Peter :
>Denis, you are a somewhat contradictory person: You seem to me a man of
great integrity yet at the >same time so blinded by your need to settle old
personal scores with Bruno that you do loose some >credibility. I put in a
lot of effort through private exchanges with both you and Bruno attempting
to >separate these personal issues from the "facts" but was unsuccessful.
In these efforts Bruno came off >the most credible and mature of the two
you, so I decided that since we could not get to the bottom of >the issues
to continue to keep the matters off the list. There is only so much I can
do about things >that took place far away in a foreign country.

Denis :
It is very easy to appear mature when you dissimulate. You just need to
look down on things and people. Let me try to sound mature like Comby for a
while :
" I don't understand, Denis, my friend. What's happening to you ? You've
lost ground with reality. I hope you'll recover soon, so that we can
continue to work as before..." How does it sound ?

I cannot blame your for your hesitation.
My weak point is, as Kirt rightly pointed out, that I tend to think that
everybody believes everybody else. This makes me react to lies, every time
I think I've found one that has escaped the attention of other people,
more abruptly than a normal, "detached" person.
Same thing for my research. It's not so much the idea of instinct itself,
as the idea that Burger could have lied in his book when he gave his own
version of how he found the idea, which started my quest.
Same thing also for Clara Davis: it's not so much her experiments that
moved me but reading the nonsensical arguments of her contradictors, since
I sensed  that these arguments were pushed forward for ideological reasons.

BIG Parenthesis on IDEOLOGY AND INSTINCT :

Realizing that the history of the belief in food instinct is tied up with
the history of anti-democratic movements and ideas in Europe - although not
in the US - will help you understand how and why Burger has currently no
competitors amongst the current scientific elite, and why the idea has
SUDDENLY disappeared from the intellectual horizon  with the downfall of
nazism and fascism....It's not that they are not capable to understand, nor
that they await the illumination of instinct. Anybody who would make a
public pronouncement in favor of Burger's thesis today  would be
IMMEDIATELY  called an "anti-democrat", and with strong, unanswerable
arguments, by those who are knowledgeable in the field of history of
medicine. BURGER knows it, because he knows many more things on the history
of the idea than he is ready to tell. After all, isn't Switzerland a
sanctuary for rightist ideas in Europe ?

Obviously, modern science cannot be  interested in "historically labelled"
"anti-democratic" ideas and concept, especially  when funded by public
money. ( at a time when Kirt could rightly have called me another "victim"
of Burger,   I  wondered  why GCB  thought useless to spend time with
scientists . Obviously he knew it was "peine perdue"....)  People like Kirt
who think that there is no room for ideology in science, that if science
has ruined the hope of many religions, it will also manage to ruin the
hopes of "agro-business" would better have a second look at the history of
the 1945 "intellectual" epuration of France,  when the socialist-communist
governement blacklisted all the authors, including scientists,  whom they
thought had favored the cause of the nazis, not only during the Occupation,
but since the beginning of the century. These people, call it whatever you
want, socialists, liberals...   are still running the place, all over the
world. Do they want to get trouble with the industry ? The answer is  NO.
I call the  second half of our century, the "mellow yellow era" : nobody
wants to get trouble with anybody. When Burger choose the title of his book
: "La guerre du cru" , he knew what he was goading some sleeping tiger..

Kirt, if you can find a copy of one of the   books listed in the 1945
Liberation Index which refers to food hygiene, please contact me and I'll
make you  a rich man ....because in France, these books have not only
disappeared from second hand bookstores, they have also disappeared from
the University Libraries. The only things which remain are name cards in
card catoalogs....

Burger needed people like Comby , naive, pure idealists without any
historical  understanding, without a speck of general education, whom he
can manipulate at will, because they had faith in the future, in their
future. (Comby once asked me the exact meaning of the word "humanist"...).
Hiding the truth on his sources served a double goal : not only could he
appear as a "master", a man of wide ranging mind (which he is, no doubt,
but to a much much lesser extent than many people think ), but also to make
people believe it was the first time such an idea had been  aired.
Supposing he had told the whole story, he would have had to explain why and
how the idea systematically got a cold shower reception, everytime
scientists took advantage of new scientific discoveries  to push the idea
forward.... with the result that many people would have said "what the heck
..." from the very beginning...

Sometimes I wonder how many people are there, who know the ideological side
of the story. I would bet that Burger's lawyers know it. One of the two
lawyers of Burger  is The most famous lawyer in France, having defended
some of the "most difficult cases" of french collaborationnists during the
german Ocupation. ( May be it is hard to believe for you, americans, that
such trials are still going on, fifty years after the Liberation ....)

Voltaire once had a very good word : he said something like the knowledge
of  history is the best remedy against sects.

End of the Big Parenthesis.

Peter :
>This thing about Americans having a more detached style I think is
nonsense. If some of the Europeans >on the list had stood up and confirmed
this, I might have been open to the idea but to me it is >obvious that you
are carrying around a lot of emotional baggage regarding these issues, and
I applaud >you for your efforts to put them aside.

Denis :
I readily admit that I'm carrying more emotional bagage on this topic than
the average person on this list .
I've lived in the States and I've had  american girlfriends. You probably
didn't have a similar experience in France. I like the US a lot : the
people and the scenery, and so on... . But one think which always amazed me
is the way you  can talk about every subject, including those which in
europe are loaded with passionate arguments (sex, politics...) on the same
unemotional
tone, as if you were commenting on  a cookbook (may be the exemple is badly
chosen...). it always seemed to me that you were raised and educated on all
topics by disenchanted psychanalysts !
I'm not putting any judgment here. It 's just different. That's all. Why
we, latin people, excessively  revel in dramatizing  our lives is just
another way of addressing the same question.

Peter (quoting Bruno)
>.... a justification of crime and delinquancy I found erroneous and so=20
>un-interesting I didn't >even read it) and that the only way to open=20
>her mind (supposedly closed because anti-meta), put a >halt to her=20
>"anti-meta" attitudes, and enable at last a free circulation of love=20
>energies in >MTR... For sure she never opposed GC and meta again (at=20
>least directly, but in private with me she >was more revolted and more=20
>anti-meta than ever) after being bashed. For me GC's explanation on=20
>that evening were pure self-justification and revolting, but many=20
>members of the group believed >his version.
Peter (himself) :
>Burger seems to have been a very charismatic character who obviously had a
strong influence on >everybody around him. And if Bruno was under his spell
as well maybe you need to forgive him for that.

Denis :
I don't see anything in the additional paragraph you quoted from Comby's
response which could justify his attitude. If he completely disagreed  with
Meta, the cornerstone of  Burger's thought, he should have left Montrame. I
think that Comby was under the spell of everything which was coming out of
Burger's mouth, including the Meta. To the point of thinking that he could
"improve it". Bruno relentlessly explained to me how one could improve the
Meta to make it more humane, and he had a whole theory on approaching
sexual partners which was incredibly elaborated, and could, in my view,
only have come out of a sick mind. The most fascinating aspect in Comby is
that there was nothing in his behaviour, apart from eating, which could be
called "instinctive" : everything was calculated, and pondered,  his own
posture in bed, his first lines ...Everything in him bore the trademark of
Burger or Dale Carnegie or other authors of  "HOw To" books which kept
piling up by his bedside...
Getting to know him personally was at times, something of an experience...

As far as "forgiving" Comby  is concerned, why not,   considering  he was a
victim of Burger ? But only  the basis of the true story, not on the face
of his continuous lies, as in his anwers to your questions.

Peter :
>If Bruno actually knew everything that Burger was up to as you imply, I
agree that does put Bruno in a >very poor light.
Denis :
I'm glad to hear you say it.
Peter :
>But I do not believe he did and you seem a little ambiguous on the subject
yourself. First you say:

>>I remember having asked him to justify his own indolence in respect of
the >whole matter, as he >>gradually introduced me seven years ago to the
reality >described in the recent article of l'Express,

>You are not clear and it seems to me that you are contradicting yourself
from above where you quote >him for lacking "tangible proofs". So when he
"introduced you to the reality seven years ago", I think >he was sharing
his suspicions but that he did not actually know from observation or from
talking to >witnesses that the sexual abuse of children was taking place.

Denis :
Bruno had no tangible proof, but he knew the victims, at least some of
them. Frankly, I don't know who had told him all he knew. But he was damned
positive when we were talking  about it. On those occasions , his very
words were: " I don't have any hard proofs, but I could tell the police who
it  should question to get them." Would he have said so, if he wasn't 100%
sure of his informations  ?
The guy who finally did what Comby should have done long ago, Ficin or
whatever his name is, well he didn't know more than that. He certainly
never knew more than Comby when both met together. And he never questionned
the victims himself either. All he did was to go to the police and tell
them who the victims were, and who they should question to get the correct
answers. And that was all that was required. But that was already too much
for Comby. Despite all he can say, he is and he remains viscerally attached
to Burger. The  typical intelligent disciple.

Denis  :
>>And this is why his image in France is so low, he cannot even grab it on
the ground.
Peter :
>Please invite some of these people to join raw-food. I find it difficult
to understand that 20.000 >people have experimented with instinctive
nutrition over the years and that only a handful have found >their way to
this list.
Denis :
Well, it seems that from these 20 000 or so , there is still one or two
hundred couples or singles sufficiently interested in the topic to continue
the discussion. Out of these 100 or 200, only twenty  might have a computer
( in France electricity= nuclear energy as you know) and out of these
twenty , may be five or six might feel enough confidence in their english
to  post mails. Personally , I only know one lurker (salut Eric....).

Take care.
Denis