From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: Dr. Rosalie Bertell:  "Quietly Eating Radioactivity"
Followup-To: sci.med.physics
Summary: the militaristic segment of our society is whats distorting everything
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: We're not choosing to live on this planet, we're choosing to kill it.
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 15:46:14 GMT



                         Quietly Eating Radioactivity
  


   i first heard segments from the following speech by Dr. Rosalie Bertell--
   President of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, in
   Toronto, Canada, she is a Doctor of Biometrics, and a researcher on cancer,
   leukemia and mortality among people exposed to nuclear power plants--in a
   tape produced by The Other America's Radio in 1986.  it affected me deeply
   from that time forward.  i recently obtained the (virtually) complete
   recording and include the transcription of it 148 lines below this one.
   As Dr. Bertell states, "this is our future.  And somehow or other there
   has to be communication between the scientists and the farmers and the
   activists and the ordinary people who see these things and the rest of the
   community because this is an alarm system for survival.  This is something
   everybody needs to know if we're going to survive."
                                                                 -- ratitor

                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *

 excerpts from the following speech by Dr. Rosalie Bertell on the consequences
 of man-made radioactive matter which is killing us and the future of all life:

      . . . .  as things get tighter and as money gets shorter, the thing 
     that's sacrificed is always health. . . . there's no justice issue 
     which does not result in a violation of human health.  Everytime 
     there's a justice issue, somebody gets sick.  It's quite clear.
        . . . . we have a right to know what's in our food.   But the
     problem is just quietly going underground and everybody's just
     quietly eating radioactive food, and they're going to be quietly
     getting cancer and quietly having deformed babies.  We will quietly
     undermine the rest of the integrity of the gene pool, and the
     integrity of the earth.
        . . . .  At some point or other if we survive, there's going to 
     have to be a massive non-cooperation with our society which is 
     producing death. . . .  And if we are ever to break out of the 
     militaristic society that we live in--and that *is* what I think is 
     our basic aim, because that's what distorting everything--it's going 
     to have to be through an across-the-board non-cooperation effort.
        It's this preoccupation with producing death, and instruments of
     death and mega-death.  This is our root sickness.  We're not choosing
     to *live* on this planet, we're choosing to kill it.  If we're going
     to turn that around it's going to require massive non-cooperation;
     it's going to have to be non-violent because you can't violently
     choose life, you kill it.  So it's going to *have* to be non-violent.
     And it's going to have to be basically people-to-people networks
     built on trust because you're *trusting* the future and you're
     trusting your life. . . .
        So we're in a crisis.  I think it's a global crisis.  It's
     manifested differently where you live but it's basically the same
     crisis.  It's the crisis that says, "If I have more weapons, or I'm
     physically stronger, then I'm in charge and you have to do what I
     want."  That's it.  Right through our society whether you talk about
     rape, you talk about abuse, you talk about despotic rulers, or you
     talk about nuclear club, it's the same thing:  if I'm bigger or I've
     got more power, therefore I'm in charge, and it just destroys
     everybody else. . . .
        I think it's both a death process and a birth process, and the
     death is coming hard.  And it's the death of militarism.  It's the
     death of the rule of the club.  It's the death of might makes right.
     And we are capable of running the world on a different basis than
     that.  It has happened before in history that we have turned aside
     from behaviors and it can happen again.  And it *will* happen again.



       Dr. Rosalie Bertell was born in Buffalo, New York in 1929;  she
       received her PhD in mathematics from the Catholic University of
       America, Washington in 1966.  Between 1974 and 1978 she worked
       as Assistant Research Professor at the Graduate School, State
       University of New York at Buffalo, and between 1970 and 1978 as
       Senior Cancer Research Scientist at Roswell Park Memorial
       Institute, Buffalo.  She has acted as consultant for the
       National Council of Churches Energy Task Force and for the
       Citizens Advisory Committee of the President's Commission on
       the Accident at Three Mile Island, the US Nuclear Regulatory
       Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

       She has published over ninety academic papers, addresses and
       articles in an international range of environmental, peace, and
       health journals and books;  she has been called as an expert
       witness before the United States Congress, and in licensing
       hearings for nuclear power plants before the United States
       Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  In the international arena Dr
       Bertell has testified before the Select Committee on Uranium
       Resources in Australia in 1980, and at the Sizewell Enquiry in
       Britain in 1984.  A member of the Order of Grey Nuns, she now
       researches low-level radiation as Director of Research of the
       International Institute of Concern for Public Health in
       Toronto, Canada, and campaigns internationally against the
       dangers of nuclear technology.


          . . . The industry also implies that only reactor fuel
         rod waste should be of concern to the public.  It was low
         level waste, not reactor fuel, which apparently exploded
         in Chelyabinsk and almost exploded in Hanford, Washington.
         It is uranium mine tailings which have bathed the North
         American continent in radon gas.  It is tritium, carbon
         14, and stratospheric pollution from weapon testing which
         is already in the biosphere and which will slowly
         continue to pollute the food chain, undermining the
         life-nurturing power of the planet earth.  Even if
         nuclear pollution were to stop today and all the
         controllable waste jettisoned into space (the dream of
         sending nuclear waste into space is utopian because of
         its extremely heavy weight, and the likelihood of
         periodic rocket failure), the uncontrollable waste
         already released into the biosphere would cause
         devastating damage over time. (p.121)

          . . . Because of inadequate military record-keeping
         policy, the US government seems unable to provide even
         the names or service experience of military men who
         participated in nuclear tests.  Such record-keeping would
         allow comparison between their health today and that of
         other men of the same age.  Similarly, workers in nuclear
         installations, people along transporation routes for
         radioactive material, or those whose main food supply
         comes from areas around nuclear power plants, cannot now
         be identified and their experiences compared with those
         of persons not so exposed to radiation.  Non-record-
         keeping is hardly a commendable public health policy or
         the way to `prove' the safety of an industry.
            The subtle limiting factors in the public relations
         statement, "there is no record of a member of the general
         public having died from a commercial nuclear power plant
         operation,' so frequently quoted, include:

             `member of the general public' -- which excludes all
           nuclear workers, even part-time employees and those
           involved in transportation of radioactive materials;
             `commercial' -- which excludes government-operated or
           military nuclear power plants;
             `nuclear generator' -- which excludes all other parts 
           of the nuclear fuel cycle such as mining, milling,
           fabrication, transporation, reprocessing and waste
           disposal; 
             `died from' -- which excludes non-fatal cancers and 
           other diseases directly caused by the radiation 
           exposure.  It also excludes genetic damage such as 
           blindness, deafness or chronic diseases which occur in 
           a child of the victim. (pp. 128-129)

      -- from "No Immediate Danger, Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth"
               by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, (c) 1985 by The Book Publishing
               Company, Summertown, Tennessee  38483





 the following is the transcript of a speech given by Dr. Bertell in August of
 1986 to AMARC, an international community radio group, in Vancouver, Canada:
 _____________________________________________________________________________
  

        First of all I'd like to thank you for inviting me to come to this
     gathering, this is the biggest "press conference" I've ever seen.  I
     had the experience when I was in India that they had a very clear-cut
     code.  In fact you had to sign a piece of paper before you talked on
     the radio.  They didn't even consider me for television because on
     the television in India you're not allowed to criticize government
     policy at all.  On the radio, there are certain things you can
     criticize and certain other things you can't criticize.  In the
     newspapers you can say anything you want.  So you have to sign and
     agree to this code.  I think in terms of communication with the
     public, that they're probably right in perceiving that the radio
     reaches more of the public than the written word, much more.  But
     probably not as much as the television.
        I would like to speak tonight as someone who has studied public
     health, studied cancer, studied birth defects, studied the effects of
     radiation pollution, and then had to listen to all the official
     propaganda that comes out--no matter where you live--at the time of
     an accident like Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island, or Mighty Oak,
     which was the failed nuclear test in Nevada at the same time as
     Chernobyl.
        I think that trying to put together a story that's meaningful for
     people when you're snowed with technical jargon, must be pretty
     difficult.  And I know I've had a great deal of compassion for the
     media when they first ran into rems, and rads, and becquerels and
     picocuries and what have you, when these kinds of accidents occurred.  I
     would say quite frankly that the vocabulary or the jargon is meant to
     confuse you and it's deliberate.
        It's become even worse of late because in order to impress the
     public with how insignificant the exposures are, there seem to be two
     tactics.  One tactic is to make the numbers small.  So if you've been
     in the business of reporting radiation exposure or accidents for
     awhile, you'll remember that it used to be in terms of maybe eighty
     millirem at Three Mile Island, or a hundred millirem as background
     radiation, or 5,000 millirem permitted to workers per year.  It's now
     changed so that instead of eighty millirem it would be eight-tenths
     of a millisievert.  Eight-tenths is a littler number.  Instead of 
     workers getting 5,000 millirems per year they now get fifty 
     millisieverts.  So they changed the unit to make it a hundred times
     bigger which makes the numbers a hundred times smaller.  So that's
     one tactic.
        The other tactic is to give everything in percent so that you're
     told `well, there's a little bit of iodine 131 in your milk, but it's
     O.K., it's only a small percentage of the permissible level.'  Now
     you're not really told where that permissible level came from, or who
     said you could have radioactive material in your milk and it was O.K.
     But to even express it as a small percentage of a permissible level
     is very deceptive because those permissible levels are
     extraordinarily high.
        What we're talking about here is death-dealing material.  I would
     like to tell you a story about just what happened to me over this
     past weekend.  If you were following me around you would find that
     this isn't a peculiar weekend, this is something that happens
     regularly.  And these are the kinds of stories happening all over the
     world.  This particular one happened in Gore, Oklahoma which you
     maybe never heard of.  It's a very small town in the eastern part of
     Oklahoma, not too far from Arkansas, and in Gore, Oklahoma there's
     really only one industry and that is Kerr-McGee's production of
     uranium hexafluoride.
        Now Kerr-Mcgee had a lot of waste at this plant, so they decided
     they would have these deep-well injections, and they would inject
     this waste down into the ground, into the rock, and then forget about
     it.  So they were going to put 300,000 gallons per minute down into
     the earth about ten feet above the water table.  This radioactive
     waste was full of at least seventeen heavy metals that are known to
     be seriously toxic.
        The people organized and they stopped the deep-injection wells.
     But what happened, in the long run, was an even worse horror because
     the Kerr-McGee plant has declared that this material, which they were
     going to inject in the deep wells, is really a hidden source of
     fertilizer and nobody recognized it.
        So now they have declared an experimental farm and they are
     spreading this nuclear waste on the farm as a fertilizer.  Now
     fertilizer has three possible things in it--it has nitrates, or
     phosphates, or potash.  And when you describe a fertilizer you give
     the percentage, maybe ten percent nitrogen, or nitrates, and twenty
     percent phosphates, and ten percent potash.  That's how you describe 
     a fertilizer:  10-20-10.  That would tell you what was in it.  Well 
     if I had to describe Kerr-McGee's fertilizer it's 0-0-0.  Now they 
     take this 0-0-0 "fertilizer" and they put a little ammonia in it, 
     which puts some nitrate in it, and then they call it a 2-0-0, because
     they added ammonia.  And this is being spread--they started out with 
     160 acres, it's now moving to between 7,000 and 8,000 acres of 
     Oklahoma prime farmland, beautiful part of Oklahoma.
        And what does this mean for the rest of us?  It means that that's
     the hay that is fed to the cattle over the winter that's going to be
     grown on this soil.  They've already had beef cattle roaming around
     on their specially fertilized ground.  And it's another example of
     the fact that radiation is now a fact of life.  We get it whether we
     like it or not.
        On Rabbit Hill, in Oklahoma, where they are doing this little
     fertilizer experiment, one of the families told me they had at home,
     a frog that their son had caught that had nine legs.  And I thought,
     `this is crazy'--they must be just bumps that they're calling legs.
     Anyway I said I wanted to see it.  So I went over Saturday night and
     the frog was dead and they had it in alcohol in a bottle, they'd kept
     it, and I never saw anything look so peculiar in my life.  It was a
     frog with the normal four legs--two arms, two legs--but then it had a
     leg coming out of the center of the chest and two on each side.  So
     there were *five* legs coming out of the center of the chest.  They
     were long, they had two parts, and they had the fingers with the web
     between them.  So they were formed, they were not just growths.  This
     is on the same land where they have been using the radioactive waste.
        The reason I'm telling you this is that this is what is happening
     to our earth, this is what's happening to our people.  This is
     Cherokee land, this is the native people's land.  Oklahoma is mostly
     native land, or it should be mostly native land.  This is our food,
     and this is our future.  And somehow or other there has to be
     communication between the scientists and the farmers and the
     activists and the ordinary people who see these things and the rest
     of the community because this is an alarm system for survival.  This
     is something everybody needs to know if we're going to survive.
     Because nothing else is going to matter if we kill the earth and we
     kill the food and we destroy the gene pool and there aren't any
     people around to enjoy the earth.  None of the other issues are going
     to matter.  And as things get tighter and as money gets shorter, the
     thing that's sacrificed is always health.
        I noticed your resolutions, on the board, and they certainly look
     encouraging, and I'm really glad to see so many people here and glad
     that you have this conference and glad for what you're doing.  And I
     did see a resolution out there that you were going to propose to give
     more time and energy to peace and justice issues.  I would suggest
     that you specialize and that you realize that there's no justice
     issue which does not result in a violation of human health.
     Everytime there's a justice issue, somebody gets sick.  It's quite
     clear.
        It's always hard to argue on a philosophical basis;  it's always
     hard to carry on ideological arguments;  but it's much simpler to
     make visible the sickness, to make visible the people that are
     suffering because of the decisions.  And I would think one of the
     things you could do that would be *most* important is to bring out
     the problems and to give a voice to the victims.  And there are many.
        I've mentioned, I've touch into the nuclear problem.  You might be
     unaware of the fact that just since 1945--not counting Hiroshima and
     Nagasaki--there are somewhere between 10 million and 20 million
     radiation victims in the world.  I'm talking about uranium miners and
     millers, transportation people, the ones who run the power plants,
     the ones who separate out the weapons materials, fabricate the
     weapons, test the weapons, and live downwind of the tests, and handle
     the waste.  And at the rate we're going, and if we start spreading it
     as fertilizer, then you can expect the number to skyrocket, and you
     can expect the number of victims to skyrocket.
        There's another thing that the alternative media could do and that
     is to act as a social critique of the main-line media.  Let me
     suggest an area where I think you could take a very strong stand and
     a very credible stand, and one which I think would attract more
     support for the alternative media.  There are many things that once
     you point them out, become obvious to everybody, and you don't really
     need to prove them.  It's just that nobody thought about them.  There
     are many things in society that are like that.  People go on in a
     kind of mindless way doing something because they've always done it,
     and then when someone points out that it's ridiculous they recognize
     it immediately.
        I would suggest that the main-line media was very vulnerable in
     their handling of the Chernobyl accident on many scores, but one in
     particular is the common assumption that you should turn to a nuclear
     physicist to ask about your health.  If you turn to a *nurse* to ask
     about your health, you would have had the whole medical association
     down on your head.  But not one person objected.  I know in Canada I
     think Ian Wilson, head of the Canadian Nuclear Society, was on every
     program talking about health.  And he has no credentials whatsoever
     in health.  They are extremely vulnerable on this.  I refused to be
     on "Cross-Country Checkup" and I refused to be on "The Journal"
     precisely because it was to be talking about health *with* Ian
     Wilson, and I said "No, he has no credentials."  And so the main-line
     media went with Ian Wilson, not with somebody that has credentials in
     radiation health.
        Sometimes they use a scientist only to be provocative, or only to
     set up an argument.  And what we really need to do is some kind of
     social critique like, "*Why* are you asking a physicist in the first
     place?"  It's pretty obvious if it's said, but it's not obvious when
     it isn't said.
        I'd like to say something else about the difficulty that we're in
     right now in terms of radiation pollution of North America much of
     which is just not being talked about at all.  I'd like to reconstruct
     what happened in late April and early May including both what
     happened in North America *and* what happened at Chernobyl.
        On April 10th [1986], the nuclear test called "Mighty Oak" was set
     off in Nevada.  And what they're doing now in Nevada is they're
     setting the test off in an underground tunnel and they have three
     sets of doors.  These doors are six or seven foot thick.  They leave
     two doors ajar and they close the third one, and at the very first
     seconds of the blast, they try to let through the radiation and then
     slam the doors shut so they don't get the blast or the fire.  Then
     they take that radiation that comes off in the beginning of the blast
     and they're trying to put it into a weapon beam.
        Anyway whatever happened on April 10th, the two sets of doors that
     were supposed to close didn't, and they had a raging nuclear fire
     underground in the tunnel.  The last door held.  They always lose
     some of the nuclear material in these blasts.  But this time it had
     filled the whole cavity where it was not supposed to be, so it
     couldn't just be released as they usually do, slowly.  They went out,
     as usual, after they had this accident, and gave themselves a permit
     to vent.  That makes it legal.  So if you ask about it, it's legal
     venting, it isn't an accident.  And they started venting sometime
     about April 20th.  They did a small amount of venting.
        After that, they must have seen the Chernobyl accident from
     satellite though they didn't announce it--they waited for Sweden to
     announce it.  But on the day after, the 27th, they began venting
     everything, and they continued to vent for five or six days in Nevada
     from that test.  They didn't admit it either until the 6th of May--if
     you look back on the press conference it was May 6th that they
     finally admitted that.  Before that they said they were being
     maligned--that they had not had an accident.
        Meanwhile another agency of the government, the EPA, started
     telling the radiation levels in North America, and in Canada it was
     the radiation protection branch of health and welfare in Ottawa.  I
     don't know how many Canadians are here but maybe you remember the
     very first announcement of radioactive rain was where?  Ottawa.
     Isn't that interesting?  It didn't go to the east coast or the west
     coast but it came from Chernobyl and it landed in Ottawa.  It was
     really incredible.
        If you look at the EPA measurements for the states, you'll find
     the highest measurement for the whole United States was in Salt Lake
     City--directly downwind of the Nevada Test Site.  You'll also find it
     quite high in Spokane and other places.  Now all they measured in
     Canada and the United States was iodine 131, and the reports are
     really quite carefully worded.  It says "Post-Chernobyl Federal
     Radiation Measurements."  It doesn't say it came from Chernobyl.
     *Legally* you cannot say that the government said it came from
     Chernobyl--because they didn't--you just imply it because that's the
     heading.
        Meanwhile when they had their press conference, the Department of
     Energy announced that they really only lost one gas and that gas was
     zenon 133.  And nothing else.  Now if you know what a nuclear 
     explosion is like, and you think that they just lost one little gas 
     out of between 300 and 400 radionuclides produced in that nuclear 
     blast, then you deserve to be deceived.  But let's suppose that was 
     true--that they could do that--that they could only release that one 
     and that all the rest were kept underground.  Then you *still* have 
     the problem that they're claiming Chernobyl radioactive iodine all 
     over the United States at very high levels, and there's been no 
     follow-up.
        I presume you know that in Europe they're now reporting the cesium
     137.  After you have an accident the first thing's the radioactive
     iodine but that's gone in about two months.  And the next thing is
     the cesium.  Sweden, for example, has forbidden anybody to fish in
     their 20,000 lakes because of the high levels of cesium in the fish.
     They're high levels of cesium in berries all over Europe, the
     blackberries and the raspberries.  There's high levels of cesium in
     apricots and peaches from Greece.  There are high levels of cesium in
     wild mushrooms and in deer, and people are being warned not to eat
     these things.
        So *if* indeed it was Chernobyl radiation in North America, and we
     had the iodine, then why are we not being warned about the cesium.
     Alright?  They can't have it both ways.  Somehow or other there's
     something pretty fishy about the radiation reports for North America.
     But we need some independent reporting, and we need some independent
     investigative reporters, and we need some people who are willing to
     interview bureaucrats and ask them why these kinds of anomalies
     exist.
        Because we have a right to know what's in our food.   But the
     problem is just quietly going underground and everybody's just
     quietly eating radioactive food, and they're going to be quietly
     getting cancer and quietly having deformed babies.  We will quietly
     undermine the rest of the integrity of the gene pool, and the
     integrity of the earth.
        So we're in a very bad situation.  One of the lifelines is in the
     alternative media.  One of the things that provides us with an
     international network to be able to help one another is the
     alternative media.  And part of the infrastructure of hopefully a
     growing global village that will replace this insanity which is
     destroying us has got to be the alternative media.
        That means you've got responsibility for not passing on the lies;
     for being awake and alive and questioning;  and also for nourishing
     what moves us toward a more life-giving agenda.  You've got a big
     responsibility.  I presume you know it because you are here and
     that's heartening.  But it means picking out the people to nourish
     and also providing a network so that the people who see things and
     know things can get it out.  Because it's very important to get it 
     out.
        I'll tell you a few more things that I heard in Europe because I
     think there are people here who maybe could use that information.
     Some of the milk was condemned in England, some of the milk on the
     continent was condemned.  It was the understanding of the people over
     there that it was put in to powdered milk form, after which they lost
     track of it.  Now where do you think that's likely to end up?
        The third world.  Right.  So there's got to be a way when 
     something like this happens in the first world, that those things can 
     be marked and that people in the receiving countries know right away 
     when they get there, and that it gets a *lot* of press.  Because 
     there's nothing that works in our present lawless international arena 
     as much as popular opinion.  There's a lot of flaunting of the law, 
     but opinion of people all over the world *still* has some kind of 
     pressure.
        And it's going to take more than that to rouse the public.  At
     some point or other if we survive, there's going to have to be a
     massive non-cooperation with our society which is producing death.
        I don't know how they did it in Poland, but somehow or other in
     spite of pressures, they were in touch with one another, they were
     able to call a strike even if it was only for an hour.  And they were
     able to shut down the society and say `we mean business.'  We have
     not yet been able to do this in the west.  They did do it in Poland,
     they did accomplish that.  I know a little more about what they did
     in the Philippines.  They worked very very hard for a long time and
     they suffered for many years.  But what happened in the Philippines
     was really overwhelming.
        When I look at the escalation--when I look at Cuba and I see that
     there was one person who was the hero in Cuba;  and when I look at
     Nicaragua and I see that there was a group of people who were the
     heros in Nicaragua--that's an escalation.  And then I look at the
     Philippines and I see the Philippines was everybody.  That is a 
     *fantastic* progression.  And it depends very much on communication.  
     Because the *only* security we have, the only safety we have is in 
     number.  And the only way we can be safe is if we do things 
     together.  And the only way we can do things together is if we 
     communicate with one another.  And if we are ever to break out of 
     the militaristic society that we live in--and that *is* what I think
     is our basic aim, because that's what distorting everything--it's 
     going to have to be through an across-the-board non-cooperation 
     effort.
        It's this preoccupation with producing death, and instruments of
     death and mega-death.  This is our root sickness.  We're not choosing
     to *live* on this planet, we're choosing to kill it.  If we're going
     to turn that around it's going to require massive non-cooperation;
     it's going to have to be non-violent because you can't violently
     choose life, you kill it.  So it's going to *have* to be non-violent.
     And it's going to have to be basically people-to-people networks
     built on trust because you're *trusting* the future and you're
     trusting your life.
        To me, there are four stages that populations will move through in
     trying to deal with these issues.  I would suggest if you have not
     read the book by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, "On Death And Dying," that
     you read it, and if you have read it I suggest you read it again, but
     read it not in terms of personal death, read it in terms of the death
     of the species.
        I think you'll find that a society goes through the same kind of
     stages as an individual goes through when they deal with these life-
     and-death questions.  And this applies to revolution, it applies to
     the nuclear issue, it applies to Star Wars, it applies to many things
     in society that carry with them the potential of destroying us as a
     species and destroying our future.
        The first stage, which is the one that you probably come up
     against the most, is just flat out denial:  bug off, don't bother me,
     I hope I die before it happens, I'm too busy, leave me alone, I want
     to live my live if it happens it happens, I can't stop it anyway, I'm
     helpless.  All those things, that's denial, flat out denial.
        If a person gets over that, or if a society gets over the denial
     stage then they move into a second stage which is normally called
     anger, frustration, high emotional content, maybe just look at a
     child and you fill up and start to cry and you say, `where did the
     tears come from?'  And you don't know, but there's something inside
     of you that says, `things are really bad and what's it going to be
     like for this child?'
        That stage is good, it's healthy.  It's much healthier than the
     first stage even though you feel miserable.  You're more in touch
     with reality.  So it's a good stage.  But if you're working with
     media then you've got to know whether you're trying to move people
     out of denial, or you're trying to deal with the people that are not
     denying it anymore but they're hurting.  And you can't continue to
     try to raise consciousness when the people's consciousness is
     bursting and their heart's aching, and they want to know what to do.
     So you can't push it at the wrong stage.  And again we go through
     this cyclically, we end up back in denial again and then we end up in
     a deeper hurting, which then opens us up to a deeper reality.
        You find after that that people move into a stage normally called
     barter.  In a barter stage you sort of half accept the reality and
     half accept the responsibility, but you're not yet acting
     effectively.  These are the people who "spin their wheels," a term
     the students use.  And it's true, they *do* a lot.  They often are
     very active, but they don't accomplish a whole lot.  And their
     activity is satisfying that hunger in their heart and that feeling
     that things aren't right and that you have to do something.
        Again, you have to deal with people differently when they're in
     *that* stage of barter where they often think they're doing all they
     can but "all they can" is not really changing something.  Do you know
     what I mean when I say that?
        I would put most politicians in that stage.  And I would put most
     military people in that stage.  They know darn well how bad it is.
     They also have gone through the stage of being horrified, and they
     have come to what *they* think grips with what reality is all about
     which is to deal with the economics and the politics of who's in
     charge.  But they don't know anything about biology or sociology or
     psychology or physiology or survival.  So they're just dealing with
     the little bit they think they can handle, and they're working very
     hard, and they think you're picking on them if you tell them to do
     more.  And this is where many of us are.  And we find ourselves back
     there, and we need a community to move to the fourth stage.
        In the fourth stage you have already let it all come in on you and
     I say that because I know when I began to realize what we were
     dealing with, how extensive and how deep in our world these problems
     work, it took me about a year.  I actually took off for a year
     because I couldn't cope with it.  And because I was broken inside.  I
     was doing things, and at the same time wishing I was someplace else
     and not doing it.  I was torn between what I though I ought to be
     doing, and what I found myself doing.
        So we're in a crisis.  I think it's a global crisis.  It's
     manifested differently where you live but it's basically the same
     crisis.  It's the crisis that says, "If I have more weapons, or I'm
     physically stronger, then I'm in charge and you have to do what I
     want."  That's it.  Right through our society whether you talk about
     rape, you talk about abuse, you talk about despotic rulers, or you
     talk about nuclear club, it's the same thing:  if I'm bigger or I've
     got more power, therefore I'm in charge, and it just destroys
     everybody else.
        If you let it come in on you and you stop your own defenses, then
     I think you will release a well of energy that you won't believe, and
     nobody else will believe.  Most of our vitality is being absorbed
     inside of us because we're not dealing with it, because we're not
     *really* dealing with it.  And if you stop all the defenses you find
     you've got so much energy you don't know where it came from and you
     can do what ten people do.  And you'll have to.  I'm not
     exaggerating.
        When someone says, `what can I do?' I know they haven't started.
     Because once you start and once you have reached, at least the depth
     of where you are now and you're willing to go with it totally, then
     all the barriers fall away.  Not easily but they do.  But they do and
     you do what you think you can't do.
        I think it's both a death process and a birth process, and the
     death is coming hard.  And it's the death of militarism.  It's the
     death of the rule of the club.  It's the death of might makes right.
     And we are capable of running the world on a different basis than
     that.  It has happened before in history that we have turned aside
     from behaviors and it can happen again.  And it *will* happen again.
        The birthing is more exciting.  And the birthing is to be
     nourished.  And the signs of the birthing are here with us tonight.
     There's signs of cooperation instead of competition.  There's signs
     of an equal sharing instead of hogging the things of the earth.
     There's signs of seeing the needs of others before we start piling up
     our own wants.  There is a sign of a vision of a global community
     where we keep our individuality, where we share our resources, and
     where we learn to live together under common agreements and regional
     solutions to our problems instead of military might.  It's going to
     take a lot of adjustments, but the people in the alternative movement
     are developing the skills that can bring about survival in this kind
     of a society.
        So I'd like to congratulate you on your beginnings and I would
     like to encourage you to go deeper, and encourage you to listen to
     what people are saying.  Draw out the people in your local community
     and give them credibility and give them a voice when they really have
     something to say.  And above all nourish the roots of the global
     village.  Nourish the roots of the future.  Because that village
     which is being born is still not quite there and it's very fragile,
     and very scary because we could blow the whole thing.  Thank you.





For more information about all this please contact:

        The International Institute of Concern For Public Health
        830 Bathurst Street
        Toronto, Canada     M5R3G1

        416/533-7351

--
                                              daveus rattus   

                                    yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                                KOYAANISQATSI

    ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
        in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
          5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.




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