Wall Street Occupation a Work in Progress
The pundits and mainstream media analysts may be viewing the Wall Street Occupation with myopic intent, perhaps because the “news cycle” is so limited in its scope and imagination, and the protesters are not yet respected as a cohesive force for social, political and economic change.
What is yet to be determined is how far the occupation actually gets as a power broker, and that is not going to be quickly articulated or resolved.
Like all occupations, including the one in Afghanistan, there is no exit strategy. So far there has been only a vague declaration that the very life of the American Dream is in peril and what is being invented and discovered is the expanded opportunity for an undeniable rude “awakening” for the fat cats, tycoons and power elite—that they are being called out by the dispossessed, disenfranchised and “activists” of all manner of “causes.”
The coalition between youth and labor, environmentalists and anti-war demonstrators does reflect a global strategy to save the planet, save the human race and promote social justice, economic fairness and sane policies that are sensibly enacted with a long-range hope to return our economy to a vibrantly productive one which regards individual rights, not corporate interests, as sacrosanct. Like George Washington at Valley Forge, the occupiers mat well have to endure a hard winter to prove they are seriously intent on staying the course until real change happens.
S. R. Lavin
via Internet
Hamp: Business as Usual
Is anyone surprised that Narkewicz wants to continue the status quo of [former Northampton mayor Clare] Higgins? Until we elect a true outsider into the mayor’s office, the shenanigans will keep the public ignorant of the damage the city is going to allow the new fairgrounds to wreak upon their neighbours [“Looking for a Fair Fight,” October 13, 2011]. If this is how Narkewcz intends to operate as mayor, it’s clear he needs to be the shortest-term mayor ever.
Gregory Bennett
via Internet
Grain of Truth
The real truth about whole grains is simply this: whole grains are seeds. You can put any whole grain in fertile soil, water it, and in a few days it will sprout. But the sprout is not a whole grain. It’s a sprout.
Whole grain bread is an oxymoron. So is whole grain pasta. Whole wheat bread is made from flour, not whole grains. Flour is not a source of whole grains. Flour is made by processing and refining the whole grain seeds.
The best way to receive the considerable nutritional benefits from whole grains is to consume them in their “whole” form. That would mean primarily to soak them, clean them, cook them (mostly boil, bake or pressure-cook) and eat them along with other delicious cooked or raw whole foods, as our ancestors did for thousands of years.
Almost any other form a whole grain takes is a form of processing, and processed grains are no longer whole. They are processed, as in cut, flattened, rolled, crushed, milled and/or made into flour.
Porridge oats are made from whole oats (not from steel cut oats or rolled oats, which are both forms of processed grains). The brown rice you ask for in a restaurant is whole grain rice. The whole wheat bread you make your sandwich with is not a source of whole grains. The bread is made from flour, which is the result of a process of refining or milling the whole grains. Wheaties and most every other cereal in a box or bag, including granola and muesli and rolled oats, are not whole grains but processed grains.
Whole grains are complex carbohydrates and convert to sugar more slowly. Refined grains in any form are refined carbohydrates and convert to sugar rapidly. Notice that both whole grains and refined grains convert to sugar. How rapidly they convert to sugar is the key to maintaining your own blood sugar in balance.
Eating six doughnuts in 15 minutes will cause a rapid and dramatic increase in blood sugar. Eating a bowl of organic quality cooked brown rice in 15 minutes will not do this. The brown rice will convert to sugar as all forms of grains do, but it is the speed at which it converts to sugar and enters our bloodstream that spells the difference between balance and some form of metabolic imbalance, like hyperglycemia.
Most people are not eating whole grains. Most people are eating highly processed foods from commercial bakeries, which are mostly flour products made from refined grains. No wonder we have a diabesity epidemic in this country. Most people are overfed yet undernourished, misinformed and uncertain, stressed out and pissed off at all the so-called experts who continue to purposely mislead them (like the cereal makers) or simply fail to educate them properly.
Whatever food you choose to eat, make the distinction between certified organic quality and everything else. There is still some debate as to whether or not certified organic foods contain more nutrients, but there is no debate whatsoever that certified organic foods are cleaner and “greener” and do not contain herbicides and pesticides, fillers, binders, preservatives, coloring agents, bleaches, dyes, desiccants (drying agents) and genetically manipulated organisms.
Russell Mariani, www.healingdigestiveillness.com
via Internet
Tax the Poor
Taxes are the price we pay for government services.
I cannot be certain, but it is reasonable to assume that poor folks require greater government services and assistance than do the wealthy. Thus, in principle, the poor should pay more.
However, since the wealthy do have greater resources, perhaps we can ask them to pay as much as the poor.
It is unarguable, though, that I have no claim on the wealth of others. While all men should enjoy the same legal rights and responsibilities, they will never have equal talent, opportunity or success!
To the extent that one’s wealth is illegally acquired, prosecution is a remedy. But another man’s honest accumulation of wealth takes nothing from me and owes nothing to me.
Joseph A. Pasulka
Southport, N.C.
Clarification: While the mothers’ group at the women’s correctional center in Chicopee (“A Hundred and Two and What Do You Do?“, October 13, 2011) is listed on MotherWoman’s “mothers’ groups” page, that group is, in fact, run by the Prison Birth Project (www.theprisonbirthproject.org). For more information about that group or the project, contact theprisonbirthproject@gmail.com.
