Oahu residents were groaning under the impact of the Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference.
Parks and beaches were inaccessible or closed, roads were blocked unexpectedly and even the freeway shut down. Waikiki was under martial law conditions, with concrete barricades, car searches, workers subject to background checks to determine if they could work, security passes were needed to enter various areas, and even offshore surf sites were closed.
Adding insult to injury, right after teachers and other public workers were forced to take pay and benefit cuts, millions of our tax money was spent to spiff up landscaping and push our most unfortunate out of what little they can call home.
This our government did in order to put on a show for the richest of the rich and their political servants – the very ones who caused and benefitted from the economic crisis that has cut our services, impoverished our public workers, and put our families out on the street.
Despite Hawaii’s visitor industry not getting a boost in business travel out of this is certain But one thing is certain: we have tainted the vacations of the visitors we already had here.
And for what? Just what went on at the APEC talks that were worth the nuisance and expense? It’s all a big secret, but the facts are beginning to come in, despite the secrecy and the distraction of self-promoting politicians making speeches.
APEC was about working on a dirty deal to benefit global banks and corporations at the expense of the rest of us.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal that the 1 % continues to cook up represents a massive corporate/bank end-run around our laws, protections, rights and self-determination.
Labor laws to ensure basic standards for workers in our community, environmental and consumer protection laws, land use laws, even laws to control health care costs – they are talking about how to get around all these. Even laws protecting Hawaiian lands are in danger, rendering Hawaiian sovereignty meaningless.
But it’s not only Hawaii’s peoples’ sovereignty that is being undermined. It is the sovereign rights of Hawaii and the United States as well.
All nations signing trade deals like TPP are giving up sovereignty rights to corporations and banks. The provisions of this secret agreement would allow private entities – banks and corporations – to bring suit in international courts to enforce the terms.
This has already happened under previous “free trade” scams like NAFTA. Mexican corporations have been successful in ignoring safety and anti-pollution laws that took decades of struggle to put in place – unsafe and polluting Mexican trucks, with drivers paid under Mexican wage and benefit standards, now have free access to American highways, competing with American truckers who respect American laws.
Even future laws we would like to pass will be prevented. For example, the governor’s idea that Hawaii should buy food from local farmers to feed our school children – that could be prevented along with any other Buy Hawaii or Buy American programs.
The 1 % pushing the TPP deals at conferences like APEC is even talking about rules that would prevent us from promoting generic drugs and force us to buy hideously overpriced patented drugs.
And they want to extend the years that pharmaceutical companies can keep new drugs under patent, thereby maintaining their breathtaking monopoly prices for all drugs.
All of us – or at least 99 % of us – will be the victims, and the big pharmaceutical companies and the banks that own them – the 1 % – will generate even bigger profits off our illnesses and aging.
APEC and TPP now seem to be just another scheme to stick it to the 99 % of us who work for a living. No wonder APEC put up walls, barricades, traffic stops and road closures to keep Hawaii’s people away from them – they were up to no good!
The last gasp of the APEC summit starts us off as we flashback on the week’s news that amused and confused us:
Obama and local boosters declared APEC a rousing success, but the residents and tourists were put off by the sight of armed troops, Humvees, and concrete barriers on the streets. We looked like the Geneva of the Pacific after a detour through Baghdad.
Though the event came up short of the projected 20,000 delegates, 2,000 journalists and $123 million in economic stimulus, organizers promised long-term benefits. As usual, we have to wait for heaven for our reward.
Governor Neil Abercrombie, who is the reincarnation of Napolean Bonaparte, said APEC established Hawaii as the “anchor of the Asia-pacific region. Businesses shut out from customers felt like anchors only in the sense of getting thrown overboard.
Mayor Peter Carlisle said his only criticism of APEC was that APEC is that Secret Service agents frowned too much. He never did understand jobs that require actually paying attention.
Then slack-key artists sand an Occupy-themed protest song for 45 minutes while Obama and other world leaders ate dinner, but said the president didn’t seem to notice. I guess that solves the old Zen riddle about the sound of one hand clapping.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s photo op with the Hong Kong delegate was interrupted when a torchbearer wearing only a loincloth streaked behind her. She must get tired of getting upstaged by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Obama couldn’t resist stopping traffic one last time by motorcading to his departing flight in the middle of the morning rush. He loves the power of being here instead of the casualty of it in Washington.
And the best – Obama who was allegedly born here could not bring himself to wear an aloha shirt yet when he went to Indonesia he couldn’t wait to wear their traditional Javanese attire.
Aloha!
About Hesh:
I have been doing a radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. To listen to the show please go to www.kwai1080am.com on your computer at 8am Hawaii time. FYI, 8am Hawaii time is 11am on the West coast and 2pm on the East coast. See you on the radio! To call in, the number is (808) 524-1080.
In 2007, I was “forced” to get a masters degree in Nutrition to stop all the doctors from calling in asking what my credentials were. Besides that, they never liked it when I asked them what their credentials were that would enable them to treat an illness without drugs or surgery.
If you go to www.healthtalkhawaii.com and click on Podcasts, there are years of shows there as well as hundreds of health related articles.
I am an activist. I am vehemently opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation, and everything else that the “pimps” (big pHarma, Monsanto, and the large food companies), and the “hookers” (the doctors, the government agencies, the Public Health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the “tricks”.
At 75, I am in 3 softball leagues, racewalk, do stand-up paddling, hike, swim, do weights and cardio, and teach women’s self-defense classes based upon 20 years of Wing Chun training. I have been a vegetarian since 1975 and a vegan since 1990, have no illnesses and take no meds.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child, I developed asthma, which plagued me until 2008 when I learned about and started taking the organic sulfur crystals. My asthma was reversed in 3 days and has not come back.
So far, 22 cases of autism that we know about have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma, osteoarthritis, joint pain, gingivitis, and erectile dysfunction. The sulfur has increased sexual activity, eliminated toxins, heavy metals, radiation, and parasites. It speeds up athletic recovery time, increases blood circulation, reduces inflammation, increases resistance to the “flu”, reduces wrinkles, allergies, PMS, monthly period pain, migraines, nausea, and way more, because the oxygen that the sulfur releases floods and heals the cells in the body.
The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids.
You can find out more about this on my website under Products.
My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, which has been published, can be viewed and purchased at www.asanediet.com. The book clearly explains why what you eat, for the most part, is designed to keep you in a state of declining health.
I have recently discovered an amazing super food – Zeal – that contains 42 amazing probiotics, anti-oxidents and more, all designed to build and strengthen the immune system. For more info about this please email me.
Hesh Goldstein, MSNutri
“Health Talk” Moderator, K-108 Radio
POB 240783, Honolulu, Hi 96824
(808) 258-1177
www.healthtalkhawaii.com
www.asanediet.com
[email protected]
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
