Musings: Goddamn the Pusher Man

I awoke in the night to a sound I hadn’t heard for a long time, and fortunately it wasn't rats, but something welcome, though it took my sleep-dulled mind a moment to register: rain! Strong, steady, ground-saturating rain.

I’d been missing its presence, and most of all its effects on the earth, and its return last night was particularly welcome because it allowed me to plant taro this morning in soft, wet, receptive soil. It’s a full moon in Scorpio, too, so especially good for planting.

The soft, unformed brains of teenagers and adolescents are also fertile soil for planting all sorts of messages, a fact that isn’t lost on marketers, who make gazillions exploiting the fears, insecurities and peer pressure that plague most Americans — especially teens.

So why would anyone be surprised to discover that kids are using prescription drugs to get high, as is reported in a Garden Island story today on "pharming," or that alcohol continues to be the top drug of choice?

After all, from the time they’re tiny keiki they’ve been watching TV, with its plethora of prescription drug ads, abundance of beer commercials and myriad booze-sponsored sporting events. Why wouldn’t they think it’s the norm to self-medicate, when they see it happening constantly, both all around them and in that strange pseudo world of TV?

And then, of course, there’s the fact that kids today are medicated legally at a higher rate than we’ve ever before seen. Most of that comes in the form of drugs like Ritalin, which are based on the chemical methylphenidate and used to combat Attention Deficit Disorder.

As BBC news reports:

In 1994 there were just 4,000 prescriptions for methylphenidate, 10 years later that figure had gone up to 359,000 - a 90-fold increase.

Sometimes, they’re even given these drugs by the schools, or parents are told they have to medicate their kids or keep them home.

Is it any wonder, then, that they don’t think that drugs peddled by the multinational pharmaceutical companies — the new, legalized pushers — are any big deal?

I’ve also read a number of articles lately about how very young children — I’m talking under 8 — are being given heavy-duty psychotropic drugs after questionable diagnoses of manic-depressive disorder, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses typically not associated with children. These drugs have not been tested on kids and the long-term effects on developing brains and bodies aren't known.

As Kauai’s Dr. Gerald McKenna noted in the Garden Island article:

”The drugs keep changing, but the problem doesn’t change,” McKenna said. “The whole idea that we are an addictive society is the problem.”

That’s a big part of this ongoing issue, but it’s not the whole story. There’s also this desire to achieve some sort of “norm” in human behavior. Problem is, that “norm” is largely defined by the pharmaceutical companies, which promise that if only you take their drugs, you’ll be like everybody else supposedly is: happy, slim, sleeping through the night, focused, always ready for sex, young and perky— but not too much so.

It’s all a bunch of crock, but so many Americans are buying it and even foisting it on their kids. Why in the world would we think kids wouldn’t model this behavior, with often tragic results?

To change the subject entirely, I’ve begun blogging for Audubon Magazine, too, so if you’d like to read my posts, and the marvelous photos by Hob Osterlund, please check out their site.

And tomorrow night I’ll be one of several speakers discussing the Hawaii Superferry — my topic is its military links, which some people still doubt — at the 6 p.m. meeting of the Eco Roundtable at the Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall on Hardy Street in Lihue. Stop by if you want to hear the latest.

Musings: Pathogens

Clouds joined the haze in dimming the morning sky, but Koko and I headed for the beach, anyway, where the sun rose in a wash of rosy color that reflected upon a reef exposed by a dropping tide and water so placid that it more closely resembled a reservoir than the ocean.

No one was around, which is just the way I like it, and we stayed until I was dry and Koko had wearied of chasing crabs and digging holes in the fresh-washed sand. Returning home, it was my turn to dig for a while to accommodate more taro, until heat and hunger drove me indoors.

Browsing through today's on-line edition of The Garen Island, I read an account of Wednesday’s County Council hearing on proposed ordinances to allow dogs on the revered coastal path.

I found one provision of the proposed ordinance, which would require persons walking their dogs to carry a bag to pick up Fido’s doodoo, rather amusing. So what, now the cops can approach and demand to see your bag? How do you know they’re not just shaking you down for pakalolo? And what if you’ve already used it? How many bags are you supposed to carry? Do you have to hang on to the evidence?

While I understand the desirability of keeping the shining path free of kukae, this is the sort of the thing that can turn into an enforcement nightmare, the cost of which, coupled with the allegedly higher maintenance fees that would be associated with allowing dogs to walk there, are the basis for Councilman Mel Rapozo’s opposition to the bill, as outlined on his blog.

Both he and Andy Parx remarkably see eye to eye on the point that the path was originally funded by the feds for transportation purposes, and so should be limited to bicycles only.

Still, Councilman Tim Bynum makes a good point in saying: “What is transportation? Anytime anyone moves from Point A to Point B.”

And if the path is just for transportation, then how come it came with all those little huts along the beach? Sure looks like a recreational use to me.

Andy Parx also reported that Councilwoman Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, who is running for prosecutor, had a letter to the editor that stated: “I’m sure the rest of the community would take offense if I decided unilaterally to pick and choose which laws I wanted to enforce or not.”

Which made me wonder, so how come Shaylene has never pushed to enforce the farm dwelling agreement? You know, the law that requires people who build homes on agricultural lands to actually engage in farming.

I also wondered why it took The Garden Island so long to run the story. It’s not, after all, like there’s tons of breaking news to crowd it off the front page. Even though Police Chief Darryl Perry continues to assert, in his quest to justify the procurement of Tasers, that Kauai isn’t a sleepy little place anymore, you wouldn’t know it from reading the local paper.

Am I missing something, or is The Garden Island? Or is the Chief just adhering to the Boy Scouts “be prepared” mantra? Kinda like when he reportedly dispatched 20 Kaua‘i police officers, including K-9 dogs, and 12 DOCARE officers to close Black Pot Park?

I’ve got an idea. Maybe the Council and KPD could work together on this one, and any cops caught misbehaving or misusing their Tasers could be assigned to doggie doodoo enforcement duty. Surely that would get them on the right path.

Musings: Food or Fuel?

I wondered where the light was when I got up this morning, thinking surely there should be more of it, but it was subdued by a thick layer of vog that obscured the mountains and turned the sun into an eerie red disc as it rose, its intensity greatly dimmed, while Koko and I were feasting on yellow waiwi along the road.

Actually, only I was eating guava. Koko was sniffing, one of her favorite pastimes whenever she’s out of the house.

Ran into my neighbor Andy, who was out early before joining an on-line auction, and he said he’d never before seen vog like this in Hawaii, where he was born and raised, and while I don’t know exactly how old he is, I’m presuming, since he’s retired, that he’s at least 60.

We got to wondering what effect Kilauea’s ongoing eruption is having on global warming, which prompted him to remark on a book he’s been reading about primitive cultures that included a time line on temperatures. Seems there have been peaks and lows throughout history, but we’ve been in a prolonged warm “peak” period for a while, which helped him understand why humans didn’t develop agriculture sooner.

“It was just too darn cold,” he said.

So now it’s warm, and getting warmer, with uncertain implications, except our growing population is always going to need food, and it’s generally easier to grow it in a warm climate than cold.

Unless, of course, you’ve begun using your farmland to grow crops that feed our hungry electrical plants and cars, rather than us.

We’re seeing this play out globally, as food prices soar and the world’s poorest people go hungry — a scenario that prompted Jean Ziegler, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, to speak out harshly against the practice. According to a BBC report:

It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.
He called for a five-year ban on the practice.

Now this global issue is playing out locally, with the state Board of Land and Natural Resources slated to vote Friday, May 23, on a proposal to allow the Green Energy Team to lease 250 acres of state ag lands at Kalepa — one quarter of all the land that’s irrigated there — to grow trees for their biofuels project.

Green Energy reportedly has backed away from its controversial plans to grow invasive albizia there, and plans to grow eucalyptus instead, which it will then chip up and burn to make electricity for KIUC.

Funny how real farmers can’t get any of that choice Kalepa acreage — the last public ag lands on the eastside — until it’s transferred over to the Agribusiness Development Corp. But Green Energy can snap up 250 acres without an open bidding process. And ironically, if a big chunk of the irrigated lands is no longer available for farmers, the ADC won’t accept Kalepa at all.

This would open the door to the seed companies, which have already said they want to move into Kalepa, or reinforce it as the domain of cattle ranchers, who currently are viewed as interim users and so are on month to month revocable permits.

Meanwhile, Gay and Robinson has already said it wants the entire 6,000 acres at Kalepa for a biofuels project — even though they haven’t managed to get one using bagasse up and running on their own Westside land.

So we’ve got several issues at stake here, the most crucial of which is preserving the original intent of the Kalepa acreage, which is to make land available to bona fide farmers through reasonably-priced, long term leases.

Then there’s the injustice of letting Green Energy snake their way in to Kalepa with a project that is totally unproven and in all likelihood will fail. That’s coupled with the unlikelihood the state would actually make them clean up their mess when they do go bankrupt, thus leaving a big chunk of viable farm land rendered useless because it’s covered with eucalyptus.

And then there’s the whole question of pursuing biofuels at all — especially on public land — when we’re seeing it turn into a global boondoggle and we aren’t even close to feeding ourselves in this state, much less on the so-called Garden Island.

In fact, if you look at the most recent Hawaii agricultural statistics, of the 1.3 million acres in farm acreage throughout the state, only about a third is devoted to stuff you can actually eat.

The situation is even worse on Kauai, which lags behind Maui, Big Island and even urbanized Oahu in real food production. (I’m not including sugar, though I know some people consider it one of the basic food groups). We’ve got just 100 acres in veggies and melons, compared to 3,500 acres in the City and County of Honolulu.

This makes me a tiny bit nervous, living as I do on the most isolated inhabited land mass on Earth, as I watch government allow our farm land — especially that precious irrigated farm land — to be gobbled up for luxury homes/vacation rentals and speculative biofuel projects with their enticing tax credits.

If you’re concerned, too, please submit testimony urging the Board to vote against agenda item D-3. If Green Energy wants to pursue its project, let them find land some place else. They do not need the irrigated lands at Kalepa.

You can fax testimony to (808) 587-0390 Attn: Board Members or e-mail it to adaline.f.cummings@hawaii.gov.

Musings: Growing Farmers

The vog is still thick, but it couldn’t blot out the moon last night or the mountains this morning, though the haze and high clouds have cast the sky in a gray pallor. Still, for a brief period when the sun rose as Koko and I were out walking, the world took on that golden-pink shimmer of ethereal beauty that reminded me the magic is always present, even when it's hidden.

Ran into my neighbor Andy, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, and to answer yet another inquiry, no, it’s not rabid reporter Andy Parx, but Andy Bushnell, the retired KCC history professor.

Anyway, Andy mentioned he’d read the piece I wrote on Jerry Ornellas — aka farmer Jerry (might as well out everybody this morning) — in this week’s Kauai People, and noted: “See, he agrees me with me that there aren’t guys lining up to do farming.”

It’s true, and it’s something I’ve talked to Jerry about more than once, as well as other people involved in agriculture. The question is why? Is it because they’re not interested, or they’ve given up the dream because it’s so darn hard to get land?

Let me correct myself. It’s easy to get land if you’ve got money. There’s stuff for sale right now — at $300,000 to $500,000 an acre. Problem is, paying down a nut like that requires way more revenue than you can generate from any legal crop. And then you’ve got to deal with anti-farming neighbors in your so-called “agricultural subdivision.”

As for leasing, the agreements tend to be a little too short to make the investment required for farming feasible. A couple of guys I know who were looking for taro land could only get one-year leases, which doesn’t quite wash with a 14-month crop. Several other people told me of getting squeezed off Grove Farm land because the terms were short and the rent kept increasing.

Who else is leasing any sizable acreage? Of course, there’s the state, but Kalepa Ridge, which is supposed to be for the general public, needs to be transferred from DLNR to the Agribusiness Development Corp. before it can be turned over to farmers — a process that’s moving along at a snail’s pace. In the meantime, it’s being mostly used for grazing.

Interesting, though, how the state lands at Kekaha, which are leased primarily to the seed companies, got transferred over to the ADC toot sweet. Guess it shows who has influence.

Maybe what’s needed is for those who are interested in farming, especially at Kalepa, to begin applying pressure to DLNR to make the transfer. Much of the land there has water, and its central location just outside Lihue adds to its desirability. It might be good for folks to start moving on that, before the seed companies expand over there, too.

In the meantime, to ensure that farmer wannabees know what they’re doing when land becomes available, Malama Kauai has been running a farmer incubator program, and Kauai Economic Opportunity has been teaching people how to grow papaya so they can supply the new fruit fly disinfestation facility that’s coming on line on Kauai.

I recently talked to Terry Sekioka, a farmer and former CTAHR administrator who is doing some of that KEO training, and he seemed to think that people do want to farm. But when the topic turns to marketing and business, “they close their books. They’re not interested in that part of it. But you have to understand all of it to succeed in farming. It really helps if you have a spouse or partner who can handle that part of it, because most farmers are busy farming, and they let the business and marketing end slide.”

And as Andy mentioned this morning, when KCC was talking years ago about developing farming curriculum, it was recognized that small engine repair is yet another skill that most farmers find useful.

Then there’s an understanding of irrigation, soil health, pest control and the varieties and cultivation techniques that work well in the tropics. It’s not quite as simple as dropping seeds in the ground and letting nature work its magic.

Farmers also need to write up a plan, Jerry said, if they expect to lease land. But most of all, he said, they need that commitment to stick with it — or even get started in the first place.

So where are we at when it comes to farming? We’ve got some land and water, some marketing assistance, some logistical support, some training. And I believe we’ve got people who are serious about doing it.

What I’ve been pondering lately is how to bring it all together before we lose more prime ag lands, more irrigation systems, more people who abandon their dreams of growing food in frustratation and discouragement.

Musings: Shock and Awe

Venus and a few of her showier friends were still visible when the first tendrils of pre-dawn orange began to appear in the northeast sky this morning.

The mountains were all clear, but as Koko and I walked and the birds began singing, a blanket of fleecy white descended on Waialeale and turned first pink, then purple-pink, as the sun rose in a full-on glorious streak show.

Watching the day arrive never ceases to fill me with a sense of awe, as does going holoholo on Kauai, where I’m always awed by her tremendous beauty, and shocked by what’s happened since the last time I went and looked.

And so it was yesterday when I headed north with a couple of friends to check out the taro fields that are being opened at Ha`ena State Park and the burials on Joe Brescia’s land that Ka`iulani Huff and others are trying to protect.

The first shock was Ke`e. If you haven’t been to the end of the road lately, steel yourself first, because alarming is the only word to describe it.

Cars were parked all the way down to the wet cave, and the parking lot that previously was used by Na Pali tour boat companies was totally full. And it’s not even peak season. My friend Ka`imi, who was working in the loi there, said 900 cars go to Ke`e daily, and if you figure two people in each car, that’s at least 1,800 people packed into that small, gorgeous, fragile place, with its stinking portable toilets, every single day.

We stopped before reaching the beach to visit with the Hui Maka`ainana O Makana guys who are restoring the taro loi in the park under an agreement with the state, but one of my friends continued on down to the water, where he said the air was thick with the smell of suntan lotion and the sand and lagoon were crowded with bodies.

“I saw one big pile of fish, but with all those tourists, no way going get close enough to throw,” he reported, prompting the guys to grumble about new state regulations requiring them to register their nets, which they see as yet another intrusion.

Meanwhile, as we gazed in wonder at the mountains that come right down to the sea, there was the incessant buzz of tour helicopters overhead.

Still, it was encouraging to see the progress they’ve made in the past few months, with three loi planted and another one opened and ready to go. They were clearing brush with chainsaws and a bobcat when we arrived, and will soon be cleaning up the fishpond so it can be refilled with water.

They’re doing it all for free under a curatorship agreement that isn’t without the usual bumps that any relationship with the state entails. For example, they can’t put up any interpretive signs to keep people off the reef, away from the hula heiau and out of the loi. The state doesn’t have the manpower or money to do any kind of real restoration or cultural interpretation itself, but it still wants to exert full control over those who step forward to take on the job.

As we headed south again, past an ocean that was turquoise-hued and impossibly calm, we forded Maniniholo Stream and gasped when we glimpsed the giant house — and I use the term loosely — that’s being constructed within feet of the road, streambed and beach park. It was impossible to imagine how the county and state could approve a structure in that particular location, especially one that large.

When we got to the beach at Naue, our moods turned somber. We walked through Brescia’s lot, where numbered stakes marked the burials that were dug up in anticipation of constructing yet another monolithic house on pillars, like all the other eyesores that have popped up along that stretch of beach.

How could anyone want to build there, we wondered, when the entire lot was literally covered with burials? How weird can they possibly be? And how sick is the system that would let them?

Regardless of what one may think of Ka`iulani, and some people have been making some pretty nasty cracks, if you actually go up there and take a look, you’ll understand why she’s upset. Desecration and sacrilege are not overly strong terms, not to mention total insensitivity.

But then, if you see the new houses that are crowded in all along there, you realize that not one of those property owners has the slightest bit of sensitivity to their surroundings or the character of that neighborhood, which has degenerated into the characteristically Kauai bizarre mix of over-the-top “look at me” architecture and local-style humble hale.

As we drove home, past startling blue green mountains and the lake-like calm of Hanalei Bay, stopping to talk with friends and acquaintances and hearing everyone express the anguish of loss, I could only wonder how anyone could possibly believe that Kauai would benefit in any way from one more lavish home, or even a half-percent increase in tourism.

Though I heard rumblings of gas cans and matches during my travels, it's too late for that already. Only a giant tsunami can help us now.

Musings: Take, Take, Take

A huge ring circled the moon in the middle of the night, but both were gone when Koko and I rose hours later and set out under a sky smudged with gold and crowned by Venus.

All the mountains were clear, though clouds hovered near Waialeale’s summit, and mist hung thick in the pastures and crept across the road. As we returned, the sun rose, smoldering orange, and we found ourselves walking through a sparkling pink haze.

It looked like the perfect day to dry laundry, so I headed down to the Laundromat, where I ran into my friend Jim, another early riser born in the year of the Rooster, and as my clothes washed, we chatted about Kapaa, where he was born and raised, and how the reef fish had pretty much disappeared along that stretch of coastline.

He blamed run-off, including chlorinated water, for killing the reef, but said that people had also overfished — taken too much while giving nothing back, and none of the young kids growing up today had any sense of the culture, much less its spiritual aspects, which were at the core of caring for any resource.

"Now days it's all take, take, take," he said.

It made me think of a conversation I had on Monday with a man who has family on Niihau, and recently returned to that island, after a 10-year absence, for a relative’s burial.

He was struck by how much it had changed in that time, saying that only about 100 people still remain, and they’re dependent on their Kauai relatives because there’s no work for them on Niihau anymore, now that the kiawe charcoal and honey enterprises have gone bust.

All they’ve got to live on are food stamps and money they can make from Niihau shell lei. A few of the old paniolos help out with the exclusive hunting trips that are the only form of tourism, save for the helicopter rides that drop tourists on the beach for a picnic. Hunters, also transported by helicopter, pay about $1,500 for a day’s hunt, but they’re pretty much guaranteed to kill something, because the island is loaded with pigs, goats and the game animals brought over years ago from Molokai Ranch.

Subsistence hunting and fishing is a big part of the residents' existence and helps them remain somewhat independent, he said, so it broke his heart when he saw how many people have started coming over from Kauai to fish and collect opihi.

“They don’t realize they’re literally taking food out of the mouths of the Niihau people,” he said. ‘They have no respect, using bleach, which kills everything, picking every opihi they can find, pulling up on shore and poaching cows and other animals.”

It used to be that no one came close to Niihau. Folks respected the island’s privacy and isolation; they gave it wide berth. But that’s all gone, he said. As the fish are depleted around Kauai, they’re looking for easy pickings, and right across the channel, there’s Niihau, with its relative abundance.

And then you’ve got the curiosity seekers, those who just want to go to someplace that’s “forbidden,” and so they sneak onto the beaches, not realizing how much it frightens the people who live there to have strangers show up, unannounced and uninvited, with no idea of their intentions, in that very isolated place, he said.

“I wonder what’s going to happen to Niihua when Bruce [Robinson] is gone,” he said, noting that the barge that brings drinking water and other supplies only goes to the island very intermittently these days. The caretaker role that the Robinson family formerly played has pretty much disappeared, he said, now that economic opportunities on the island have dwindled.

“People have this idea that Niihau is this little paradise for Hawaiians, the last untouched place,” he said. “But it’s not. It’s really very depressing. The people there have so little, and now other people from the outside just want to grab what’s left. All they want to do is take, take, take.”

Musings; Boom Goes Bust

Waialeale popped its head out and said hello —the first time its summit has been visible in weeks — when Koko and I went walking this chilly morning. A few wispy tendrils clung to the lower slopes and Makeleha, to the north, was bundled up in gray, so I had a feeling the clarity wouldn’t last.

Sure enough, the clouds were already starting to drift in before I’d even finished watering my taro patch, which has been wondering, where the heck is the rain?

Meanwhile, the County Council is asking, where the heck is the County Attorney? According to an article in today’s Garden Island, the Council has authorized $75,000 for its own legal fund because it can’t get any service from the County Attorney’s office.

The article reports:

“There’s a total lack of respect for any activity that is going on here,” Councilman Ron Kouchi said, referring to [County Attorney Matthew] Pyun reportedly saying he does not want his deputy attorneys wasting their time sitting through often lengthy council meetings.



The attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.



Council members said they want a county attorney on hand at their meetings to answer legal questions, a service that has been intermittent over the past year here but should regularly occur as it does at council meetings across the country.

When I used to cover Council meetings, former County Attorneys Mike Belles and Kathleen Watanabe — not their deputies — sat through the whole dang thing. So what’s changed? Is the office now seriously overwhelmed? Understaffed? Mismanaged? Disdainful? Do the county attorneys avoid Council duty because they don’t want to get beat up or bored? Or is this yet another indication of the fractured relationship between the Council and Administration, with taxpayers paying the price?

Still, it’s rich to hear Ron Kouchi expound on “respect” when the Council regularly withholds from the public opinions issued by the attorneys we pay for. Talk about getting dissed.

It was also interesting to note that the Council authorized more money for the bus, Kauai Food Bank and home meals for the disabled and elderly — indications that rising food and gas prices are expected to take a higher toll on island residents this year.

Seems that Councilman Jay Furfaro called a private meeting of the county’s business leaders last week to assess the island’s economic condition, and consensus was, the situation is bleak. Construction, real estate sales and tourism are all down. At the same time, officials are aware that residents are fed up with the rapid growth in all three sectors that has been occurring, pretty much unabated, ever since Iniki.

So maybe it’s high time for a time-out. Problem is, a lot of folks have gotten used to the boom, a lot of folks recently moved here because of the boom and a lot of folks picked up hefty mortgages and big car payments during the boom. Looks like serious crunch time as the boom goes ka-boom.

Except, apparently, not for Princeville Corp. — one of Jay's consulting clients — which is moving ahead with plans to carve up Princeville Ranch into ranchettes. The super rich are unfazed by economic downturns, and that’s who Kauai caters to now.

As for the rest of it, looks like it's gonna be catch as catch can.

Musings: Misguided Intentions

Gray clouds were building up thick in the northeast when Koko and I set out this morning, while before us, the mountains were capped in white fluff. The sunrise was limited to a pale orange smudge, and even the birds were subdued in their singing.

Ran into my neighbor Andy, who was also out early, roused as I was by the light that’s now stretching the day on either end. Koko was, as usual, happy to see him, and she stood up and hugged his calf, bringing her head closer to his hand, or perhaps it was the pocket with dog biscuits she was aiming for.

Earlier, Koko had spent a lot of time snuffling around in the place where the pigs cross the road, traveling from one valley to another. With the guava fruiting, they’ve got plenty to eat.

A friend recently told me he’d heard Kauai’s pig population was estimated at about 65,000 — a figure that’s comparable to the resident humans. That stockpile could come in handy if food prices, driven in part by oil that is now $126 a barrel, keep rising.

It seems wild pigs are increasing even on Oahu, where hunting may be expanded in some parts of the island to keep a lid on the population, according to an article in today's Advertiser.

But it seems there’s a conflict with some folks who live in Manoa, Makiki and Tantalus and actually put out food for the wild pigs — sort of like the well-meaning, but woefully misguided, people here who feed the feral cats and chickens. They all reproduce wildly, and with few predators, it doesn’t take long for the numbers to get out of control.

When I was on Lanai, I was chatting with a guy who works for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Although he primarily manages the hunting areas there, he was also helping some of the other state guys trap the feral cats that are preying on the black-rumped petrels. Lanai actually has the state’s largest population of these endangered birds.

Anyway, since nothing goes unnoticed on that small island, when the traps arrived by barge, word quickly spread to the cat rescue society and the state guys had to pull a few diversionary maneuvers to avoid a confrontation.

Apparently, the cat people had been spaying wild cats then releasing them back into the wild. Yes, that does help to curtail the population, but it does nothing to stop them from eating endangered birds and other wildlife, or slowly starving to death when the pickings are slim.

I love cats, and all animals, but everything has its place. And with so many of Hawaii’s native bird species on the ropes, the backcountry is no place for kitties.

The Kauai County Council, meanwhile, will conduct a hearing on Wednesday on bills that would allow folks — but only the responsible ones, mind you — to walk their dogs on The Path, which is considered a "linear park," and so off-limits to canines.

According to an article in The Garden Island, Councilman Tim Bynum, who introduced the meaaures, received some 80 pieces of mail on the subject, and all but three supported dogs on The Path.

"This is a serious issue," he said. "There are people who are intimidated about dogs, and sometimes dog owners just don't understand that. But as a society, we've decided having dogs on leashes in public is the norm."

Actually, dogs chained up in yards is more the norm on Kauai.

While I feel for the cops who will be assigned doo doo patrol to ensure people pick up after the pooches, let's hope the Council can see its way clear to pass these ordinances. If we've got to endure concrete along the coast, at least let us share it with our best friends.

Musings: Bearing the Burden

Birds provide such delightful bookends to the day, as I observed this morning, lying in bed and listening to their pre-dawn songs and calls fill the valley below my house with music, and yesterday at sunset, when Koko and I went deep mauka, accompanied by a traveling bird symphony, to visit the ohia trees.

They’re blooming, adorned with feathery, deep-red lehua blossoms, and if there is a tree that more deeply touches my heart, for reasons I can’t explain — not that I need to — I haven’t yet encountered it.

The albizia, too, is blooming, a sight that fills me with some dread, as it’s easy, when their canopies are a mass of tiny white flowers, to see how quickly they’re marching up the mountains, how far they’ve already come.

They’ve traveled high up Makaleha and Hihimanu, two important watersheds in Kapahi and Hanalei, respectively, and they’ve pretty much taken over Kalihiwai Valley. In the remote, backcountry regions, they shade out uluhe fern and crowd out ohia — two plants that effectively collect water.

The uluhe also provide cover for the burrows of Newell’s shearwaters — a rare seabird that comes ashore on Kauai to nest and is already challenged by the proliferation of electric lines and lights in previously dark areas.

I think about these things when I’m out and about, and often I get to wondering why it is that we humans, with our oblivious, short-sighted ways, cause so much trouble for other species, and even our own.

That thought came to mind the other day when I was listening to Niumalu resident Gary Craft talking on KKCR about the air pollution emitted by Norwegian Cruise Lines when the “Pride of America” is in port at Nawiliwili.

As Gary, a teacher and reasonable-sounding man, discussed how he began researching the health effects of the sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide and particulate matter released from the ship’s smokestacks while it hangs overnight at the harbor, I heard the worry in his voice.

I also heard the frustration he and others experienced when they tried to seek help from the Legislature, only to have a bill that would have required the ships to burn cleaner fuel while in port defeated, and the state, only to be told it couldn’t determine the source of the contaminants.

“We want to support tourism,” Gary said. “We just don’t want to die for it.”

How much burden, I wondered, should one community have to bear to support Kauai’s predominant industry? And what burdens are already being borne by other communities?

Well, to name just a few, Koloa is being systematically destroyed to make way for more shops and vacation houses. Hanalei and Haena have been completely overrun by a proliferation of unregulated vacation rentals. Kapaa is choked with traffic.

Sure, tourism is our bread and butter, but how many of the impacts we’re feeling are the unnecessary result of poor planning, lack of political will, incompetence and sheer greed? I’d venture to say nearly all of them.

I remember once, many years ago, when Puna Geothermal Venture was building its plant to generate electricity in the Big Island’s Puna District and residents were complaining that it was emitting toxic fumes that were making them sick, destroying their community and driving down their property values. Ironically, many of them had chosen to build homes that were totally off the grid, so they wouldn’t even be using the electricity.

I happened to be interviewing Sen. Dan Inouye when he came to Hilo for a political affair, and asked what he thought of the residents’ concerns about geothermal. He replied that everyone had to share in the burden of providing the needs required by our modern society, just as he endured the traffic noise generated by the freeway that ran near his Honolulu apartment.

There’s some truth to that, but what about when the burdens can be mitigated, or entirely avoided? And is it fair to make those who aren’t gaining any direct benefits shoulder heavy burdens?

These kinds of questions, if they’re raised at all, are regularly ignored or dismissed by most government agencies and political leaders. Meanwhile, government continues on the same path, scuttling a bill that would make NCL clean up its act, approving a questionable biofuels project that will allow a company to plant more albizia downwind of the watersheds that serve us all.

Sometimes, though, attempts are made to break through this unconsciousness, and such is the case at Nawiliwili, where a number of actions are planned for May 22 that are intended to make Norwegian Cruise Lines — and its passengers — aware that real people are being affected by their business decisions, and these real people aren’t happy. It’s an effort that deserves support. And who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to more instances of people rising up to say “no!” When people go through the proper channels, and still get no relief, truly, what other options do they have?

Musings: Cop Shop Talk

I love living in a place where the pile-ups involve not cars on the freeway, but pink and gray clouds atop Waialeale, and madly singing birds, not sirens, capture your attention and the air smells not of exhaust, but flowers, if you’re mauka, or salt, if you’re makai.

Those were my thought when Koko and I went walking on this lovely spring morning that's all golden, warm and breezy. I’m not sure what she was thinking, but it likely had something to do with chickens, smells and the likelihood of my neighbor Andy kicking down a dog biscuit, which he did.

Both Andy and farmer Jerry stopped to talk about the article I wrote on Chief Perry for this week’s Kauai People, and then the conversation expanded into a broader discussion of the police force — a topic that Katy Rose and Jimmy Trujillo also broached in their very interesting KKCR program yesterday.

The Chief’s request for tasers and riot (aka “protective”) gear has attracted much of the attention, with folks debating whether such equipment serves to increase or decrease violent behavior among cops, or if it's even needed on little Kauai.

My own feeling is that a cop’s humanity diminishes when the protective armor goes on and the face shield goes down. Such gear is also intimidating as hell to citizens, and tends to change the tenor of a protest or demonstration into something way more radical. When confronted by a face-off with heavy armored cops, citizens might react by doing stuff they otherwise wouldn’t, like throwing bottles or rocks.

As a friend who was listening to the KKCR broadcast with me observed: “You play nuts, you get nuts. You play big city, you get big city.”

Still, I can understand the point that both Jerry and Andy made, which is that Kauai is not the sleepy little place it used to be, and cops might feel more secure if they have protective gear.

And as Chief Perry already acknowledged in budget hearings before the Council, “operational plans are now in place to partner with other agencies to effectively respond” to incidents like last summer’s Superferry protests.

So would we rather it be our own cops in riot gear, or guys brought in from somewhere else, like Honolulu, who might not be inclined to cut us any slack?

I’ve also heard the argument that when cops have tasers, they’re less likely to pull their guns. But as Jonathan Jay noted on the radio, how often do Kauai cops use their guns right now? It’s not a very common occurrence. Would they be more likely to zap someone with a taser?

I don’t think any of us know the answer to that question. It seems like a lot of it comes down to what kind of training they get, and what kind of cops are on the force — two areas where the Chief is trying to make major changes.

It also seems the Council, which holds the purse strings, is inclined to defer to Chief Perry and give him whatever he thinks is needed to pull our very troubled police department together and achieve national accreditation.

In its coverage today of the public hearing on the county budget, The Garden Island included comments from two Councilmen:

Some of the items in the police budget are not a reflection of things stemming from the August protests of Hawaii Superferry at Nawiliwili Harbor, [Jay] Furfaro said.


It is about helping the department under the leadership of new Kaua‘i Police Chief Darryl Perry reach its goal of earning national accreditation, he said. This includes specific training, certification and retention requirements.

“The chief is not there to militarize, he’s there to professionalize and bring accountability,” Councilman Tim Bynum said yesterday.

After talking with Chief Perry, I feel that Tim's assessment is true. While I personally don’t think KPD needs riot gear and tasers, it’s just one tiny part of the much bigger, and more sordid, picture at KPD. I’m way more concerned about the stuff that’s playing out behind the scenes, which is all about who really controls the department, and I hope the community doesn’t turn against the Chief over this issue.

That said, I also hope the Chief makes a statement soon about last week's take-down of Kingdom of Atooi leader Dayne Aipoalani. As my neighbor Andy observed, even if Juan Wilson’s account was exaggerated, it does seem like excessive force was used.

And as Andy Parx noted on the radio yesterday, if the cops could have accomplished the same thing simply by calling Dayne on the phone, it raises the question of whether the county really needed to make a $50,000 appropriation to Councilman Mel Rapozo — the former KPD sergeant who left the force following the Monica Alves scandal and now has his own PI biz — to bring in some of the guys with outstanding warrants.

Finally, someone left a very clever comment on yesterday’s post that seems to accurately sum up Kauai’s attitude toward the big boat. Who needs bogus newspaper and blog polls when you’ve got akamai observers like that?

Mahalo for the laugh.

Musings: Persona Non Grata

There’s a certain comfort to be found in the sound of rain falling in the night, when I’m safely snug in bed, a certain reassurance I feel when I hear the world around me getting the nourishment it treasures most.

Ask any plant if it would rather have rain or chlorinated water from a hose — and some hoses contain lead, I hear, although I can’t imagine why — and I know without it saying a word what the answer would be.

After our walk, in which Koko strained at her leash, whining and yipping in a classic case of chicken envy as my neighbor Andy’s dog, Momi, chased a few stragglers alongside the road, I spent a little time in my taro patch, weeding, and marveling that one small leaf could hold a good quarter-cup of water, sparkling in the sunlight that filtered through the camphor tree.

I escorted four large African snails out of the patch; they didn’t appear to be eating the taro, just hunkering down in the moistness, but I generally take the approach that snails of any kind are persona non grata in the garden.

The question of whether the Superferry has a similar status on Kauai continues to be addressed by the media, with The Garden Island today taking up the topic on its front page.

The article quoted yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser coverage, which included comments from new Hawaii Superferry CEO Thomas Fargo saying the company was waiting for an affirmative sign from the community before resuming service.

Curiously, Fargo declined to comment to The Garden Island, although he’s already talked to the Star-Bulletin, Pacific Business News and Advertiser. It kind of makes me wonder if his previous interviews were merely a dog and pony show staged for the Honolulu folks.

Nor did HSF spokeswoman Lori Abe respond by press time to a request for more info about the company’s purported outreach efforts here. Again, you’d have to think she’d welcome the opportunity for some exposure in the local press — unless exposure is exactly what she doesn’t want, if you get my drift.

Fortunately, Mayor Bryan Baptiste continues to exercise his stunningly strong leadership in the issue, with the paper reporting his astute observation that “the complexities surrounding the issue have not abated.”



“I’m not sure if we can come to a consensus; there’s so much passion on both sides,” he said yesterday. “My concern as mayor is the divisiveness this issue has caused in our community.”

Baptiste said the county would, however, support a forum or poll conducted jointly by state and Superferry officials.

Oh, you mean the same guys who ganged up previously to bully the ferry’s way into the Neighbor Islands? Yes, that would certainly be the team to conduct a poll that would leave everyone assured of its accuracy and fairness.

Meanwhile, Dick Mayer on Maui raised a good question in an email yesterday as to whether it’s a conflict of interest for Fargo to serve on the board of Hawaiian Airlines while Hawaii Superferry offers corporate-subsidized cut-rate tickets intended to lure business away from the airlines.

Of course, the whole corporate world in Hawaii is so intertwined — some might even say incestuous — that it’s tough to figure out just which nest these guys are feathering when they’re serving on multiple boards.

But I think chances are good that those nests don’t belong to you and me.

And that reminds me: I found a tiny gray feather in the loi and brought it inside with me. Now I’m thinking, after this brief foray into the human/cyber world, that I should have stayed with it outside.

Musings: Syngenta, Superferry, Chemtrails and Cops

The cloud-filtered sun produced the kind of light this morning that made it hard to tell whether it was spring or fall, but the flowers provided ample hints that it’s the former.

Albezia — scourge of the watersheds — is ablaze with tiny yellow-white blossoms that blow in the wind, creating a carpet of petals beneath the trees. I also noticed — or rather, my nose did — that some of my taro is blooming, exuding a delightful scent that is far more complex than one might expect from the simple appearance of its flowers.

Syngenta, it seems, is planning a simple solution to concerns that the pesticides it’s spraying on fields adjacent to Waimea Canyon Middle School are making kids and teachers there sick.

No, it’s not going organic. Instead, I learned yesterday from a reputable source, it’s planning to take those approximately 10 acres out of production. Apparently the company was concerned that local Syngenta reps haven’t expressed adequate public concern about the situation, so they sent one of their big wigs over from America to tidy things up.

Since they have a long term lease on the land, they can’t just let it sit there, so they’re looking at other uses, including an ag education program and worker housing, although both of those proposals have some drawbacks.

In the meantime, some folks on the Westside continue to monitor the situation and post various videos on youtube.

My favorite was "Prehistoric Monster," not because it’s compelling video, but because it was sent out with this hyperbolic intro:

Like a prehistoric monster looking for it's prey, a chemical sprayer works it's way towards a building of classrooms on Waimea Canyon Middle School campus. With winds blowing towards campus it's sonance carried on the breeze strikes fear in children and adults knowing it's breath will soon cause discomfort, pain, illness, and possible future death.

It prompted a friend of mine to respond: “They should have been around when the plantations did that with aircraft.”

Speaking of aircraft, a new blog, Kauai Sky, has been started that is devoted solely to monitoring chem trails — the “streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by jet airplanes at high altitudes.“

I’m not really too familiar with chem trails, although I’ve heard them discussed by Bill Rash on KKCR radio, and the blog associates them with such diverse impacts as climate change and inability to concentrate. It also references a USA Today story that states:

A new conspiracy theory sweeping the Internet and radio talk shows has set parts of the federal government on edge.
The theory: The white lines of condensed water vapor that jets leave in the sky, called contrails, are actually a toxic substance the government deliberately sprays on an unsuspecting populace.

OK. Moving on to the Superferry, Councilman Mel Rapozo is running a little survey on his blog asking whether the big boat should return to Kauai.

Brad Parsons, meanwhile, sent me an email with comments from Sen. Gary Hooser and Rep. Mina Morita that indicate neither is expecting its imminent arrival.

Said Gary: I may be wrong, but in my opinion the HSF is not likely to propose any return to Kauai until they 'prove the model' on Maui and stabilize their financial picture and community perception.

Mina weighed in with: They may see Kauai as further damaging their cash flow situation and decide not to come or see as an opportunity to put them in a better financial situation which I doubt - that's what I think their determination to return to Kauai will be based on.

And The Advertiser, once again running behind a story already covered by blogs, Pacific Business News and the Star-Bulletin, has a piece today reporting that new Superferry CEO Thomas Fargo is waiting on a sign not from heaven, but the Kauai community. And not just us rank and file types, but those who supposedly lead us.

If the Superferry were to get some kind of signal from the community, especially from leadership, that service is desired, the carrier would respond to the request, Fargo said.

Asked what would constitute a signal from the community, Fargo said: "There'll be a momentum or view by the community that they would like Superferry service." He added that he wasn't sure how that view would be communicated.

The story also has spokeswoman Lori Abe maintaining once again that “the company is continuing to talk with community members on Kaua'i.”

It’s unclear, however, who those community members are, or exactly what they're talking about.

Finally, if you’re curious about our new Police Chief Darryl Perry, you can look in your mailboxes for the story I wrote in this week’s issue of Kauai People. If you don’t live on island, you can read it on line here. It starts on page six.

Musings: Troubling Trends

I had the complete and utter pleasure of being at the ocean when the sun both set and rose, something that I technically could do each and every day, if I wanted, but I don’t, and it made me wonder why it is that we willingly hold ourselves back from that which brings us great joy?

And joy it was to walk Lumahai as the sky went all purple and gold, the ocean mist mingling with the smell of a mokihana garland I wore around my neck, a gift from a friend who had made his annual pilgrimage to a tree that this year offered up a bounty of plump, anise-scented berries.

Later, I stood under the stars at the edges of Waioli Park and listened to the lua guys chanting and stomping their way through their practice, invisible in the darkness of a new moon night, but sending their presence deep into the valley, which echoed back, reverberating, and ate just-caught akule fried so crisp no need worry about the bones.

This morning I was in the water when the sun came up at a beach much closer to home, where no one was, or had been, because the sand was still smooth and unmarred, and as I swam in water made shallow by a cutting tide, an `auku`u sat on the reef and watched for a meal. And when I pulled on my sweatshirt, the same one I’d worn last night, it still bore the fragrance of moki.

Before I ended up on Lumahai at sunset, I stopped in to oversee a repair at a friend’s Princeville condo, which I’m watching for her while she’s on an extended stay with her hospitalized father in Ohio. I’ve been there many, many times before, but I made two wrong turns; I so often lose my bearings in Princeville, where the buildings all look the same and a recent rash of condo construction has obscured my old navigational landscapes.

Tourism is booming there, most all of it the timeshare type, and it made me think of a conversation I had last week with a local woman who lives in Koloa and has worked in tourism all her life. She now specializes in incentive travel — you know, the free trips given to folks who achieve high sales or some other sort of corporate excellence.

She was saying it’s the form of travel that actually puts the most money in the hands of Kauai residents, because these visitors tend to spend a lot of cash on shopping, activities and meals because their trips are otherwise paid for.

But we’re losing that business to Maui and the Big Island because so many of our oceanfront properties are now timeshares that only the Hyatt can provide the kind of accommodations they seek.

The new Westin that just opened above Anini Beach is timeshares, as is the new hotel under construction at Running Waters in Kalapaki — where, btw, a surfer friend told me there’s no longer access to the surf break there.

Property owners love timeshares, the woman said, because they can recoup their investments quickly and cut down on housekeeping and other staff. So they actually provide fewer jobs that don’t pay as well or offer the good benefits that the hotels did. “Everyone’s in it for the quick buck,” she said. “Nobody cares about aloha, or delivering a good experience any more.”

Meanwhile, we’re also seeing a proliferation in the vacation rental biz, where people often tend to work for cash cleaning the houses and taking care of the yards, which seems fine until you realize how expensive it really is to pay for all your own benefits — if you have them — and that you have no real recourse as an under-the-table worker when the wealthy off-island owners delay payment or stiff you entirely or make you pay for stuff (like cleaning a pool when some lawn clippings blow in ) that you can’t afford.

So here we have all the impacts of tourism — the people, the high prices, the land speculation, the rising property taxes and rental rates, the environmental and cultural degradation — as the economic benefits that are supposed to make it all worthwhile steadily shrink.

Kinda screwy, if you ask me, and it’s yet another troubling trend that we just sort of fell into, without much thought and no clear way out.

As I mentioned in a previous post, another troubling trend is the crack down on the Kingdom of Atooi, which is all part of the growing militarization of cops everywhere, including Kauai.

Over on Island Breath Juan Wilson and Koohan Paik explore that topic in two posts that delve more deeply into the details of Dayne Aipoalani’s arrest and link it to the Superferry protests.

It's the kind of overreaction that needs to be nipped in the bud — especially because the cops are due to be getting more riot gear and tasers.

Musings: Look the Other Way

The rain lulled me back to sleep and then the next thing I knew, pink was streaming in the windows, so Koko and I went out under a lavender sky. The rain kindly let up long enough for us to walk, but has now returned, which is a good thing, because the first round failed to dampen the dry spots under trees.

Ran into my neighbor Andy, who wanted to correct an assumption I made when I wrote in earlier post that Kauai's WWII prostitutes got only a fraction of the money they made.

In fact, he said, some of the women got quite wealthy, and the Honolulu jewelers and others who catered to the trade felt the pinch when business tapered off after the war. He said the women often serviced 12 men an hour in the mornings, which is when the military guys were free to visit the cat houses, then rested in the afternoons and headed over to the plantation camps for a second shift at night.

They even offered a kama`aina discount. Servicemen paid $3, but the price for locals was only a buck.

Although prostitution was never legal in Hawaii, officials long looked the other way because there was such a huge imbalance between women and men, due to the influx of male plantation workers. Apparently officials weren’t so much concerned about keeping the workers happy as ensuring they didn’t come after their own wives and daughters.

It seems that "look the other way" approach has long characterized the way Hawaii does business.

Also ran into farmer Jerry, who said to Koko: “Hey Cinco de Mayo dog. Your countrymen are celebrating today.”

Yes, like all self-respecting small poi dogs, Koko has a hefty dash of Chihuahua, and who knows what else: red-nosed pit bull, miniature Pinscher and chocolate lab are just a few of the guesses people have made.

I’m not sure which of her many breeds account for her desire to chase chickens, which she indulges at every opportunity. The other day she nailed a young rooster by the beach and left it lying belly up, legs twitching in what I thought sure was a death shudder, a mouthful of feathers blowing in the wind. I was talking to a friend on the cell phone, and lamented her senseless carnage, but he assured me, no worries, those roosters are tough.

Sure enough, once I’d captured Koko, I saw the rooster — still lying in the death pose — lift his head and look around, and the next day when I returned to the beach I went to check and it was gone.

A question that keeps arising is whether the Superferry is gone for good from Kauai, or plotting its return. Brad Parsons noted an interview that Chad Blair conducted with new Superferry CEO Thomas Fargo in the May 2 issue of Pacific Business News. The article isn’t on-line, but Brad provided this excerpt:

Q: Any chance Kauai service may resume soon? Fargo: We are “monitoring” the situation “very closely” and we are going to “do what the community asks us to do.”

The question now is whom within the community will HSF be listening to? In the wake of last week’s temporary air cargo shutdown, Dick Botti, president of the Hawaii Food Industry Association, began pressing for resumption of service and urging folks to push the Council to pass a resolution asking for the boat’s return.

However, Mr. Botti is not a member of this community, and it’s unclear how much weight such a resolution would carry — considering it could even get passed — since the previous resolution asking for the ferry not to come prior to an EIS was totally disregarded.

Will the business community be making such a request? I wonder, since it doesn’t seem like farmers — the one group who supposedly would benefit from such service — are eager to use the service, based on comments made in recent news articles that followed the blip in air cargo service.

In short, the flower guys need refrigeration and other operations, even Esaki’s, which is a large produce distributor, don’t have a spare truck and driver to send over to Honolulu, since the ferry doesn’t accept unaccompanied cargo.

So who else is there in the business community to make a strong stand for service? And how many regular folks here on Kauai are just dying to have it?

Or maybe it doesn’t matter what people want at all, and Hawaii Superferry will just continue to do whatever suits it as officials look the other way. Hasn’t that been its MO all along?

Musings: Feeling Threatened

The sky was oozing gold around its northeastern edges, but mostly it was grey, so I wasn’t expecting anything showy when Koko and I went walking this quiet Sunday morning.

But looks can be deceiving, as I discovered when the sun rose in earnest, infusing color into the world, and I watched a rain shower, tinted pink, drift the entire length of the Sleeping Giant’s body and a thick, vibrant rainbow form when the rain reached the cinder cone, and soon it was joined by another, only this one was slightly fainter, and then they both touched down in a roadside pasture. I don’t think there was a pot of gold at the end, unless you count the value of the cow that ambled through and the inherent splendor of a scene that filled my eyes with beauty and so my heart with joy.

And suddenly the rain was upon me, soft and warm, and still the light did not fade, nor the rainbows, which followed me home and as I turned into my driveway, Koko and I were standing at the apex of the most brilliant arch and we remained there, paying homage, until the rain stopped and the colors disappeared.

It seems, from recent actions, that the Kauai Police Department would like the Kingdom of Atooi to disappear, so in following the usual strategy taken when the established power structure feels threatened, they’re going after its leaders, Dayne Aipoalani and Robert Pa, in a heavy-handed way.

As you may recall, Dayne and Robert were arrested last October at a planning commission meeting — you know, the place where hardened criminals and radical revolutionaries usually hang out — on charges of obstructing government operations, disorderly conduct and simple trespassing, stemming from the late August Superferry protests at Nawiliwili.

 Both men were also charged with impersonating a police officer because they were carrying badges — not fake or real cop badges, but badges issued by the Kingdom.

Since then, even though the county prosecutor has failed to successfully prosecute others arrested at the Superferry protests due to the usual police bungling (go bunglers!), the case against Rob and Dayne has dragged on.

In between court appearances, the cops have subjected both men to harassment that would be considered petty, except their liberty — and since cops carry guns, and soon tasers, perhaps even their lives — is at stake.

The most recent event occurred on Wednesday night, following the anti-GMO meeting in Hanapepe, which Dayne had attended. While driving home with his wife and daughter, he was stopped by a large number of cops, some of them reportedly dressed in riot gear, then shackled and hauled off to jail on a contempt warrant for missing a court appearance.

Never mind that Dayne had a doctor’s excuse for missing his court date, and that the excuse was indeed in the records. But instead of letting him go immediately, with an apology, they reportedly questioned him about the ongoing occupation at Iolani Palace. What, just because he’s a kanaka, he’s supposed to have da scoop on what every other independence group is up to?

This kind of amped-up take-down shake-down is totally uncalled for. Dayne has never advocated any sort of violent overthrow or been known to carry weapons; indeed, the group advocates such radicalism as cleaning up ice, more citizen participation in decision-making and sensible land use planning.

I realize this is all very threatening to the status quo, but certainly Dayne and Rob have as much right to push their agenda as, say, Grove Farm, which has already so thoroughly infiltrated the county’s political system that it has no need to advocate for change from a position outside of it.

Meanwhile, when I interviewed Rob Pa about his hand-carved Polynesian canoe, he told of how he was trying to transport it to Kekaha for a town celebration when cops stopped him in Anahola because he reportedly didn’t have a permit to move it on the road, even though it was on a trailer.

The cops demanded Rob’s driver’s license, which was in the glove box, but instead of letting him go get it, they arrested him and hauled him off to jail for driving without a license. His wahine, also in the car with their two young kids and baby, had to follow him down to Babylon central to produce the license. The charges were dropped, but needless to say, it kind of ruined their day.

Instead of trying to destroy the Kingdom and incarcerate two men who are trying hard to do something positive for the community, why can’t the cops work with them, like they’ve embraced the Westside Guardian Angels and neighborhood watch groups?

I liked and respected KPD Chief Darryl Perry when I met him, and I know his sister, Mahealani Perez-Wendt, is a strong advocate of Hawaiian independence. I’m not sure where he stands on the issue, but regardless, I hope he can come to understand that the Kingdom guys are not our enemies, and shouldn’t be treated like thugs and terrorists. The cops on the beat need to be reined in here.

As Rob told me: “I like they leave us alone and recognize us. I’m doing what I should be doing, but the state, DLNR, the cops, all try to stop us. Who is them to be telling us you cannot do this, you cannot do that?”

Indeed.

Bad Scene at Gitmo

Of all the misdeeds committed by the Bush Administration, incarcerating people for years without charges at Guantanamo Bay — and torturing them — has got to be the worst.

Slowly, some of those wrongfully held are being let go. As Democracy Now! reported yesterday, Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was released after spending nearly six-and-a-half years at Gitmo with no charged filed. He was tortured and subject to more than 200 interrogation sessions.

Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day, he said.

The New Yorker also had a good piece, “Camp Justice,” recently on the military trials that are planned at Gitmo, and the uncertain future of so many detainees.

This seems a good time to share an interview I did for the “Honolulu Weekly” with Honolulu attorney Edmund Burke, who has a client at Gitmo. At the end, he tells what we can do to try and halt this injustice.

Following the Bush Adminstration’s 2001 declaration of “War on Terror,” an unknown number of mostly Arab men were rounded up and imprisoned, some of them at the U.S. Navy prison at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. They’re incarcerated under a “void in the rule of law” that allows men designated by the U.S. government as enemy combatants to be held without charge or trial.

Burke is among more than 300 lawyers — and the only one from Hawaii — offering pro bono legal services to “Gitmo” inmates. Their work is currently delayed as they await a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of a provision in the Military Commission Act that strips American courts of all jurisdiction over the detainees.

Still, Burke continues to visit his client — he’s been to Gitmo five times since October 2005, most recently in early March — and work toward the man’s release. He finds Guantanamo Bay a far different place today than when he first visited some 50 years ago as a midshipman in the U.S. Naval Academy.

What is the situation at Guantanamo now?
Initially there were perhaps as many as 700 men there, but about half were transferred to their own countries. Approximately 275 are left.

What’s it like to practice law there?
I have a co-counsel now but it’s very difficult. We use an interpreter. Any notes made with your client have to be turned over to your [military] escort, and if they don’t contain classified information, they’re returned. The concept of attorney-client privilege doesn’t exist. You have to petition months in advance to see your client. Much of what I’ve gleaned about the case has been released through a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) prosecuted by the Associated Press.

Who is your client?
He’s approximately 35 years old, originally from Libya, and he’ll have been in there six years in August. He’s never been charged with anything but being an “enemy combatant.” He is accused of taking part in a training camp of other Arabs in Afghanistan and leading combat troops in 2001 against the Northern Alliance.

The facts he’s related is that in 1998 he was working in Afghanistan clearing land mines and one blew up, resulting his leg being amputated. His left leg was damaged earlier in an industrial accident. He hobbles about using either crutches or a walker. It just blows my mind as far as any kind of logic that he could be involved in any kind of combat operation in 2001.

Was he tortured at Gitmo?
He spent a whole afternoon telling us that the Americans are the master torturers of the 21st Century. His description never included getting beaten or physically harmed, except sometimes they would take his prothesis away so he had no ability to move about. There was sleep deprivation. There were never more than a couple of hours they could sleep at a time. The isolation was and still is a big factor. They have nothing to read, no one to talk to, nothing to occupy your mind. And the government keeps the AC turned up so they’re cold all the time — teeth chattering cold. And there were other things, too, that I don’t feel at liberty to discuss. The interrogations have slacked off, but he still goes through them once a week.

How does he spend his time?
Just thinking. They let them exercise two or three times a week, where they can go outdoors into things that look like a cage and are about 50 feet long. They’re all fed in their cells.

What prompted you to get involved in this situation?
I was greatly offended at the concept of my government locking people away. People who are POWs have very well-defined rights under the Geneva Convention, but we haven’t done that. Just the idea of incarcerating someone without a charge or conviction — maybe even forever — doesn’t seem to be the American way of doing things. The Center for Constitutional Rights coordinates this.

What concerns you about the situation there?
Just the whole concept. Even our own government admits they had no plans to give trials to the vast majority of the people there. One study shows a good 70 to 80 percent confined were not taken into custody on any battlefield. My client was living in Pakistan in a religious school and was arrested with boys as young as 13 and the majority ended up in Guantanamo. Our government was paying $5,000 a head for people accused of being either members of the Taliban or Al Quaida. I think most were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why have you been going public about this at programs sponsored by the ACLU?
If Americans know what is going on at Guantanamo, that our government doesn’t seem bound by any rules at all — they make their rules as they go along — hopefully we can generate some public support for closing it down. It’s a void in the rule of law to confine people and say they’re enemy combatants and we’re just going to hang on to them until the War on Terror ends. I’ve never seen any indication that these people are linked to terrorism.

What can you do for your client?
My big hope is that the Supreme Court, when they make their decision, will put us back in business. The legal tool is a writ of habeus corpus, which is basically saying to the government, either charge these people and convict them, or let them go. I’m very optimistic that at some stage my client will be released. We’re trying also to gain refugee status for him, maybe a European country. He can’t go back to Libya because he was a member of an organization that was attempting to overthrow Kaddafi. His parents, under threat of being killed, had to disown him.

Does he think he’ll be released?
We’ve sort of watched his mental status deteriorate. He’s a very discouraged individual. His moral is pretty low. The reason I and my co-counsel and the interpreter try to see him every few months is to keep some hope alive for him. We’re trying to let him know someone cares about his case.

How has this affected you personally?
I’m a guy who was raised to think my government was my friend and to be respected. I had a higher level of respect for the government than I do now. You come back very depressed. There’s nothing uplifting about it.

What can people do?
Write their Congressmen. Congress has the power to change the Military Commissions Act. We all sort of live a hope. Maybe it’s a naïve hope, but something like this can’t go on forever.

Musings: Whorehouses, Nooses and GMOs

It’s the time of year that I especially like, when the sun sets late and the bird alarm goes off early. It was plenty light at 5:30 this morning when Koko and I went walking, beneath Venus and a while sliver of moon. Have you noticed how the moon tracks the sun, and they’re both rising much further in the northwest in these days preceding summer?

Ran into my neighbor Andy, and I was trying to make him laugh so he’d forget about his sore eye, when farmer Jerry pulled up and we got to talking about taxi dancers — women who danced, for a price, with the plantation workers — and then Andy told me there had been a house of ill repute on our road during World War II.

He said the women had to work incredibly hard, often servicing 40 to 50 men a day. Wow. We’re talking long days and short sessions to get those kinds of numbers. And of course, those who labored got only a fraction of the money.

I never know what my morning walks will bring, or my email inbox, for that matter, which today included a report from one of the guys at the Austal USA plant in Mobile, Ala. — you know, where they’re building Superferry #2 and American war ships — that a noose was found hanging in an employee breakroom yesterday.

TV station WKGR, in its coverage of the incident, included this report:

The company's Vice President Bill Pfister released this statement -- he said: "Our preliminary investigation has revealed the possibility of a personal agenda as the motivation behind this incident and does not reflect the culture that Austal has worked so hard to build."

It doesn’t? Swan Cleveland, a union organizer at Austal USA, alleged in an interview on KKCR last month that Austal is engaged in racial discrimination and union-busting tactics. And an Austal welder who also participated in the show was fired for disloyalty.

It’s just another taint on the already tainted Hawaii Supeferry folks, and yet another bit of “bad news” related to the Superferry that has gone unreported in the Hawaii media.

Meanwhile, The Garden Island today is reporting that there was a sizable turnout at Uncle Jimmy Torio’s kukakuka under the big tent. Some 100 westsiders turned out on Wednesday night to voice their concerns, and cultivation of GMO crops and pesticide use were hot topics of conversation.

The article also touched on the split between the big tent organizers and Diana LaBedz guys, who didn’t want to participate in the community meeting if the seed companies were allowed to talk. So they had their own anti-GMO meeting in Hanapepe.

Fortunately, the guest speakers they’d brought in — Dr. Lorin Pang and Hector Valenzuela, two very knowledgeable and reasonable men — were able to articipate in both events.

Andy Parx did a good job of on his blog of outlining the pettiness and elitism behind the factionalism, a course of events that prompted a friend of mine to observe: “So what, now you’ve got the PLO and Hamas?"

According to the Garden Island, Diana “felt the community needed to air their concerns without the seed companies’ participation.”

I can’t understand that line of thinking. If folks are mad at the seed companies for growing GMO crops and blaming them for kids getting sick from possible pesticide exposure, shouldn’t they be at the table? Wouldn’t you, as a community member, want to be able to question them directly and hear what they have to say?

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a supporter of GMOs and I’ve got my suspicions, although they’re yet unproven, that pesticides or some kind of chemicals being used in fields near the schools are making the kids sick.

More investigations are needed, as is advocated by Pang, Valenzuela and Maluia-WCMS, a coalition of Waimea Canyon Middle School staff, parents and community members concerned with the use of pesticides and GMO crops on lands adjacent to the campus.

Meanwhile, we need to get clear on the ultimate goal in regard to the seed companies. Is it to make them more accountable? To tighten up their act? To eliminate GMO crops, but allow hybrids? To shut them down completely? If it’s the latter, what about the westsiders who depend on these companies for jobs? And what about the role these companies play in contributing to the economic viability of agriculture on Kauai, and in providing seed corn for places all around the globe, as I mentioned yesterday?

Much as we might all love the idea of small, sustainable, family-owned organic farms on Kauai, they’re as yet minor players in our agricultural picture. And I for one am not willing to eliminate all other forms of agriculture on this island, just because they don't fit my ideal. There's far too much at stake, in terms of keeping ag lands and water from being diverted into development.

As Glenn Teves, the UH extension agent on Molokai told me, if agriculture is going to survive in Hawaii, farmers, environmentalists and Native Hawaiians need to form a coalition. Because the economic pressure to replace ag with development is strong, and getting stronger.

Musings: Lingering Animosity

It’s so nice to have birds as my alarm clock. I’m not talking about the chickens — a Honolulu friend terms them "crack roosters," because they're up at all hours — but the song birds that sweetly alert me to the sun’s impending arrival.

And today, I watched it come up, prevailing in its mighty effort to triumph over the clouds, because after all, it’s May Day, so we need some rosy golden light shining down on the flowers.

Ran into my neighbor Andy, who is recovering from eye surgery and unable to read, so I gave him a verbal update on the latest Superferry happenings from yesterday’s blog. If they had it together, he said, the Aloha Air cargo shutdown would have given them the perfect excuse to return to Kauai.

But they didn’t — in fact, they’re scrambling to handle cargo deliveries to Maui — and those who are thinking that the closure of Aloha’s air cargo service will provide impetus for the Superferry to return to Kauai may be disappointed to learn that the big boat isn’t coming to our rescue after all.

Even as food executives — or at least, the president of Love’s Bakery — were crying to Gov. Lingle, asking her to make the boat deliver Love’s bread to Kauai and the food industry lobbyist was beating the drum for the ferry’s return, the void was already being filled.

I happened to sit next to Brian Suzuki, president of Hawaii Air Cargo, at yesterday’s Small Business Administration awards luncheon in Honolulu. He told me that Pacific Air Cargo, which has planes that are larger, quieter and more fuel-efficient than Aloha’s, was going to start service to Kauai last night. The company will even be hiring a lot of Aloha’s workers.

So instead of shipments being delayed for weeks, they’ll just be held up a day or two, he said. United is also looking to get in on the Neighbor Island air cargo action, because it’s already operating direct flights to Lihue, Kahului and Kona from the mainland.

The news likely won’t sit well with the folks who left vitriolic comments on yesterday’s Star-Bulletin story, “Firms want ferry service.” A lot of Oahu and mainland residents are positively livid we said no to the boat, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they have this lingering animosity.

What do they care, anyway? They aren’t even riding the thing, as the passenger counts to Maui indicate. But that doesn’t stop them from telling us what we should do, calling the wrath of God down upon our heads or making like they know what the majority of residents here want. And they don’t even live here. What kind of fricking arrogance is that?

Now I’m sure it will just piss them off even more to learn we aren’t going to stew in our own juices as we slowly starve, or be forced to eat crow and beg the boat to come so we can have Love’s bread and cigarettes — the only two items missing from one store’s shelves.

In the short run, the air cargo upheavals will affect export of highly perishable Hawaii-made products like mushrooms and flowers the most, Brian said. And Hanalei Poi, a poi-like product that requires refrigeration, is apparently also feeling the squeeze. (Gee, maybe that’s a bit of what goes around, comes around.)

Anyway, in the long run, everybody’s going to be paying higher prices for everything, Brian said, whether their stuff is coming in on the ferry or a commercial airliner or a cargo plane or the barge because it’s all tied to rising fuel costs. And those higher costs are going to affect our farm exports, he said. Because even though the dollar is weak, which would normally increase overseas sales of commodities like papayas, the fuel surcharges are eating up those gains.

It looks like the farmers are going to eat it again, which is all the more reason to now support our local growers.

I was surprised to learn that seed corn — much of it grown right here on Kauai, and no, it’s not all GMO — is one of the biggest users of air cargo space in Hawaii, according to Brian. It seems that diseases and other problems have greatly slowed seed corn production on the mainland, so Hawaii is now supplying much of the world, with places as far away as France and Brazil clamoring for our crop.

Kind of makes you think a little differently about those fields over on the Westside.

One thing’s clear: The global economic picture has so many moving parts, and we’re all so interrelated, that it’s kind of miraculous things function at all.

Finally, the Advertiser picked up on Ian Lind’s Superferry lobbying disclosure story, but relegated it to the capitol blog. Now why do you suppose they don’t consider it worthy of coverage in the paper? Or is that just the reporter's way of sweeping it under the rug because he missed the story?