thank you. it's seven thirty here on in moscow you're watching our t.v. let's take a look at the headlines our french ex-pats the cars their ballots in the country's run of presidential vote as france decides on sunday between nicolas a cosy and his socialist rival francois hollande in an election which is shan't be split the country. the self-proclaimed mastermind of the nine eleven terror attacks on through the judges question of whether stony silence at a one ton of record some critics however believe the timing of the military tribunals is politically motivated. and a day of mourning is observed in russia's republic of dagestan for the victims of

a double bombing which rocked the capital and thursday night the explosion which left thirteen did and over one hundred injured is sauti have been linked to international terrorist groups. next to our special report exploring the very individual community that lives in a place called twin oaks stay with r.t. . if you don't want.

it's easy to look out in society it's easy to look out at what's going on in politics or society and say well i don't like that like i want to protest against that or you know some political decision or whatever you know whatever happens there's things that it's good to you know the easy to identify a protest against but but there's got to be a flip side to say well here's what you're against but then what are you in favor of so we talked about you know some people go off to the occupy wall street protests but that in a way is just as important to stay here and keep you know keep our businesses going and saying well here's the alternative if you don't like the corporations will then you support you know companies and businesses that are owned by the workers you know so politically that it feels to me like. rather than going out and doing something a little in the way my life might work just making this place is sort of

a political action. it's hard to locate twin oaks philosophically because we operate as a communistic organization you know we're sort of a pure pure sort of communism however the way we function is that we're not trying to keep people here and they can't believe we have a meeting with her people who want to join and the only consequence we have for people who don't work there share is they get kicked down so this sort of small scale communism works really well. floats christmas morning so we're having brunch so everybody in the community.

who wants to have a special brunch. here. and then much to a lot of people are bringing other things with them to help contribute. because what happens around christmas is we get a lot of stuff in the mail from their family. place to go. through to. hear what people hear fruitcake some things like that and so then they can bring into this brunch and share that. you know this is in central virginia right between the cities of charlottesville and richmond where about ten miles outside of the town of louisa

a very rural environment. there are one hundred people living in twelfth's there are ninety four adults and thirteen children. twelfth's was started in one nine hundred sixty seven and has been a robust community ever since then and we have spawned other communities using our systems we helped start east when community in the jury we helped start acorn community. just down the road and a lot of other communities have adopted our systems and adopted our practices so we developed these robust systems for keeping people equal and equally empowered.

i think. they all said well. i don't feel the constant like advertisements and people to get me by. walking around with a bunch of strangers who don't want to look you in the eye and also like to know my resource of things i like a lot of it. looks like a better way for me to live but i'm afraid of living a life so. things. like the work is so much more fulfilling than the work i did in the city. i work a lot of. crappy jobs. food service. customer service. and i didn't feel fulfilled. and i might be learning so much and just like feel like everything i do

feel. like hoping. and contributing to something bigger. this is a boiler and their way this works is a story of a fire and it has a. blower in it so it's a very efficient boiler it takes about five or six little logs to heat the water that he says whole building has twenty one bedrooms twenty one people. well i think we're a lot less focused on money and having nice things i think are more focused on

quality of life. for people here say that we pay ourselves and fresh vegetables which is a nice idea. and generally have a sense of ownership of my work in a way that i didn't. in mainstream society in the work that i do here directly impacts the community and if i do it badly for community suffers so because of that there's a lot of incentive to do things right. and it's very nice i. i think i found the place that i was looking for i don't know if. i'll be here for the rest of my life or just. as long as it takes to like. learn to love myself. learn to love the world i think that there's a lot of opportunity to connect with nature and

silence and stillness. if you would. not ration. care. for. the constant gardener which place where you are. now why. it's so much better in. one or the mer frustrations social. political. it is entirely up to the individual how they relate to any greater being there is no. state religion that the community is mandating and so there are people

here who go to a local christian church there are people who celebrate like solstice and equinox like the other holidays like that. feeling. if you hear it. you know. sort of mind tory. taking care of animals in the fall

and so on i really enjoy taking care of. and it's hard it's hard but it's worth it if you're really currently capable of doing it then. we're ready to take a leadership role in. now what tends to happen is that we have new members come to the community and since there are so many areas of the community and they all need managing we have a kitchen in a kitchen manager and automate once an auto manager and. quickly even new members are asked to be a manager of some area it's a very educational process because each of the managers are expected to provide

a service to the community in their area and they're expected to only use the amount of resources that they're budgeted and i don't go over budget. in every culture there is still an elite and we're twin oaks is trying to do is to get beyond having any sort of elite so everybody here is expected to be responsible and so we don't have a political elite to keep everybody at the same economic level so we don't have an economic elite and we also everybody has their own relationship to a greater power and so we don't have a religious leader there's an. increase . i was born in taiwan. my dad was in the cia he worked in the cia for twenty twenty five years central intelligence agency and so we traveled

back and forth. my dad retired from the cia nine hundred seventy seven and he wrote his book called deadly seats my twenty five years in the cia and it is all public information like you do reveal any secrets. but it is critical of the cia's role in the government basically what my dad says in his book is that the cia is a tool of multinational corporations that it's odd. that the cia doesn't gather intelligence it creates propaganda to support american foreign policy. and became clear to me is this his life of keeping secrets this was bad and made him unhappy and i think that something changed in music i don't want to

live a life where i have to keep secrets and so i i imagine that had something to do with how i chose to come to twenty zero because here everything is open everybody knows my business i do a real sad business what we are doing and when it works is clear and public we're not keeping any secrets from anybody and i think that that makes the people who live here happy or. people. who in their.

oh. i don't even work for me. the theme for our new year's eve party is twin oaks and wonderland and so. we're taking some of the motifs from the book movie such as mushrooms and giant ism and we're trying to create that space so when people walk into our living room they're going to see giant mushrooms over their head and they're going to feel like they're very small like alice was when she drank the potion that made her very small. each adult member of the community has labor obligation that's

forty two hours a week and exchange for doing those forty two hours the community covers basically all the cost of living. if all of your medical and your clothing and your housing your food and insurance and entertainment and transportation and basically all of the costs you have so most of the members who live here in most days joe actually handle any money this is extremely unusual for the united states almost everybody in the country is an adult handles money almost every day and almost everybody who's here almost every day just we have two big businesses hammocks making is one of the businesses one of the big businesses and we also know a tofu from soybeans.

there are basically no significant scale hammocks production facilities in the united states except for us and the way that we're in. able to do that is that we don't have any managers there were paying fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for and so that's why it's possible for cooperation workers cooperative to complete compete with globalized industries in other countries because we don't have this capitalist overhead of the very expensive managers on top. of a model of one way that it's possible for production to happen in this country and still be competitive with places like china and india. nice thing about hammocks where is the can come in and that any time of the day or night and you can work for as long as you like and then when you leave you don't actually have to

leave any note or information to the people who are coming after you they can figure out what needs to be done simply by looking at your work and there are no supervisors and no time clocks it's an honor system. tofu is a much more industrial process and tofu there's a real assembly line and you get schedule to shift and you need to be there and you need to be working at a pace that keeps the whole assembly line running so if you're if you have a job that's in the middle if you go too slowly and stuff stacks up in the middle and it negatively impacts the people who are after you and if you. see any any place after the first location is affected by the speed of the previous locations and you kind of have to keep up and it's quite it's quite a brisk work place it will be and it's also heavy wet work though after the

automation that we're currently investing or almost a million dollars to upgrade the facility they'll be much less heavy work it will still be lots of wet work in the two for what it will be to is the one of the principal design. elements of the. expansion and improvement of the took her business is to reduce the stress on workers. take just a little bit of the party to. broadly plan i have no idea how many people we're going to have but i'm going to have a few hundreds of cookies oh wow yeah there's going to be a lot of cookies tonight. that's a way to begin a new year. and really. don't like. to now i

know what we're doing here is. there. was like. to do a. i can. carry . our all. the way a. little bit before i move to twin oaks i actually was an elementary school teacher i have my master's degree in elementary education and i wasn't very happy with the options available to me teaching in public schools or private schools elsewhere because i would always be working with twenty or thirty kids and you just can't

can't get to know each kid that well and you can't tailor the curriculum and you never get to know their parents and things like that and you can't follow them you know i would have a kid in my class one year and then they'd be gone and i'd never see them again. you know the kind of. things. you'll say but here at two a no the kids are here as long as their parents live here and i'll be able to work with them as babies and work with them as toddlers and teach them history when they get older. you know. well i'm going to order you know where in school and anything that helps and then i like pick out my party outfit yet.

there is a whole costume section of comic clothes which is over here. we get all kinds of. contribution. so this is a custom somebody made for halloween some years back and i really i took it to a formal new year's party and it was the it was the hit of the palm so this is coming close short for community codes and it is a free clothes lending library doesn't have a librarian so anybody in the community can come up and they can find something that is of their liking and they can take it and they weird until they're tired of it or until it's dirty and then they throw it in the community clothes laundry and somebody else washes it and somebody else dries it and somebody else fixes it if they've banged it up and somebody else brings it up here and puts it in the right

location so it can be found again. sent certain answer choices on qualcomm's always seem correct to joe bloggs he quickly find them in history and interrupt here if you don't fish and so i don't want to go. right so then why. and so would you make shocked you have been afraid that. soon you. just presented with with values one in each column and just keep in. mind. i've learned everything i know here homeschooled i have the longest time i've been in public schools about the thirty minutes i travelled a lot when i was a kid. and have and really liked the experience of travel so i would

like rowan to have the option. to do anything he why i like won't have the option to do anything he wants so if he wants a career that is someplace else if you want to travel to other countries who are live in other countries i would like him to be i feel that he is competent and capable enough to do that. twenty two to fifty words and three three so and then eighty four out of the if. one of the things i know how to do is how to build the. answer i want to make sure the row knows how to build things to. and so he's. even when he was. seventy years old he was using a drill in a song. which

. i'm just trying to figure out what to do my hair. is a little thicker. and a really reverberated here yes i am. you know our.

back and. really. happy new year that. they are are you doing anything happy tony's whole yes i give you a big hug and clearly that's. nothing. new talking to my much like you know my dad works and stay and i actually do have a mike now sukey in. it's still great to talk to you could sleep like this can you tell me your life secrets now yes the secret of life is to love everything as

though everything where you. live i live you can even i'm not saying that's not because this is to be on t.v. sets.