KauaiEclectic

Musings: No Clarity

2012-02-01T09:58:00.000-10:00

The stars were blazing when the dogs and I went out at about 5 a.m., and I'm pretty sure I saw Mars, glowing red, not far from the bright beacon that was Arcturus. But within 40 minutes, the clouds were blowing in and the stellar clarity was quickly lost.

There hasn't been much clarity about why Roy Asher and Ale Quibilan, both assistant chiefs with Kauai Police Department, were placed on leave.

The first I heard about it was at 4:48 p.m. yesterday, when someone left this comment on Monday's post:

KPD suspends Asher... 
"hahaha you ain't got nothing hahaha you ain't got nothing" -Roy Asher  
KARMA KARMA KARMA KARMA KARMA KARMA

I immediately contacted Chief Darryl Perry, who said that Asher had not been suspended, but he could make no further comment.

So I checked with Beth Tokioka at the mayor's office to try and find out if the leave was indefinite, paid, or whatever, but she replied with an email stating:

Per instructions from the County Attorney's office, we are unable to release additional information on this matter.

Next it was on to sources, who said the issue is being kept very quiet, with rank and file also in the dark. But it apparently has something new to do with Darla Abbatiello, the police officer who won a $980,000 settlement against the county after claiming claiming that her civil rights and the protection offered within the Whistleblower's Protection Act were violated.

I don't imagine too many tears are being shed over Asher, who has been carrying on a vendetta against Kingdom of Atooi over their badges. But I have a small soft spot for Quibilan, who at least had the brains to check with the chief before the cops served a warrant for my arrest on trespassing charges stemming for an August 2008 protest at the Naue burial site.

Now, I understand there are laws governing employee privacy. But it seems to me that if the cops and county can release information that seriously smears someone, such as the announcement that Oklevueha Native American Church minister Shane Johnson was arrested for two counts of first degree Promotion a Dangerous drug, second degree Commercial Promotion of Marijuana and three counts of Drug Paraphernalia, even though he has never been charged with a crime, that we the people ought to be informed about what's happening with KPD's top brass.

And finally, for those of you who have seen some of the videos that parody the “shit” that various people say, here's one on “Sh*t People From Hawaii Say.”

Don't expect clarity unless you understand pidgin!

Musings: Revolutionary Concepts

2012-01-31T08:46:00.000-10:00

I recently attended a workshop on raising chickens that was held at North Country Farms and led by Sky Roversi-Deal, a young man who grew up on that Kilauea farm and is now sharing the hands-on knowledge he gained with others. Contrary to what we're constantly told, not every kid is fleeing the farm.

I'd had chickens before, but was interested in learning how Sky fed his flock with a minimum of imported feed, 'cause ain't nothin' sustainable about shipping in layer pellets, and they're not cheap, either, especially if you buy organic. Plus I can't imagine that eating heavily processed food is any better for chickens than it is for us.

Anyway, I was taught how to make food for chickens, which I'm already doing for my dogs, thanks to Dr. Ihor Basko, and it got me excited about building a coop and raising some chicks.

But Sky imparted another lesson, too, one about the value of stable, consistent yields, as opposed to the high production mentality that is degrading not only farming practices, but livestock animals and the earth. It's pretty shocking — and yes, disgusting — to think that chickens used as layers don't even know how to set eggs — or in other words, hatch chicks — or forage. They've had those basic instincts bred right out of them so that they can function solely as high-volume egg-laying machines in food production factories.

We're changing the basic nature of animals so that we can more efficiently exploit them, and that's not only wrong in so many ways, it's putting our own survival at risk by intentionally reducing diversity.

We've all heard the phrase ”you are what you eat,” and it still holds true. I read the other day that for the first time the French are having problems with obesity, and it's because they've become addicted to the deadly junk food that America exports, like weapons, to the rest of the world.

Producing at least some of own food — and I'm talking cooking as well as growing — is not only the best way to ensure quality, but re-establish a healthy relationship with one of the essential components of life. In the process, it can also reveal attitudes that need changing. I thought of that yesterday, as I was contemplating how to make my cherry tomato plant produce more. I suddenly realized that it was doing just fine, providing me with a steady supply that fully met my needs. I did not actually need more.

And isn't that a revolutionary concept in ever-ravenous America.

While we're on the topic of revolutionary concepts, the White House, Google and YouTube fully ignored the most popular video question that citizens posed to Obama in yesterday's "Your Interview with the President" production.

Even though it won twice as many votes as any other video query, this question was deemed too daring to even broach:

"Mr. President, my name is Stephen Downing, and I'm a retired deputy chief of police from the Los Angeles Police Department. From my 20 years of experience I have come to see our country's drug policies as a failure and a complete waste of criminal justice resources. According to the Gallup Poll, the number of Americans who support legalizing and regulating marijuana now outnumbers those who support continuing prohibition. What do you say to this growing voter constituency that wants more changes to drug policy than you have delivered in your first term?"

Guess we know the answer to that one: nothing.

But Obama did take advantage of the “virtual interview” to defend his unprecedented use of armed drones. As Democracy Now! reports:

"I want to make sure the people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they have been very precise precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied. So I think that there’s this perception somehow that we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly. This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases and so on. It is important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash."

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported in August that U.S. drones strikes had killed between about 400 and 800 civilians, including 175 children. The Bureau put the total number of people killed by drones as high as 3,000.

Weird, yeah, how killing kids and civilians is no big deal, but talking about legalizing marijuana is kapu...... But I guess it's no more bizarre than our devotion to factory food.

Musings: Fringe Fights

2012-01-30T09:11:00.001-10:00

What a delight to wake to the sound of twittering, chirping, singing birds, creating a harmonious impromptu symphony that roused me from dreams and sent the dogs and me out into a warm, damp morning that was just turning orange around the edges.

Forget the news; the real action has been playing out overhead in the darkness the last few evenings, with a waxing moon first dancing with Venus low on the horizon, then cozying up midway between Venus and Jupiter, and last night finally snuggling close to Jupiter, not far from the constellation of Makalii. Simply stunning.

Enroute to a meeting with Planning Director Mike Dahilig on Friday morning — which will be covered in another post — I saw a good-sized group clustered around the Moikeha building, where the police commission was meeting. They were members of the Oklevueha Native American Church of Kauai, and in protest of the cop's December raid on their Church, which resulted in the peyote they use as sacrament being confiscated, they were holding signs with messages like “”let us pray” and “set our buttons free.”

Afterward, I spoke with Shane Johnson, the minister, as well as some Church members who said they were not allowed into the police commission meeting, which is public, so I'm not sure how that was justified. Their numbers certainly didn't exceed the capacity of the room.

I looked at the documentation that Shane had, and I can understand why they were under the impression that local government considered them legit, and thus protected from peyote busts. They have a certificate of good standing from the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs that shows they were incorporated as a nonprofit under the laws of Hawaii, with a declaration from the main church in Utah that establishes them as a branch and states peyote is central to their religion, as well as a General Excise license.

Plus as Shane noted, “We're signed up with the mayor's recycling program. It's not like we're trying to hide anything.”

At any rate, the commissioners said they didn't have the authority to return the peyote, although they would investigate allegations of police wrongdoings from Church members, which will take at least a month. And if you look at the commission's agenda, you will see that a great number of citizen complaints against cops are dropped because of insufficient evidence. In other words, unless you've got the incident on video, like LeBeau Lagmay’s Tasering, you're pretty much screwed.

“We're not trying to attack the police force,” Shane said. “We're just trying to keep from being attacked.”

After the meeting, as a uniformed cop stood by watching just in case whatevah, Church members joined hands, said a prayer and sang a song, and the leaders were anointed with hemp oil. They then went to say hi to the mayor, or more accurately, stand in the foyer beneath his office. Their next plan is to visit the prosecutor, though they might want to make an appointment as she could be out campaigning, I mean, educating seniors about scams and the like.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a complaint letter against Maui County, citing concerns that cops violated the First Amendment rights of Occupy Wall Street Maui protestors during a week-long demonstration outside the Kihei facilities of Monsanto, the epitome of the evil corporation.

According to a report from Maui Now:

The ACLU letter, dated on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, alleges OWSM members were threatened with trespass and instructed to leave the site after sunset because of safety concerns.

“[T]here is evidence to suggest that the county is singling out the Occupy protesters for harassment based on the content of their speech.”

The cops also reportedly turned away porta-potties that OWSM had rented, prompting Deputy Corporation Counsel Moana M. Lutey to state in a reply to the ACLU:

“In terms of the portable toilet permit, this cannot be construed as an act of harassment by MPD. If a permit was denied, I do not know who would have denied it. There is no provision in the County Code for the issuance of a portable toilet permit. As a result, no county agency could have denied the permit.”

So the cops were just going rogue?

I loved Monsanto's response:

“This is a legal and safety matter outside of our purview, so we respectfully defer to county and state authorities.”

Really? Then I guess they wouldn't mind if local government started cracking down on safety issues related to their poison-laden GMO cultivation practices, which is one big reason why the OWSM guys were out there in the first place.

Musings: Out of Sight

2012-01-27T09:13:00.000-10:00

Out walking beneath a starry black sky that turns white on its way to blue, in a bowl formed by Nounou, Waialeale and Makaleha, all standing vividly clear, I am reminded, as I watch the dogs scamper and skip without restraint of leash, of the model they set for finding joy in the small/big things in life: freedom, affection, food, being part of a pack — as opposed to a PAC.

So let's see, what's in the hopper today.....

Well, it's no surprise, given the recent talk about beefing up America's presence in the Pacific, that both Civil Beat and the Star-Advertiser are reporting an anticipated increase in military spending and personnel — perhaps 1,000 more Marines — for Hawaii.

With all this saber rattling going on, good thing the Lege is considering a bill that will add PTSD as another of the maladies that can be treated by medical cannabis.

Speaking of medical cannabis, I was interested to learn a few more details about that December raid on the Oklevueha Native American church. While the police carefully weighed all the peyote they confiscated, they reportedly did not weigh the cannabis that belonged to three authorized medical marijuana users before seizing it, too. What's more, they haven't given it back. Now how can the cops legally take marijuana that belongs to blue card holders? The cops also were trying to classify the scissors used to cut up the weed as drug paraphernalia. Come on.

Church leaders will have 12 minutes to state their case to the Police Commission this morning about why they feel the bust was bogus. I understand commissioners are busy people, serving for free, but don't you think they could spare more than three minutes per person when folks are raising concerns about the actions of law enforcement officers?

Meanwhile, I was dismayed to hear that a planning commissioner told a North Shore resident, “I haven't been up there for 20 years. I wrote that place off a long time ago.” Sweet.

Equally out of sight is the radiation from Fukushima. But that doesn't mean some folks aren't paying attention. Up in Alaska, they're testing sick seals for radiation exposure. Another culprit could be hydrazine, which was pumped into the damaged reactors and is extremely toxic to marine mammals.

And a detailed article in the Montreal Gazette reports that:

Japan is the only country that appears to be systematically testing fish for radiation and publicly reporting the results.

What's more, they're finding it. According to the article:

Cesium was especially prevalent in certain of the species:

73 per cent of mackerel tested; 91 per cent of the halibut; 92 per cent of the sardines; 93 per cent of the tuna and eel; 94 per cent of the cod and anchovies; 100 per cent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish.

“It’s disconcerting how big of an event Fukushima was and how little data are out there. No one has taken responsibility for studying this in a single agency (in the U.S.), even though we also have reactors on the coast and other events could happen,” said oceanographer Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the non-profit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.

Which quite possibly explains why one is studying it.

Musings: State of Shibai

2012-01-25T07:58:00.000-10:00

It was such a joy to hear the rain come in the night and stay, depositing nearly half an inch of much-needed moisture before it slipped away, leaving big puddles and fog creeping across the road when the dogs and I went out walking in darkness broken only by a few stars and the blinking lights of aircraft overhead.

It had been so long since it rained that I was beginning to feel like I lived on the leeward side. Guess this is what Hawaii under climate change is going to feel like. But don't worry, can still be business as usual —NOT!

Speaking of which, last night Obama gave his bizarre State of the Union address, in which he began by exhorting us to mirror the example set by the Armed Forces — what, you mean follow orders blindly and kill innocents in defense of empire and some bullshit about making America safe, even as we willfully destroy the environment that provides our true security just so we can continue to wildly consume energy and everything else? Ummm, no thanks.

Or was he suggesting we emulate the high rates of suicide, depression, domestic violence, unemployment and brain damage suffered by too many of the 2.3 million vets who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the frustration they experience when being jacked around by the VA when it's swamped under a whopping backlog of 900,000 disability claims?

Yet Obama actually had the nerve to say: “As they come home, we must serve them as well as they've served us.” Get real. If you want to know what crappy service we're giving those sent to fight those two misguided wars, read this article in The Week.

After pandering to the vets and nationalistic sentiment, he moved on to the middle class, talking about income inequality and the bad guys on Wall Street, which prompted Ralph Nader to point out:

"Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail."

But while Obama talked a lot of shit, these two lines really stood out:

We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings

Meanwhile, in the real world, Homeland Security is teaming up with the Coast Guard to create a security zone at Kaunakakai Harbor on Molokai precisely for the purpose of intimidating residents — through the threatened use of violence — who oppose the Safari Explorer cruise ship. It's the same strategy Lingle employed during the Superferry protests: slap up an exclusionary “security zone” and threaten anyone who enters it with a federal crime. Oh, and they'll take away your kids, too. Remember that?

As the notice in the federal register reads, emphasis added:

The establishment of this security zone is necessary to enable the Coast Guard and its law enforcement partners to protect people, vessels, and facilities in and around Kaunakakai Harbor during potential non-compliant protests involving the passenger vessel SAFARI EXPLORER to its intended berth in the harbor.

That's the true state of the union, folks. You can engage in civil disobedience only in the manner the government prescribes. Otherwise, you're non-compliant and treated like a terrorist. But hey, this is a democracy, which means you can submit your comments on the zone even though it went into effect on Jan. 19 and was already used last weekend. And you know they're gonna do it no matter what the people say. That's why I really had to laugh at the part that reads:

We encourage you to participate in this rulemaking by submitting comments and related materials.

Yeah, and don't forget to vote, too. hahahahaha

Musings: What Happened?

2012-01-24T08:32:00.000-10:00

The sky was just waking up when the dogs and I went out walking. Stars that had been blazing all night were slowly disappearing as their black background began shifting to the faintest shade of blue. Mist rose up from the pasture and drifted into the road, and in the distance stood Waialeale, fully visible, though softened by a purplish haze. The hundreds of fighting roosters, tethered to their little a-frames, let out a continuous roar, and occasionally a dog barked or yelped.

Returning home, yoga released the stiffness that had set in from spending a couple of hours in my garden, which reflects my own expansionist tendencies. As I complete one bed — I'm now up to eight, plus three tiny loi and an herb garden — I'm thinking, where can I dig another? Because there's always something more I want to grow.

And it brought to mind an article I emailed to Farmer Jerry, under the subject heading “whither (wither) goes ag.....” It was entitled college majors that are useless and included the ranking:

Useless Degree #1 - Agriculture; Useless Degree #4 - Animal Science; Useless Degree #5 - Horticulture

Somehow we've come to view growing crops and raising livestock — in other words, creating the raw ingredients that are made into the processed food-like substances we consume — as inconsequential, in the same category as fashion design and theater arts. What happened?

The same question could be asked of the case that involves Councilman Tim Bynum's alleged zoning violation. Information that I had previously received “off the record” was released by The Garden Island today, so we might as well talk about it. I'm referring to an April 7, 2010, email that County Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho sent to former Planning Director Ian Costa:

“We received information to corroborate an anonymous complaint dated March 26, 2010, that was sent to the Planning Department and our office, that Councilmember Tim Bynum was renting out his house, or a portion thereof. Can you let me know if renting out a portion of his residence is illegal given his land status, and what ordinance/statute would he be violating by doing so? Please advise.”

On April 8, 2010, Costa emailed Iseri-Carvalho, responding that Bynum’s residence was permitted as a “single-family” dwelling based on one kitchen.

“If a second kitchen (area used for the preparation of food) is present, then a violation would exist for an illegal ‘multi-family’ dwelling unit,” Costa said in his email.

Now, I found this interesting, because when I attended the Dec. 21, 2011, court hearing on Tim's case, I had a little chat with Deputy Prosector Jake Delaplane about how zoning violations are handled. He said violations are done in tandem with the county attorney's office, with the planning department and county attorney's office typically taking the lead.

So if, as Shay claims in the newspaper's report, her “staff works 60-70 hours each week, and it is 'quite insensitive' to have her staff tied up at a council meeting,” how does she personally have the time to follow up on a zoning complaint about Tim? Wouldn't you think she'd delegate an inquiry like that to an underlying?

Or since the planning department had also received the same “anonymous complaint” — and it's my understanding that it wasn't truly anonymous, but someone who wished to have his/her identify withheld — wouldn't you wait for the planning department to check it out and start the ball rolling?

At the Dec. 21 court hearing, Jake said the prosecutors office wasn't targeting Tim, and some 40 persons accused of CZO violations were arraigned the same day as Tim. “Overall, we're taking a stronger stance with these violations because they haven't been enforced in the past,” he said.

Did Shaylene follow up personally on all of those cases, too? Has she been trying to hunt down the off-island owners of the TVRs that are in violation, so they can be served their summons for violations?

I mean, this can't be the highest priority for an overworked county prosecutor, and it sure makes it look she's gunning for Tim. And while Tim is not one of my favorite people, I'm even less enamored of selective enforcement and political vendettas.

Musings: Strong-Arming Molokai

2012-01-22T09:53:00.001-10:00

Those who support Molokai folks in their quest for self-determination, as well as people involved with the Hawaii Superferry demonstrations, will appreciate the action at Kaunakakai Harbor yesterday, where about 50 persons protested the return of a 36-passenger vessel operated by American Safari Cruises.

Here's a link to a short video clip of the protest, which was posted with the text:

On January 21st 2012 over 100 police, coast guard, us sheriffs, and fbi converged on the tiny isle of Moloka'i. To protect a private luxury yacht and it's 36 passengers. At a cost of over $1 million dollars.

One of the background comments recorded on the video:

Well, I guess the governor really proved his point. He's the man. Can strong-arm Molokai.

Ya really gotta wonder, why would that cruise ship want to bring passengers to a place where they're so clearly not wanted? A sign held by one protestor offers an answer: GREED IZ DA PROBLEM.

According to a very short report in the Star-Advertiser:

The Coast Guard used a cutter to escort the American Safari Cruises 36-passenger ship, with a response boat and 27 Coast Guard personnel assisting on the ground, as well as a few manning small boats from the Marine Safety and Security Team from San Francisco, which was here for the recent presidential visit.

The FBI, Department of Land and Natural Resources, Maui County police and deputy sheriffs were also on hand.

The clamp down followed an action on Nov. 26, 2011, when Molokai folks used surfboats and small boats to block the cruise ship from entering Kaunakakai Harbor. It eventually turned around left.

But now it's back, with an armed escort. As a protestor addressing the ship and its escort with a bullhorn said:

We don't know who you're protecting. Not us. Molokai has always peacefully demonstrated and yet you guys come here fully loaded, armed and ready to shoot. What's up with that? What you guys gonna do? Shoot our kids? You gonna shoot the kupuna?

We're not terrorists. We love this place. Do you guys love this place? You don't even know this place. Therefore, leave.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when the government is forcing tourism on kanaka at the point of a gun. As the sign held by one kupuna read: Respect the Lifestyle and Desires of Local People.

Musings: A Truly New Day

2012-01-19T10:55:00.001-10:00

Driving to the beach for sunrise, I'm starstruck not by the stars, which were disappearing, but all the mountains — Kalalea, Makaleha, Waialeale, Kawaikini — standing perfectly clear against a backdrop the color of pink ginger. At the shore, the drama continues, with a strategically placed cloud blocking the top half of a fiery red sun, causing five broad shafts of rose and silver light to beam from sea to sky.

The water, smoothed by a faint offshore wind that carries the musky-sweet scent of white hinano hanging in coastal hala trees, is a color somewhere between blue and brown, and conditions are perfect for the guys who pulled into the parking lot right behind me, driving a truck with a window decal of a diver preparing to spear a tako.

I think of the conversation I had the day before with fisherman/surfer Greg Holzman, who expressed concern about the possible loss of shoreline and ocean access that he and others fear could accompany critical habitat designations for the monk seal and the creation of marine life sanctuaries.

I think also of comments he made about how access to the island's mauka areas has been lost with the closing of sugar plantations, development, landowner worries about liability. As a result, he said, the areas that are open, like Kokee, get overused, creating conflicts between hunters and hikers/tourists, and the pig population has exploded in the places where guys can't get in to hunt anymore.

And that makes me think of DLNR's new plan to protect our watersheds — provided the Legislature kicks down $11 million per year. Perhaps that's why the agency is taking its case to the public in the opening days of the Lege with a television special, “The Rain Follows the Forest,” set to air on KGMB at 6:30 tonight, and again at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday.

The plan, which is part of Abercrombie's “New day in Hawaii,” and so includes language about public-private partnerships, sounds a serious alarm:

Immediate action is needed to secure Hawaii’s water supply. Hotter, drier conditions and damaged watersheds are escalating the costs and conflicts over water.

Fresh, clean water is an irreplaceable resource. It is fundamental to our well-being. It fuels agriculture, tourism, and sustainable development. In turn, our water supply depends on the health of our mauka native forests, which capture and absorb rain. With over half of the original forest lost, and the remainder threatened by exploding populations of invasive species, the forest now relies on us for its survival.

The proposal identifies fencing key watersheds and removing all hooved animals from those enclosures as “the first step towards protection” — a concept that is essentially a repeat of what plantation owners did in the early 1900s. But it's likely to meet strong resistance from hunters, who have long had tremendous influence on public land management in Hawaii. Though the plan calls for using hunters to remove the animals wherever it's safe to do so, hunters have consistently opposed efforts to fence public lands.

When the state talks about partnerships, perhaps it could push harder for improved mauka and makai access, so that people, especially those who secure food through hunting and fishing, don't continue to feel so squeezed, which feeds conflicts with other humans, as well as wildlife. Witness the recent attacks on the monk seals, which are viewed as fishing competitors.

I was also interested in the proposal's acknowledgement that:

Additionally, resorts are the most water-intensive land use, using over three times more water per acre than industrial and commercial, and five times more water per acre than agriculture. Because of this, water-intensive resort development and expansion can be restricted by limited water supplies.

But mightn't that be a good thing? Especially since the proposal also recognizes:

[T]he unique cultural and natural resources that attract visitors to Hawai`i are declining. Native species sacred to the Hawaiian culture are disappearing at the highest extinction rate in the nation because of development, introductions of invasive species, and other threats.

Once again we're confronted with this ongoing disconnect between conservation and development. We keep acting like we can have both, and we keep getting knocked up side the head by proof that we can't.

If we're going to spend millions to protect the native forests, why not also get sensible about determining the carrying capacity of these islands when it comes to tourism? We've already heard Richard Lim, director of the state Department of Economic Development and Tourism admit:

[T]ourism has essentially remained stagnant for the last 20 years and can no longer be relied on to move the economy into a prosperous future.

So why keep pretending like it will? Instead of spending money to lure more and more tourists to the Islands, and jumping through hoops to ensure they're entertained, why not channel a big chunk of dough into supporting local ag? That way we'd save water, increase our self-sufficiency and keep our hard-earned cash in Hawaii, rather than sending it out to the places that grow our imported food.

It's good to see DLNR pushing its ambitious plan to protect watersheds, and hopefully it's not too late. But if the Guv truly wants to usher in "a new day in Hawaii," he needs to start steering the Islands away from their dependence on tourism and the military, neither of which will ever be sustainable, and into practices that are.

Musings: Lessons From the "Lowly"

2012-01-18T09:02:00.001-10:00

Last night, as the trees creaked and big rain beat on the windows, I sent a video link to a friend of a crow clearly using a jar lid to sled down a snowy roof. It was accompanied by a short article in which a scientist described it as “play-like behavior.”

“I don't understand how people don't think animals play,” she replied in an email I received after walking beneath a crescent moon as shell pink clouds blew past the waterfall-streaked face of Makaleha this morning.

Really. So if it's hard for some humans to believe animals play, much less think or feel, I realize it's a big stretch to accept the fact that bacteria have something important to teach us.

But they do. After all, they've been around for some 4 billion years, compared to our measly little 100,000, only the last 6,000 of which have approached anything close to what we now congratulate ourselves on as civilization.

Meanwhile, the bacteria can watch the frenzied empire-building, colonizing, exploiting, over-populating, over-consuming human dramas that have brought our species to the brink of simultaneous crises and yawn, “Been there, done that.”

Because they have, more than once, and each time they figured out a way to adapt themselves to weather it, which resulted in an evolutionary leap. Heck, they even developed electric motors as complex as our own, and way before we did, says Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolution biologist who was the subject of a fascinating and inspiring interview on New Dimensions that you can listen to free through today.

I suggest you do, because hearing her give the abridged history of the evolution of life on the planet really helped to put things in perspective. It also gave me hope. As Sahtouris says, “Life gets creative in a time of crisis.”

So as we ponder our possible fates, it behooves us to take a few lessons from the “lowly” bacteria that not only were here first, but offer us a model for how we humans can evolve into a mature species — provided we don't kill each other off, first.

Here's the biggest tip: move beyond hostile competition to cooperation and co-creation. “We have to form a global family if we're going to make this thing work,” Sahtouris says. “We're not looking for monoculture; that's a human invention. We have to maintain the diversity and do things cooperatively within it.”

And another one: have a little more appreciation for all forms of life, especially the bacteria that play such critical roles in our own existence. Consider this: the bacteria in our guts alone regulate 80 percent of our immune system function.

“We're not supposed to call them germs and attack them all the time,” Sahtouris says. “They're so flexible. We're not as smart as they are. Our consciousness is new in evolution compared to theirs. Once we understand this, we will be demanding natural products and good food.”

Needless to say, she is an opponent of genetic engineering and factory farming practices that call for giving livestock massive doses of antibiotics. While the technically-oriented scientists who come up with this stuff do have their place, she says, “we need scientists who understand life to stand up to them when they're going off course.”

What I really liked was her description of life as “a sort of improvisational dance, constantly rebalancing itself and learning flexibility and resiliency.”

Interestingly enough, just before listening to the interview I'd written an article about acupuncture, and how its sole purpose is to help restore the balanced movement of energy through our bodies so that we can naturally repair ourselves. Ah yes, yet another ancient concept that's finally trickling into Western awareness...

Anyway, as Sahtouris sees it, we currently have "an old culture and a new culture co-existing” in human systems. The old is vigorously resisting relinquishing its power — think Mitt Romney preaching how he'll America arm to the teeth to reassert our role as a dominant force in the world — and the new fears that it won't prevail against that resisting force. But she sees the shift we're making “less like a phoenix rising from the ashes than the metamorphosis of a butterfly emerging from the caterpillar.”

In other words: “Look for ways that we can adapt,” Sahtouris says. “Be in joy, not fear or negativity.”

And embrace your role as co-creator in this dance of life.

Musings: Witnessing the Incredible

2012-01-16T12:37:00.000-10:00

Sitting in the midst of a racket of mynah chatter and soughing of warm wind through big trees, I think of a friend who likes to affect obliviousness; a facade that is often betrayed by his actions, such as when he wisely declined to view a video clip I sent him about how horribly animals are abused in labs — “I can't watch that stuff,” he said — and instead emailed me a link, under the apt subject heading: response to animal testing.

I watched the video in a state of awe that increased as it progressed — did you see the bat (a mammal, just like us) carrying a baby when it came in to feed? — until at the end, all I could think was, wow, we humans are so lucky to be a part of this world. Can't we start treating it a little bit better?

And then I decided, I'm not gonna post the link to the animal testing video. It's just too tempting to look, and why sicken ourselves with documentations of our depravity when we can nourish our souls and psyches by witnessing the incredible web of life?

All you really need to know is Mars engages in animal testing — as do all these companies — and the video was so disturbing you'll never eat another M&M, Snickers, Twix, Dove, Three Musketeers, Starburst or Skittles. Take my word for it.

Musings: Alternative Vision

2012-01-13T09:06:00.001-10:00

It was a shivery 62 degrees and the sky was the pink-gray-silver of mother-of-pearl, an open abalone shell, when the dogs and I went out walking this morning. As I watched, the flat top of Waialeale was overcome and then freed by clouds that drifted up and then back down, up and then back down, a scene that kept repeating itself as I tried to dodge sticky, ensnaring spider webs that stretched between trees, dangled from branches and utility wires, holding insects, leaves, pine needles hostage.

It was a scenario not unlike our modern economic system, with its cyclical booms and busts, its advertising campaigns designed to trap us into wanting, and acquiring, so many things we do not need. And I thought back to a snippet I heard on the radio from Mitt Romney's New Hampshire primary victory speech:

The country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We have to offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we’re lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success.

It struck me that Romney, and so many others, have it all wrong. The current antagonism toward the 1% isn't rooted in envy or resentment of success as they define it — at least, not for many of us.

We don't want to be like them. We want them to be more like us.

We want them to be aware of how over-consumption, conspicuous consumption, endless consumption, strain the planet and its finite resources, lay waste to the land, can never be made sustainable, leave so many others with not enough.

We want them to see how selfishness, narcissism and greed undermine community, destroy relationships, sow injustice, feed famines, wars and strife.

We want them to understand that success has nothing to do with power, money, stuff or exclusivity, but instead is rooted in one's ability to care, to hold out a helping hand, attend to others' needs and not just one's own, appreciate the beauty and love available to all of us, free of charge, each and every day.

That's the alternative vision that is being offered not by Mitt Romney, or any candidate on the campaign trail, but those of us who recognize time is growing short, and we must quickly change our ways.

Musings: Changes Large and Small

2012-01-12T09:02:00.001-10:00

A blast of chill air and a lopsided white moon in an even whiter sky greeted the dogs and me when we stepped outside for our walk this morning. Everything was drenched in thick dew and Waialeale, with her notched summit, was fully in view, though in outline, not detail. That would come later, when the sun rose red-gold, staining all in its path with like color and revealing every nook and cranny, crack and crevice, on the mountain's ancient blue face.

I was talking to a guy yesterday who said Kauai used to be much larger, about the size of the Big Island, and Waialeale once stood about 13,000 feet, but the weight of the magma near the top grew too heavy to hold and the summit collapsed, all at once, permanently submerging lower-lying lands up to an elevation of about 1,800 feet.

While the events in Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe's courtroom yesterday were not nearly so dramatic, it's still noteworthy that she actually ordered a guy to pay restitution for stealing medical marijuana. Seems he was caught on video ripping nine ounces of cannabis from a blue card holder who is a caregiver for two others. In addition to restitution of $3,150, based on a price of $350 per ounce, the man convicted of felony theft was also sentenced to five years probation and six months in jail, suspended.

So even though Hawaii's medical marijuana users still face discrimination in numerous other ways — registering with the Department of Safety, no insurance reimbursements, ridiculous six-month backlog for processing blue cards, no legal supply source, prohibitions against when and where it can be used, and most invasive of all, having to consent to let law enforcement inspect the place where it's grown to make sure the crop doesn't exceed what's allowed — at least the courts will stand up for patients and caregivers when they're robbed.

Or as one courtroom observer noted: "Wow! I just saw a court treat pot like medicine."

Meanwhile, citizens of Washington state and Colorado are going straight for legalization, via the taxed-like-alcohol model. Enough signatures apparently have been collected to qualify ballot measures in both states this year, according to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The group's spokesman, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, issued this statement:

“Our brief experiment with alcohol prohibition along with 40 years of a war on drugs has clearly shown that making a drug illegal does nothing to decrease its availability and may actually result in greater usage. It is also equally clear that marijuana prohibition greatly increases violent black market crime, police and political corruption, and the overcrowding of prisons with people who in most cases could have been productive members of society - all this at a cost of over $70 billion a year, money that could be put to much better use!”

Wow. Seventy billion. Kinda makes you stop and think, WTF?

Musings: For Sale, Cheap

2012-01-11T08:58:00.001-10:00

It's good to read that the state Ethics Commission is warning lawmakers not to attend today's “A Taste of Ag” event. The menu sounds super yummy, and we all know how our legislators love to tie on the feed bag. However, the problem lies not with the chow, but with the hosts: the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association and Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation.

As Larry Geller reports over at Disappeared News:

This event is clearly aimed at winning the hearts and minds of legislators. In addition to the fancy menu (see below) it will feature three keynote speakers representing the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation and the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association. As the sponsors clearly know, the best way to win someone’s heart is through the stomach. The keynote speakers are aimed at their minds. After all, this is their business: lobbying legislators (another interpretation of “winning hearts and minds”).

So just who is behind the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association? Well, H. Doug Matsuoka did a little digging over at his blog:

In their testimony in opposition to GMO labeling, they describe themselves as “a nonprofit trade association representing the seed industry in Hawaii.” How cool, right?

Wrong! I tried to find out more about them by researching their officers and directors.

He then goes on to present a little chart that shows where all but one HCIA official — including our own Cindy Goldstein, the DuPont/Pioneer shill — is employed:

The corporations represented listed in alphabetical order:

BASF
Dow
DuPont
Monsanto
Syngenta

What we have is a who’s who of multinational GMO corporations. As much as they try to represent themselves as “agricultural” companies, note that all of them are primarily chemical companies with a major portion of their sales in poisons such as herbicides and fungicides.

We all know that these corporations have gazillions to spend on lobbying lawmakers and bullying opponents, which is why it has been virtually impossible to pass any laws regulating the GMO industry in Hawaii and elsewhere.

And while that isn't likely to change any time soon, at least Ethics Commission Executive Director Les Kondo is putting lawmakers on notice that it's just a little too blatant to gorge on grinds at one of their events. Or as the old German proverb puts it, “Whose bread I eat his song I sing.”

What's really sad, though, is that our lawmakers can be bought for a $50 buffet, even if it is all you can eat.

Musings: "Suckas!"

2012-01-10T09:02:00.002-10:00

I stopped by a Planning Commission hearing last Friday morning to bang my head against the wall, I mean, check out what's happening with Kauai's most lucrative and bountiful agricultural crop: vacation rentals.

Yep, they're all sliding through the permitting process now, with the owners by and large getting the go-ahead to dramatically increase the value of their properties, rake in outrageous revenues, skew the value of ag land and forever change the character of rural communities like Kilauea.

To their credit, staffers in the county attorney's office and planning department have sought to impose a — gasp! — agricultural dedication on ag lots larger than one acre — an idea proposed by attorney Dan Hempey as a way to get farmers on the land and help TVR owners comply with state law.

But the message from the TVR owners — or rather, the attorneys they sent in their stead — was clear: we don't need no stinking farms.

One after another, the attorneys said screw that pesky ag dedication. Ironically, Charley Foster, Hempey's associate, was among them.

Of course they don't want farms — and most particularly, the kind of people who would labor on them — cracking the carefully constructed facade of opulent exclusivity that they market along with the “private beach” accessed via the illegal trails they supposedly built for “maintenance purposes.”

And while I applaud the county for trying, let's get real: can you imagine how a poor farmer might suffer trying to work on land owned by some of these greedy, narcissistic, money-grubbing speculators, most of whom live off-island?

Which brings me to a question: why aren't these applicants required to show up in person, instead of being allowed to send their attorneys? If they're going to benefit so greatly from the generous gift of a special use permit, can't they at least be bothered to trot their butts down to the meeting room, like those of us testifying against them?

I do have to give Michele Hughes credit for showing face, such that it is, though her attorney, Lorna Nishimitsu, did all the talking. But then, I guess Michele figured it was worth a few hours of her time, seeing as how she had two units up for approval. On that day, anyway.

Which raises another question: why can't we limit these hoteliers to no more than one? Cause isn't it kind of hard to believe that they were actually building a house for themselves and didn't know they couldn't operate it as a TVR when they've got multiple units spread around the island? As an interesting aside, the building permits for the Hughes property show a 2,394-square-foot, two-story “barn” and a 470-square-foot “garden shed,” which is, coincidentally, I'm sure, the approximate size as the two TVRs. Amazing how many “ag buildings” are needed by a non-farm.

Which leads me to yet another question, the question that actually should have preceded all other questions: what about the farm dwelling agreement? You know, the document that ag landowners sign under a notary's seal — with the planning director and county attorney affixing their signatures, too — swearing that the house they're building “is located on and used in connection with a farm where agricultural activity provides income to the family occupying the dwelling?” With family defined as “an individual or two or more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption or a group comprising not more than five persons, not related by blood, marriage or by adoption.”

So how, pray tell, do the sleep-20-with-spa mini-resorts like Hale Mana, which was also on the agenda that day, possibly qualify, even if you pretended the steady stream of tourists staying there were a family? And how can one person have more than one unit, seeing as how it's physically impossible to occupy two dwellings at once?

Which raises another question: why didn't the County Council and Mayor move to enforce the farm dwelling agreement against these egregious violators, instead of cowering in the corner and passing a bill legalizing their scams when their attorneys threatened to sue for a “taking?” Cause it sure looks to me like they're the ones doing the “taking,” with both hands, no less.

And aren't these places a blatant violation of the CZO, which defines a dwelling as “a structure used exclusively for residential occupancy and having all necessary facilities for permanent residency;” and single family detached as “a building consisting of only one (1) dwelling unit designed or or occupied by one (1) family?”

I mean, if they can prosecute Councilman Tim Bynum (who voted for the ag TVR bill, btw) for a rice cooker in his family room, surely they can go after those who build resorts on fake farms.

And then there was Laurel Loo, representing an owner at Anini who wanted a permit for the main house and the ADU (additional dwelling unt), too. Gee, I remember when ADUs used to be called “ohana units,” because the Council approved them as a way to provide low-cost housing for permanent island residents. Guess that concept has gone out the window, along with any sense of justice and morality.

Because it's wrong, flat out wrong, to be rewarding people like Bill and Sandy Strong, whose TVR is up for approval by the Commission today, when they intentionally built their houses for resort purposes. I know guys who worked on the Strong house, and it includes elaborate security provisions and fortifications designed to make it attractive as a rental by the paranoid uber rich. What's more, they added on two guest cottages that would have been illegal, except for the covered walkways that connect them to the main house, thus completing the charade that it was all one unit.

Yeah, that's the kind of manure being spread on these faux farms, which in that particular Kilauea neighborhood have actually worked to drive real farms out of business. Did you ever stop to wonder how Will Smith could sell seven acres of ag land with a house for $20 million? It's because his neighbors on the bluff above Kauapea Beach are running luxury mini-hotels.

Which brings me to anther question: shouldn't all the applications in one neighborhood — to use the term loosely — be grouped together so that the Commission might assess the cumulative impact of such uses on a community? As the president of the Kilauea Neighborhood Association pointed out in his testimony on Friday, that agenda alone included more than a dozen TVRs in the Kilauea area; dozens more have been or will be considered at other times. At least, as KNA pleaded, make the developers present their plans to the community before they are rubber stamped for approval.

And then there's this nagging question: how can the county be handing out special permits for TVRs built on CPRs when state law reads “Special permits for land the area of which is greater than fifteen acres or for lands designated as important agricultural lands shall be subject to approval by the land use commission?” Six of the TVRs on last Friday's agenda are on lots larger than 15 acres.

It's not like the county doesn't know about this provision, because on two other applications the staff report states: “Because the subject property is less than 15 acres in size, the Planning Commission does not require final approval by the State Land Use Commission.”

So what gives, guys? Are you just winging it, because you know Protect Our Neighborhood Ohana – the only group holding your feet to the fire — doesn't have the money to challenge this crap in court?

The mayor and certain members of the County Council who approved the ag TVR bill have tried to soothe opponents by cooing, take heart, at least they're being regulated now, and there will never be any more — a platitude now adopted by staff.

But they just don't seem to grasp that the problem lies in how they're being regulated, as well as in the fact that the greedy grabbers got the goodies, and any farmer who decides at some future point that she/he really could use a vacation rental to keep the farm afloat will be shit out of luck.

By then, of course, many of these mini-hotels will have changed hands several times, at great profit, or sold to hotel chains and investment consortiums. And the original developers will be laughing all the way to the bank, saying, “suckas!”

And that, sadly, is land use "planning" in a nutshell on Kauai.

Musings: Reclaiming Life

2012-01-09T08:31:00.004-10:00

The approximate time was last evening, and we were sitting on the beach, preparing to eat a picnic dinner, or more accurately, I already was; my friend was fiddling with a phone app, trying to figure out exactly where Mahina would rise.

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I'm always perfectly situated, just intuitively. Look!”

And I pointed to the pale white orb ascending, directly in front of us, through the blue-pink smear that sits upon the horizon at sunset, and as it rose, it turned soft gold, then deep orange, and finally, white-gold, casting a shimmering path upon the sea.

The moon was only part of the show, though admittedly the most dramatic. Above us, Jupiter was reigning brightly over the sky, and beyond that, at the end of the arc, was Venus, slipping lower as the moon climbed higher.

Returning home, I flipped on the circuit breakers and the moon-planet glow was replaced by the blinking green numbers of the clock on the stove. I certainly hadn't missed that, with its constant reminder of the passing of time, when I “powered down” yesterday, and I hadn't missed the hum and chug of the fridge, though I did miss its cooling effect, which is why it had been turned back on earlier, before the food inside could go bad.

I've lived without refrigeration, and it can be done without a sense of great deprivation, it just requires a different way of eating, which isn't easily adapted to one day off.

I did feel a sense of giddy joy when I unplugged in the office — the wi-fi, the computer, the back up hard drive — and that told me something; namely, I might be happier if I spend less time working, or at least, the kind of working that keeps me hooked to the Internet.

I've got a smart phone, which I can tether to my laptop, which has a good battery supply, and so I can use my computer and access the Internet without being directly plugged in, and briefly yesterday, I did. But using batteries, whether they're charged by the sun or KIUC, isn't really “getting off the grid” because those batteries are shipped in here from someplace else and toxic substances are generated when they're produced and recycled, or tossed in the landfill. The same goes for wind and hydro turbines, solar panels, liquid propane and backup generators.

They've all got impacts, so ain't nobody truly pure or off the grid, which I define as the military-industrial-corporate complex, in their consumption of electricity.

But tethering the phone to the laptop was a bit more cumbersome than simply flipping the lid and letting wi-fi kick in, which made me stop and think, and that's a good thing, because breaking habits — addictions — is all about bringing unconscious behavior into consciousness.

And make no mistake, energy is an addiction. On Saturday night, thinking about the next day's “power down event,” my mind went through the same litany of excuses it drags out whenever it's told it cannot have something it wants: no one will know if you keep on doing it, what does it really matter, you're not hurting anyone.

Or as Neil Young sang, “Seemed like the easy thing/To let it go for one more day.”

So no, I didn't kick the habit, but I did think about ways I can reduce my electrical use, and the morality of doing so, even if I can afford to pay my KIUC bill. Overall, it was a good exercise in mindfulness, which I always welcome, and my garden benefitted greatly from the attentions I lavished upon it, rather than a keyboard and screen.

But beyond that, choosing to unplug for a day, as opposed to having the electricity go off, gave me an unexpected sense of freedom, of power, of reclaiming my life in some small way. And I got to thinking, so how much has electricity — all technology, really — functioned primarily to enslave us, to enmesh us in an artificial, manmade world (at the expense of the natural world), even as we worship it and the convenience it provides?

Musings: People Power

2012-01-06T08:16:00.000-10:00

It was that quiet time before the dawn, or even the first inklings of it, when our way was lit solely by a sparkly, starry sky, the moon having slipped a couple of hours before into a bed of soft orange perched atop Makaleha, when the dogs and I went out walking. I like to look up at the glorious universe when I'm bummed about anything and everything because it helps me to remember: there's so much more than just this.

Here and there, a light was coming on in a bedroom, a kitchen, save for that one house that is occupied only occasionally, and so the lights are always on, as if burglars aren't wise to that trick.

I've been paying a lot more attention to lights — or more specifically, electricity — and our wantonly wasteful use of it in preparation for Sunday's Power Down! event. When I first heard the call to unplug from dawn to dusk, I thought, “Yeah, right. What good will that do?” But then I interviewed its brainchild, the very brainy and witty Jonathan Jay, for a For Kauai article and my thinking changed.

I like it primarily because it's about helping our thinking to change, about coaxing us to become conscious of what we're doing. And god(dess) knows we need more of that. As Jonathan noted:

“[It's] all about trying to discover the value of getting by with less, saying yes to the power of less. It's about right-sizing our relationship to the world.”

Amen.

But it's not just a consciousness-raising exercise, though that would be fine in and of itself. As Jonathan points out, if we all got serious about reducing demand, KIUC wouldn't be under so much pressure to supply, whether it's by exporting $80-to-$100 million annually to import the 30 million gallons of diesel fuel used in its Port Allen generators or pursuing “green energy” that isn't truly green.

“If everyone used 10 to 15 percent less, that would shave off 10 megawatts of consumption and we wouldn't have to build a dam on the Wailua River,” Jay says. “That's one example of how we can improve life on this island.”

In other words, we have power, people!

When Jonathan came on Jimmy Trujillo's KKCR show to talk about this yesterday, a man called in and asked, why stop there? Why not reduce gasoline consumption by slowing down and not driving aimlessly around the island?

Yeah, why not? Point is, we can all do a lot more by using a lot less. In many ways, that's about the most revolutionary act you can commit in our consumerist society, without having to worry about being indefinitely detained as a terrorist.

Which leads me to a really excellent article that clearly explains the most troubling aspects of the National Defense Authorization Act. It was sent to me in an email that had as its subject line: NDAA: Open Season for the Police State.

A lot of people, primarily the Obama apologists — one of whom I had to “unfriend” on Facebook because I just couldn't stand another post like “America has a very ungrateful electorate” — are trying to claim it's not so bad, Americans are safe from the Act's provisions.

It is. We aren't.

Its language is subjective and its powers are broad. Since 9-11, our buds in Congress have been steadily chipping away at fundamental rights that we've come to take for granted — just like the electricity that's (almost always) there when we flip a switch.

But ya know, we got the power. Shine your light bright.

Musings: Killers on the Rampage

2012-01-05T08:57:00.002-10:00

OK, folks, we've got a possible serial monk seal killer on the loose. Or perhaps the discovery Monday of a dead seal on Kauai, reportedly at Pilaa, where one of Jimmy Pflueger's workers shot a seal in 2009, is a copy-cat crime, modeled after the three previous deaths on Molokai. At any rate, from the KITV news report, these sure look like hate crimes:

"They're dying because their skulls are being smashed. So for me, that is alarming. That's setting a dangerous trend. If we don't stop it, we are going to be the cause of the death of these seals," said [Molokai activist Walter] Ritte.

Ritte believes those behind the recent deaths are young fishermen or hunters who may be misinformed about the seals.

"People are killing the seals. The government can't say it because they need proof. I'm not the government, I'm from the grassroots and I know they're killing the seals," said Ritte.

Hawaii News Now had a bit more detail:

"I can't speak for any other island," Ritte said. "I can speak for Molokai. We all talk story over there. It's a small island. So where you find the seals with the heads smashed is only places where fishermen and hunters go. So if you put all of that together, all of the talk that's going around, it's the young people. And when you talk to the young people (young fishermen) they say, ‘It's just an invasive species. And I walk all this distance and then I get there and the seal is bothering me. They are in our nets. They are in the moi hole. They are invasive species. Kill them,'" Ritte said.

So if people are doing it, other people must know. Make the reward big enough and somebody will talk. And it's not just for the sake of the seals. Anybody pissed off enough to bash in the head of a sleeping seal — or any animal — needs serious help before he moves on to the true invasive species: human beings.

Moving up the coast a bit from the murder scene at Pilaa, there was some discussion in yesterday's comment section about whether the $20 million sale of Will and Jada Smith's home above Kauapea Beach affected home prices on the island.

What hasn't been mentioned is that the property in question is agricultural land. So when you've got seven acres of ag land with a house going for $20 mill, it most certainly does affect all of us who would like to see farming as a viable activity on this island. Speculation on ag land used for gentleman's estates and luxury vacation rentals – as is the case all along that bluff above Kauapea — is rampant on this island. As I've reported previously, it's pushed out bonafide farmers in that area who can't compete with the “fair market value” created by these high-end non-farms, and it drives up the price of ag land in general, making it harder for legit farmers to carry on.

And it's all made possible by a planning department that doesn't take the farm dwelling agreement seriously and planning commissioners who voice disbelief, yet still give their approval, when a billionaire landowner represented by then Rep. Roland Sagum, who thankfully has since been voted out, claims his half-acre spread is a “farm dwelling” and his “crop” is going to be turf. Oh yes, and let's not forget the Realtors who condone this charade and profit mightily from the flips.

While we're on the topic of ag, I encountered an intriguing article about a possible cause in the colony collapse disorder that is ravaging bee hives: a fly parasite that turns the bees into zombies. (Jan TenBruggencate also has a blog post on this today.) As the Discovery article reports:

Parasites, viral and bacterial infections, pesticides, and poor nutrition resulting from the impact of human activities on the environment have all played a role in the decline.

So why is the USDA even considering deregulating corn that has been genetically engineered to resist applications of Dow's powerful herbicide 2,4-D, which has been linked to cancer, hormone disruptions and Parkinson's disease? Because — surprise, surprise — some weeds have developed resistance to the Roundup that was used to drench crops that had been genetically modified to withstand direct doses of that herbicide. So now they want to up the ante with an even more powerful chemical. And when insects develop resistance to that, then what?

"Those resistance problems are going to get worse unless something is done to remedy that," said Garry Hamlin, spokesman for Dow AgroSciences.

Mmm, what about cutting back on the poisons, guys?

To end on a positive note, I recently encountered a suggestion to eat in silence, so that one can think loving thoughts while nourishing one's body. Hopefully with non-toxic foods. And with that, I'm off to the garden.

Musings: Beaten Paths

2012-01-04T09:05:00.002-10:00

I saw my first whales of the season yesterday, spouting and flapping and frolicking in lusciously glassy water off the eastside coast, just beyond the place where perfect barrels were collapsing on the reef.

I saw a monk seal, too, but it wasn't “stealing” anybody's fish, just catching a few winks nestled among rocks that provided perfect camouflage beneath the shade of a heliotrope tree. Ironically, I did see a spear fisherman — or more accurately, a guy carrying a snorkel and spear, who told me, “I've never been to this place before,” to which I replied, dubiously, “it looks a little rough to go out” — trying to “steal” the seal's fish.

But it really was too rough to go out, so after getting banged around for a while, the guy returned to shore, empty-handed.

The school vacation, big waves, sunny skies and warm temps on the tail end of the holiday season prompted a lot of people to hit the beach yesterday — so many that four born and raised North Shore boys headed south to get away from the zoo at Hanalei, and stopped by my house for a visit.

“The whole town is just choked with tourists,” said one. “You can't go anywhere.”

“Pine Trees get so many people it's sick,” said another. “You can't even move. We had to get out of there.”

We spoke of a mutual friend who lives in Wainiha, and they mentioned they hadn't seen her for a while. “That's because she holes up at times like this, when the crowds get thick,” I said, and they all nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, you don't even want to go out when it's like that,” said a third. “That's why we came down here.”

Once again, I was confronted with locals who are being displaced by tourism, made to feel unwelcome in their own backyard, or too uncomfortable to want to enjoy it. And once again I found myself wondering, when it comes to tourism, at one point do we cross the line between enough and too much? Have we already crossed it? I'm sure those four guys would say “yes!” Is anybody even reflecting on that delicate balance? Or is the plan to just go gangbusters so long as there's money to be made?

And I thought back on Monday, when I went to a beach that I consider pretty remote and wild, a place that is lightly used, and mostly by surfers and fishermen. Coming up, at the top of the path, I encountered a group of tourists lugging tripods and cameras, their eyes on the big, beautiful surf, oblivious to me and my dogs trying to get past them on a steep, narrow, badly eroded trail.

I was surprised to encounter a small throng in that place, but didn't give it much thought until I saw, parked along the access road, a van with a PUC license advertising photography tours. Great, I thought, yet another wild place — a place that most tourists would never go — is being opened up, commercialized, so somebody can make a buck. And I was pretty willing to bet it wasn't a local running the enterprise.

Sure enough, it's not. According to an Associated Press article posted on the company's website, it was started by a D.C. transplant in 2009 “when the sluggish economy cut into his fine art sales.” Now it takes out some 1,500 people per year. Which is great for him, but what about the rest of us, those who cherish our quiet, private, untrammeled spots? As the article notes:

Tours last about five hours with a maximum of seven people in a group. They include up to 15 stops, some of which are so far off the beaten path that the hikes back to the car leave you winded enough to realize it's been a few months since your last trip to the gym.

Tour guides swaps out locations depending on the weather, time of day and year, and keeps adding new stops into his rotation as he discovers them.

[W]e stopped at waterfalls, walked into taro fields, waded in lagoons, climbed over lava rock, hiked down to one of the island's most dangerous beaches, and ended in time to catch a dramatic sunset over Hanalei Bay on the island's north side.

Perhaps the company has the proper permits to take people to all these out-of-the-way places. While only a handful of Kauai trails are approved for commercial use, the state is much more lax when it comes to commercial activities on beaches. You can conduct weddings, and perhaps photo tours, too, on all these beaches — if you have a permit.

In other words, pretty much the entire coastline can be used for commercial purposes so long as you pay the state a fee. Or chance `em, because what are the odds of getting busted given DLNR's scanty enforcement budget?

Now, I've got absolutely nothing against tourists. I understand and appreciate their value to the local economy, their desire to experience this beautiful place. I think it's grand when they indulge their sense of adventure and exploration and find some cool, special spot on their own. But it really kind of grates when they're led to the few relatively unused places by someone who is exploiting these locales for kala — even if they do have a permit. As the testimonials noted:

We saw some amazing places that we would not have known to even look for.

[T]ook us to some places that we would have never found in any guide book.

[T]ook us to lots of fabulous locations which even with all the guide books I wouldn't have been able to find.

Which is just what the company's website promises:

Mostly off-the-beaten-path, difficult to find hideaways. See where these many beautiful places are located & return to enjoy on another day

So in other words, soon they will not be off-the-beaten-path, difficult-to-find hideaways. Instead, they'll become like the all the once off-the-beaten-path places that are now on-the-beaten path, easy-to-find places that locals try to escape because they're overcrowded, overused.

Musing: Antidote

2012-01-03T07:46:00.001-10:00

Driving in the cold starriness of 5 a.m., mountains lurking darkly in the middle, rumble strips glowing orange along Kuhio Highway, heater turned on to warm rubber slippered feet, hoodie pulled up over chilled ears, punching buttons on the radio to pass the time, I hear the lyrics, “fill me with your poison, I want to be a victim.”

Really? Are you sure? Because the politicians, you know, they're happy to oblige, what with Iowa holding the first caucus of the 2012 Presidential election today, thus launching us into the vapid, ugly orgy of a campaign season that lasts longer and costs the corporations more than ever, but still leaves we the people with the same result in the end: disappointment, disillusionment, discouragement, dismay. Take, for example, this story from the Los Angeles Times, which has Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a liar:

"He's not telling the American people the truth."

Who on the national stage is? Besides maybe Rep. Dennis Kucinich? Who Rick Santorum likened to Rep. Ron Paul, which is a point in Paul's favor, though he still needs many more to rise above zero.

Which brings to mind a comment in an email sent by a Hawaiian national:

Many gun owners are afraid that with Ron Paul as President the Federal Government will come and take your guns away. Without Ron Paul as President the Federal Government will still come but take you away....!

Yeah, Obama, that old sell-out, overrode his own reservations and signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows indefinite detention to be codified into law and means even the guys cleared for release will remain indefinitely in Guantanamo. Remember how he promised to close that horrid place?

I never really expected much from Obama; indeed, as I wrote back on Jan, 20, 2009:

Shoots, I’d be happy if he could merely live up to this part of his inauguration speech:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Need I say more?

Moving into the local realm, where your vote might actually make a teeny, tiny difference, The Garden Island ran a piece that had four Councilmembers and the mayor reflecting on their achievements and frustrations in the past year.

Perhaps a more useful exercise would have been to pose that question to the voters. That way we couldn't have to read Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura talking about “respect” even as she takes yet another swipe at former County Clerk Peter Nakamura's former pay raise, or Mayor Bernard Carvalho waxing enthusiastic about his Holoholo 2020 vision while downplaying the languishing landfill and adolescent drug treatment center or Councilman Dickie Chang uttering such implausibilities as “other islands and the Mainland now look to see how things are done on Kaua‘i.” Oh, wait, that was a different story.

But enough of all that nonsense. A red ball is rising out of a pink mist and the birds are singing and the dew is sparkling. Nature: free outside your door daily; the antidote to politics.

Musings: On Perception

2012-01-02T08:47:00.000-10:00

The dew was thick and mist steamed from the pastures, blending into the bleached white pre-dawn sky, when the dogs and I went walking on this chilly, exquisite morning. Once the sun did begin to rise, it made the dew drops, which clung to grass, wire fences, branches and spider webs, glow a sparkly red-gold. Oh yeah, the world is a temple.

It's the season for spiders, and I've been watching their webdoms expand around my house, in the vegetation throughout the yard, forcing me to pay attention to where I'm going, rather than bullishly charge on through. But that's OK, because isn't it all about being aware, so as to avoid sticky entanglements, thoughtless destruction? In some places, camphor leaves and ironwood needles have been caught in single strands that descend straight down from the trees and there they dangle, dancing and spinning joyously in the breeze, like the Hare Krishna lady on the street corner in Kapaa.

I saw her, btw, in Anahola the other day, and she same to me with a smile and a loving hug and a wish of Merry Christmas, though that day was past, and I reflected upon how lucky I am, with my work, to have the freedom to approach total strangers and probe into their lives and share those gleanings with readers so that they might understand others, especially the “odd others,” and so perhaps themselves, just a little bit better. Because though each of is unique, we're really not that different.

I've been spending some time in the garden, which feels to be waking from its slumber, or maybe I've roused it with my attention, now that we've passed the winter solstice and the days are growing longer, imperceptibly to me, though I'm sure the plants notice, since they're far more attuned to such important things. I had completed several hours of digging and planting and weeding and tending when a friend dropped by, just as the pink-orange wisps of sunset were gathering over the naked summit of Waialeale and the waxing moon and Jupiter, all cozied up, were starting to gleam.

“The garden always seems so much happier when I've spent time in it,” I said, looking out over the neat beds carved from guinea grass, a slowly expanding study in shades of green and brown.

“That's because soil absorbs all your negative ions, which changes your perspective and makes you view things more positively,” he responded.

Or maybe, I thought, by working in the garden, close to the plants, attentive only to their needs, it changes me so that I'm better able to perceive their happiness.

Who knows? But of this I am certain: it's all about perception. As Robert Wicks noted on a recent New Dimensions broadcast:

It's the perception that we have that shapes things. We can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.

I've spent a lot of time probing the heights of heaven and the depths of hell, both my own and society's — not that there is any real difference — and in the process I've come to believe that we can't do much to change the world until we first, or simultaneously, change ourselves, an idea that I find exhilarating because it gives each of us the power.

We don't have to wait for the next election, or pass the job off to others. We don't have to wait until we have all the answers, or the perfect solution. We can just keep chipping away at the illusions, the false beliefs, the limitations, the fear.

As a friend said, when I asked if he made New Year's resolutions: “No. I just tell myself, OK, do everything a little bit better.”

Or to borrow a phrase that Stephanie Azaria used when talking about what we need to know to thrive in 2012:

Step into your role of creator. Step into your higher self.

Kauai Cops Raid Native American Church

2011-12-30T07:43:00.000-10:00

Kauai police raided a Native American Church in Wailua last week.

But you wouldn't know it from the county's press release, which was issued yesterday after I called looking for more information upon interviewing Robert Pa, president of the Kauai branch of the Oklevueha Native American Church. The release, reprinted by The Garden Island passes it off as another drug bust:

Police arrested a Wailua man last week after locating drugs in his home.

Shane Johnson, age 36, was arrested on Dec. 19 for two counts of first degree Promotion a Dangerous drug, second degree Commercial Promotion of Marijuana and three counts of Drug Paraphernalia.

An initial investigation revealed that Johnson was in illegal possession of a significant amount of Peyote, a Schedule I controlled substance,” says Assistant Chief Roy Asher of the Investigative Services Bureau. “The drug was found in various forms, including: active growth, recently harvested and for immediate consumption.”

Police also seized a large amount of marijuana that far exceeded Johnson’s allowable limit per his medicinal marijuana permit.

Due to the ongoing nature of the case, the specific amount of drugs seized will not be revealed at this time.

Johnson was released pending further investigation.

But Robert, who was present at the raid, offers quite a bit more detail. As he tells it, UPS delivered a box with peyote, which the Church uses as sacrament, that had been sent from Thailand to Shane's house. The cops had already opened the package so they could outfit it with a tracer that alerted them when it was re-opened and also stained the opener's hands, as well as the peyote buttons, with dye. “They're mixing chemicals with our sacrament,” Robert fumed.

As soon as the box was opened in the house, there was a knock on the door, and Shane opened it to find some 12-15 cops outfitted in full SWAT gear standing in the yard. They had a search warrant signed by District Judge Trudy Senda. On the front page was a reference to Shane's house, while on the second it spoke of the Native American Church.

Shane, who is an ordained minister in the Church, and also its vice president, showed police his paperwork, as well as a copy of the Church's charter.

He also pointed out that the package included a declaration stating that the peyote was destined for the Native American Church. “You have to present that paper [to the seller] to get it shipped in legally,” Robert says.“But the cops ignored it and said it doesn't count.”

According to Robert, one of the cops likened Church leaders to David Koresh, the Branch Davidian leader who was killed, along with 75 adults and children, in a federal raid on their Waco, Tex., compound back in 1993. Except, Shane pointed out, in this instance only the cops had guns, and they were using them to rob the Church of its sacrament.

The cops also nabbed two teen boys, one of whom lives in the house, as they walked out the back door, apparently unaware of the police presence in the front. The house is quite large, and sits on many acres of land. The cops reportedly asked the boys why they were trying to leave a crime scene and handcuffed them, which Robert says left them “fully traumatized.”

Meanwhile, the cops proceeded to search the residence. In one cabinet they reportedly found and confiscated both bagged and freshly harvested cannabis, which Robert says was the property of blue card (medical marijuana license) holders living in the house and well within the allowed amount.

They also found some unopened packages addressed to Touch of Aloha and asked Shane for permission to open them. Shane said he couldn't give that permission, because they weren't his. According to Robert, the cops threatened Shane, saying they would pull his family out of the house for two days and tear it apart if he didn't give them permission to open the boxes. They then reportedly told Shane that he wouldn't get in trouble if the boxes contained pot, only if they held cocaine or heroin. He still wouldn't go along.

“The cops took it upon themselves to those boxes without a search warrant,” Robert said. “That's breaking a federal law.”

At any rate, the cops allegedly found marijuana inside the two packages.

Meanwhile, Robert, Shane and the cops were having a debate over the legality of the Church and its sacrament, with the cops reportedly telling them they could only possess peyote if they had 25 percent Native American blood.

I'm not sure where the cops got the blood quantum bit. A 2004 decision by the Utah Supreme Court involving James Flaming Eagle Mooney, a founder of the Oklevueha church, held that a federal regulatory exemption that allows the use of peyote in religious ceremonies does not restrict that use solely to federally recognized tribes:

We therefore rule that the exemption is available to all members of the Native American Church.

Because the Utah Controlled Substances Act does not clearly specify whether it incorporates the Religious Peyote Exemption, a holding that the exemption does not apply would give rise to serious constitutional claims under the due process clauses of the federal and state constitutions. The ambiguity in the statute is such that the scope of its peyote prohibition cannot be decisively interpreted by lawyers, to say nothing of citizens untrained in the law. This weighs strongly against any interpretation that would enable the State to initiate criminal prosecution based on arguably legitimate conduct.

This ruling, apparently, is what the Kauai branch of the Church was going on in carrying out its own activities, which allegedly included using peyote in sacred ceremonies with its members.

The cops also reportedly confiscated peyote that was in pots, awaiting use at the solstice ceremony.

“I don't see the cops raiding the Catholic Church and taking their bread and wine,” Robert said. “They told us we cannot practice our religion until the courts decide. They are stopping all our activities until they decide if we can go forward. Isn't that genocide? It makes me nuts.”

He said the cops tracked mud throughout the house, and it took him some three hours to clean up the mess after they left, with a handcuffed Shane in tow. “They kidnapped our minister from the Church," Robert said. "The cops, they got no leash, no boundaries on them. They just do whatever they want.”

Shane, who was reportedly interrogated for several hours at the police station, without an attorney present, was then released without charge, pending further investigation.

Meanwhile, someone had called the mayor's office to complain about the raid on the Church. According to county spokeswoman Beth Tokioka:

An anonymous caller called our office and spoke with Sean [Texeira, the mayor's special assistant] to report an incident. Sean offered to look into it but the caller did not want to leave his name and number. He instead left the names and numbers of a few other individuals - one of whom was Shane. Sean determined that the appropriate course of action would be for someone to file a complaint with the Police Commission if they feel something improper had occurred. He then called Shane to relay that information and explain how to file a complaint if he wanted to do so. A day or so later Shane and another individual came to the Mayor's office to present the complaint forms. Sean walked them down to the Office of Boards and Commissions so that it could be filed with the Police Commission secretary.

According to Robert, Sean apologized for what happened and asked if Church members felt violated. When they said they did, he suggested they file a complaint with the Police Commission. The hearing is set for 9 a.m. Jan. 27, 2012.

“But our sacrament cannot be kept out [of soil] that long,” he said. “Our peyote is dying and we missed our solstice ceremony, our Christmas ceremony and now our New Year's ceremony coming up. They get our sacrament in prison and we're out here walking around. What's wrong with that picture?”

Musings: The Bigger Picture

2011-12-29T09:24:00.003-10:00

It occurred to me, gazing out on a beach strewn with white coral, white clouds scuttling overhead where albatrosses with their plump white bodies soared, white boobies dive bombing into spraying, bubbling, frothing white and flying the inside lip of a wave like specks of white foam, that Kauai does, indeed, have its own version of a white winter wonderland. It just happens to be a warm one.

Contrast that scene of beauty, harmony and wildlife splendor with the news that yet another monk seal — the third in two weeks — has been found dead on Molokai. Auwe. Something's obviously up. Someone's obviously really, really angry, and my guess is that it's about a lot more than the seal. Some serious outreach needs to be done, and not by NOAA or DLNR, but by residents of that island who do care about the seals. And NOAA needs to stop and think about whether it's really such a good idea to press forward with critical habitat and relocation proposals given the extreme hostility toward seals right now.

Yes, I and others know that a critical habitat designation won't hinder fishermen or people using the beach, that it affects only projects developed with federal funds and it can actually help to preserve shoreline access and protect the nearshore marine environment, which ultimately benefits fishermen and ocean users. But a lot of other people don't know that. Until they do, best to back off. And like I said in Tuesday's post, it's time to return resource management to local communities as opposed to top down directives, especially from the "dreaded feds."

In response to Tuesday's post, which raised the issue of whether monk seals are native to the Main Hawaiian Islands, I got an email with this comment:

[B]asking seals even more than flightless geese are easy prey, and like the moa nalo and so many of the other flightless birds, would have disappeared from the archaeological record very very early. In the case of moa nalo, so early that its name unlike the `ilio holo i ka uaua, [monk seal]was lost and had to be supplanted by "lost fowl." Virtually all the fossil moa nalo have been found in dunes, sandstone layers and sinkholes, not in archaeological sites.

It went on to cite a reference in the Federal Register:

Human settlement appears to have largely excluded monk seals from the MHI, although seal bones have been found at archeological sites dating from 1400 - 1700 (Rosendahl, 1994). In 1900, Hilo residents reported that solitary monk seals were seen in the area about once every 10 years (Bailey, 1952). From 1928 to 1956, seven monk seal sightings were documented in the MHI (Kenyon and Rice, 1959), and Niihau residents reported that seals appeared there in the 1970s.By 1994 there was a small naturally-occurring population of male and female monk seals in the MHI. This population appeared to be growing, and at least six pups had been born (one in 1962, and five between 1988 and 1993). Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of documented sightings and annual births of monk seal pups have occurred in the MHI. Combined aerial and ground surveys in the MHI counted 45 hauled-out monk seals in 2000, and 52 in 2001 (Baker and Johanos, 2004). Sightings in the MHI tallied 77 individually identifiable monk seals in 2005 (NMFS, 2007b), and 83 in 2006 (NMFS, 2008a). Together, these observations suggest that monk seals are recolonizing the MHI.

So like someone else said, can't we all get along? Rather than slaughter seals because you fear they're taking too much fish, why not restore the fish ponds that Hawaiians built? Rather than impose regulations and restrictions, why not provide local communities with support to meet their subsistence and recreational fishing needs?

In other words, why not look at the big picture, and act accordingly?

Speaking of the bigger picture, I've gotta commend Chad Blair at Civil Beat for keeping the spotlight on the incredible injustice being done to Roger Christie. For those who don't know the name, Roger is the guy who has been in the face of local, state and federal officials for a couple of decades now, pressing the envelope — and law enforcement buttons — by challenging marijuana laws, most recently by operating the THC Ministry in Hilo.

Now they're getting their revenge by locking his ass in federal prison without bail for 17 months because he's a supposed “danger to the community.”

Come on, let's get real. Roger, one of the kindest, most sincere guys I've ever met, is not a danger to the community. But they're keeping him in lock down to make an example of him because Roger most definitely is a danger to the mind-set that wants to perpetuate the fiction that marijuana is a societal scourge that should be strictly outlawed.

Or at least until the feds can make money off it by granting an exclusive cannabinoid license to a pharmaceutical firm:

"We find it hypocritical and incredible that on the one hand, the U.S. Department of Justice is persecuting cannabis patient associations, asserting that the federal government regards marijuana as having absolutely no medical value, despite overwhelming clinical evidence," said Union of Medical Marijuana Patients director James Shaw. "On the other hand, the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to grant patent rights with possible worldwide application to develop medicine based on cannabis."

But hypocrisy is rampant in federal government, which is why, as Chad also reported, a Honolulu police captain accused of selling meth, as well as extortion, tampering with a witness, making false statements and taking payments for giving illegal game room operators tips before raids, remains free on bail while Roger languishes in jail. Heck, they won't even let him have a prayer blanket made of hemp!

Now which do you, as an intelligent, reasonable person, think is a bigger threat to society: a guy openly distributing weed as part of a ministry, or a really dirty cop peddling ice?

The difference, however, is clear: Roger is trying to tear down the wall. The cop, on the other hand, is part of the wall. And that's why Roger's still in jail, but the cop isn't.

Musings: Puzzling

2011-12-28T09:07:00.001-10:00

I recently met a charming couple from Southern California. She's an architect and former planning commissioner for her city; he is an editor and journalism professor. They read my blog, and so had some questions about our puzzling land use planning process that they hoped I could answer.

They arrived for lunch carrying a copy of The Garden Island that featured a front page photo of Councilman Tim Bynum seated outside the railing that separates the Council from the hoi polloi. “Why is he sitting out there?” they wanted to know. “Is he dangerous?”

Ummm, only if it's possible to inflict death by whining.

That wasn't their only question, and most of them weren't easy to answer, except with a shrug and one word: “cronyism.”

I know some people would've responded with a couple of other “isms,” like racism and sexism. Yes, I've heard the stories of Michele Hughes, and others, shaking their booty at the planning counter, and of the haole developers and vacation rental owners languishing in limbo because they didn't have enough dough or smarts to hire to hire an insider to shepherd their projects through.

Anyone who follows planning issues has seen it: the former county planners and attorneys who now shill for developers; the mayoral buddies named to the planning commission, despite (or perhaps because of) their inexperience and apparent lack of conscience and/or will; the political appointees within the planning department allowed to stay far too long — and then replaced by a fresh batch of mayoral boosters.

It's been going on for an awfully long time, as I came to understand while researching and writing the Kauai chapter of a book that chronicles Hawaii's land use struggles. So my ears pricked when Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura spoke at a community meeting on Grove Farm's plan to evict people from their lifelong homes at Koloa Camp:

”I feel I'm back in the '60s when the Niumalu tenants and Kilauea farmers were being evicted,” she said.

Yes, here we are, some 40 years later, and not much has changed, except some of the folks who were fighting for the people and the `aina in those early land use struggles have since crossed over to the other side to play a very different role in the battles waged today.

Consider the resort at Nukolii, now the Hilton. Citizens objected intensely, but still the county approved the rezoning. This was followed by lawsuits and finally a referendum in which voters rejected the zoning by a margin of 2-1. The developer, meanwhile, had continued to build, in the belief that his rights had been vested. Citizens demanded that the permits be revoked; the county refused. Kauai Circuit Court Judge Kei Hirano sided with the county and opponents appealed all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which overturned Hirano's decision.

The high court found that the government had not taken final discretionary action — issuing a Special Management Area permit — prior to the referendum, so the developer had no guarantee the resort could be completed. It ordered all permits revoked and construction halted. A second vote came out differently, and that's why the resort remains.

Fast forward to this century, and the development debacle involving Joe Brescia. The county and state allowed him to construct a house atop 31 known burials at Naue, thus setting a precedent that a Burial Council's decision to “preserve in place” means a structure could be built atop iwi that have been capped in concrete. The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. fought the project in court, and though Judge Kathleen Watanabe found that the state had acted improperly, she refused to halt construction, saying substantial work had already been done on the project.

Of course, that work — including capping the burials with concrete against the wishes of the Burial Council — was sped up precisely so Brescia could claim at the hearing that he'd already invested too much to stop.

But the interesting point in all this is that when attorneys petitioned the Planning Commission to revoke the building permit, which had been issued based on the state's faulty actions, Commission Chairman Jimmy Nishida — the same guy who had been on the frontlines, risking arrest in the Nukolii fight — said no. He was worried about Brescia's private property rights, about the county being sued, about doing a “taking.”

I didn't know then about the Hawaii Supreme Court ruling in the Nukolii case, although Jimmy surely did, and the county attorney's office. While the circumstances weren't exactly the same, the state's high court had already said, decades earlier, that a project far more valuable than Brescia's house could indeed be stopped if the process was flawed. The court had already approved a "taking," much to the shock of government and the business sector. The county didn't need to be afraid of losing a lawsuit. Commissioners could've voted their conscience. As I reported then:

Only Commissioner Herman Texeira said no, he wouldn’t go along with the planning director’s recommendation [to deny the petition]:

“It seems the developer knew what the situation was. He went into this with his eyes wide open and then seemed to deliberately circumvent what was on the land.”

All this ran through my mind as I sat in the meeting room, listening to JoAnn speak and residents object, as I've heard them object so many times before to what is happening to this place we call home.

And I thought, if we don't learn from history, or choose to ignore it, if we lose our moral compass, or choose to ignore it, how many more bitter land use battles will have to be fought? How many more lawsuits will be filed, protests staged?

How can we correct the flawed process that allows bad developments to move forward, at great social, environmental and cultural cost?

Our visitors, it seems, aren't the only ones puzzled by a process that tenaciously endures, even though it is so obviously faulty and flawed.

Musings: Seals in the Scheme of Things

2011-12-27T08:24:00.001-10:00

It's not yet getting light earlier in the mornings, but when it's clear, as it was today, it seems as though it is. The first crescent of waxing moon that I spotted last evening had long since set, but faint stars still dappled the brightening sky when the dogs and I went out walking. In the absence of people noise, animal sounds grow more distinct, a pleasant phenomenon I reflected upon as we passed one section of pasture where the cricket song was almost deafening, and another where I could hear a horse's teeth grinding grass. And we turned toward home, the human-shaped clouds that lounged in the east, limbs akimbo, began to turn peachy.

Things are reportedly not so peachy for monk seals on Molokai, where state and federal wildlife officials are investigating two recent seal deaths. Necropsies done on a male found dead in mid-November and a female found dead last week indicate that both appear to have died under suspicious circumstances.

This prompted Molokai activist Walter Ritte to release the following statement:

“Our elders are saying that these seals are not Hawaiian. Our young people are calling these seals an invasive species brought in by government. The seals are now the easy targets of blame for the many ills of our depleting fisheries. We need to stand up for the truth: These seals are not only Hawaiian, but have been here longer than the Hawaiians. These seals are not invasive; they are like the Hawaiian people who are struggling to survive in their own lands. Hawaiians need to see themselves when they see a Hawaiian Monk Seal. How we treat the seals, is how we can be expected to be treated as Hawaiians in Hawaii.”

It's good Walter finally said something, because I've been hearing those same disturbing assertions for a while now. It started with murmurings that seals aren't really “native,” or at least not to the Main Hawaiian Islands, and expanded in more recent years to claims that they were introduced by the government. Both contentions picked up steam in the recent round of meetings over NOAA's plans to relocate juveniles from the Northwestern to the Main Hawaiian Islands. As I reported in the Honolulu Weekly:

“The idea that it’s a native is based on a lie perpetuated by certain environmental groups,” said Kawika Cutcher, a Native Hawaiian resident of Kauai, noting that the seals are not mentioned in the chant of creation or named as aumakua or ancestral spirits; nor are there any wood carvings, petroglyphs, oli, mele, medicinal uses or other traditional cultural references to the seals.

He also cited a lack of any monk seal bones in archeological digs, which would have indicated they were used for food by the earliest inhabitants of the Main Islands.

As a result of the article, a Hawaiian woman sent me a link to a website that she described as having “extensive information on cultural documentation related to the monk seal.” It includes some of the findings of a NOAA-financed project whose goal “was to conduct an objective assessment on the historical and modern cultural significance of the Hawaiian Monk Seal. Archival research was conducted, including searches of Hawaiian language newspapers and other resources. Several interviews were also conducted throughout the state with individuals from the Hawaiian community with a wide range of views on the monk seal.”

The site has some interesting material (use the pull down menu on the top of the page, as the one on the left side doesn't link), including possible references in the Kumulipo, or Hawaiian creation chant. In looking at the materials then, and reviewing them again today, I didn't feel they definitively proved that monk seals were historically abundant in the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). But that doesn't mean it makes sense to view animals found in the Main and Northwestern Islands differently, in terms of endemism. They're all part of the same archipelago.

Still, I found this paragraph in the “interviews” section especially intriguing:

In a few unique places in the archipelago monk seals are regarded as a natural part of the ecosystem and human-monk seal conflicts appear to be minimal. These areas tend to be rural and fairly isolated communities that are characterized by a higher degree of self-sufficiency, and where familial traditions and local decision-making processes are preserved. On Ni‘ihau Island, for example, monk seals became established nearly three decades ago. Community members discussed the social impacts associated with monk seal colonization (e.g, increased presence of sharks), and ultimately decided to act as stewards of the animals (Robinson, 2008). As a result, a sub-population has become established and residents have developed a stewardship ethic towards the species. A similar situation is occurring in the isolated Kalaupapa community on Moloka‘i Island, where another sub-population is thriving in the MHI, and where community residents largely leave seals alone. In these communities, fishers and other ocean users will move away from areas where seals are visible in order to minimize interactions.

The key here is “local decision-making processes,” something that is glaringly absent in resource conservation in Hawaii. It's always the state or the feds calling the shots, often far from the scene. I think what's really behind the animosity toward the seals and NOAA's relocation plan is the sense that once again, those who use the resources are being told what to do by bureaucrats and scientists who regulate and study the resources, and so have a very different perspective.

That's why Walter's statement is so powerful. It provides a framework for understanding the seals' plight in both a cultural and political context. Because the fact is, the state and feds do attempt to “manage” the kanaka maoli in much the same way that they try to manage other native species, from on-high and far-away, through laws, lawsuits, policies and regulations. And unfortunately, all too often through a divide and conquer strategy.

Musings: Varying Versions

2011-12-23T09:17:00.002-10:00

Clouds drifted overhead like gray ghosts in a somber pre-dawn sky, but all that changed when the sun began to rise, infusing the world with yellow, and then rose, until the trees shone red with alpenglow and then a shower blasted through, leaving sparkling diamonds on the ironwood needles and an iridescent shimmer on the mist-shrouded face of Makaleha.

Now that's the Kauai version of a winter wonderland!

I noticed the Associated Press/Star-Advertiser today finally released its version — though it lacks all the juicy backstory — of the Superferries-to-Navy story that I had on Tuesday.

Which leads me to Linda Lingle's quote in a New York Times article on the “unease” of Democrats in Hawaii that attempts to portray her as a more viable Senate candidate than I (and many of those leaving comments on the story) believe she is:

“Anyone who tries to tar me with what’s happening at the national level will run up against the reality of my own record in Hawaii,” she said.

Yes, Linda, and that's precisely why you won't be elected. We all remember the reality of your record in Hawaii, as so perfectly personified by the Superferry shibai.

I also saw that KITV yesterday had its version of the tsunami debris story I reported on Dec. 14 for Honolulu Weekly. Not to get all cocky, but I love it when I beat the MSM!

Everybody's downplaying the threat of radioactivity in the debris, just as they are with the continued fallout from Fukushima. Yet I recently read an article published in the International Journal of Health Services that estimates “14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns.”

But a reporter friend who specializes in nuclear issues said that version's not legit:

"The "14,000" figure is getting very wide publicity in America - without any explanation.

It has the effect of "re-setting" the later 35,000 excess deaths and even later 100,000 excess deaths figures to the minimized number 14,000 number from 7 months ago.

It is a complicated scam worthy of the devious nuclear industry in America.

It is the last thing Americans will remember before the holiday forgetful period.

A bad hand [Fukushima] very well played by the pro-nukers fighting for their jobs. Now the dead and maimed count can soar and couch potato Americans will not have a clue.

It seems the study was based on very early findings, and subsequent data shows a much higher mortality rate, like into the 100,000 range. He said it's all based on a simple tactic: Denying doesn't work. You have to minimize.

Meanwhile, I'm amused to hear the cheery radio ads — funded by the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) campaign portion of the Federal American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, through the Center for Disease Control — urging folks to exercise, get healthy and eat right. That's great, but what about the pesticide-laden, genetically engineered foods that the government not only allows, but refuses to label?

And finally, if you've got a few minutes to spare, this video serves as a solid reminder that even small acts can make a big difference. Or as the friend who sent it noted:

Remember, the real St. Nick does not wear a Red Suit, just red blood. The Lord puts us in different circumstances in our life. In some situations, we can do something better for others and in most situations just being thankful for what we do have and can share. Please do not deny yourself your makana [gift] of being blessed right at this very moment.

Ain't that the truth!

Musings: In the Zone

2011-12-22T09:10:00.000-10:00

I happened to be in town yesterday afternoon, so I stopped by Judge Trudy Senda's District Courtroom for round one in the criminal proceedings against Councilman Tim Bynum over his alleged zoning violations.

The county code says the county attorney and prosecutor must enforce such violations together. On the criminal side, he's now facing four misdemeanor counts of violating the comprehensive zoning ordinance (CZO) for allegedly converting his single family home into a multi-family dwelling unit without the proper permits. He faces a maximum $2,000 fine and one-year jail term for each count. On the civil side, Tim was ordered to cease and desist and bring his home into compliance, which he reportedly has done.

Tim's attorney, Dan Hempey, was in court yesterday trying to get the misdemeanor changed to a violation, but Judge Trudy — I love watching her in action because she's so akamai — wasn't going along. She set Feb. 28, 2012 as the day Tim has to enter a plea. He is entitled to a jury trial, if he wants and can afford one.

For a bit of background, county planning inspectors reportedly observed the violations on April 14, 2010, and they were first made public in my blog on Oct. 27, 2010. I then provided more details, using planning department documents, in a Nov. 9, 2010 post that refuted Tim's account of the incident as reported in another blog.

Specifically, Tim was busted for having installed a door between the rest of his house and a “family room,” where planning inspectors Patrick Henriques and Sheila Miyake reportedly spotted a refrigerator and rice cooker during a site visit. The room also contains a wet bar sink. Together, they gave the appearance that the room was being used as a dwelling unit, prompting the April 15, 2010, notice of violation and cease and desist order.

The CZO defines a kitchen as any room used, intended or designed to be used for preparing food. According to planning inspectors, intent can be determined by such things as installed appliances or a space in a countertop where a stove might go. Under the CZO, a dwelling unit is described as a unit used for cooking, eating, sleeping.

The case is intriguing because it involves a county councilman and the possibility of political dirty tricks. Tim previously claimed the complaint was politically motivated by his enemies, Councilman Mel Rapozo and County Prosecutor and former Councilwoman Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, but both deny that contention.

Interestingly, Tim was not in the courtroom yesterday — The Garden Island reported his wife was in surgery — but his arch enemy, former Council Chair Kaipo Asing, was.

All that aside, the case raises a number of thorny questions: What exactly constitutes a kitchen? Is it discriminatory for such zoning violations to be pursued primarily on a complaint basis? Are inspectors trespassing and violating civil rights if they look into a window when the occupant is not at home? Can administrative searches, such as those undertaken by planning inspectors, be used to prosecute criminal cases? And what will it take for the county to bring all the many violators into compliance?

Because as Deputy Prosector Jake Delaplane noted after the hearing, “On this island, the CZO violations are out of control.”

Jake said the Councilman was not singled out for prosecution, noting that some 40 persons accused of CZO violations were arraigned the same day as Tim. “Overall, we're taking a stronger stance with these violations because they haven't been enforced in the past.”

The prosecutor's office regularly gets notices of violations from the planning department, he said, “but historically there was very little follow up.”

Now, however, they're getting more attention. The county prosecutor's office is currently going through a “big stack” of zoning violations to determine whether they are chargeable offenses, he said, and it just filed “a bunch of TVR violations.” However, it's proving a bit difficult to serve summons in some of those cases because the owners live off-island.

Musings: Why?

2011-12-21T09:46:00.000-10:00

Hard to look at, but even harder not to wonder, why, why, why? Why do we keep doing this?

Iraqi War Photographers: Their War at Home

Musings: Winter Solstice

2011-12-21T09:02:00.002-10:00

I happened to open my eyes at a fortuitous moment and look out the window to see the golden glow of the rising moon and so I had to go out and look at that bright crescent bravely holding up and illuminating the dark whole, and from there it was down to the beach for a shimmering sunrise and shivery swim on this blustery Winter Solstice morning.

I was reading the “weekly weather report” on the The Cosmic Path website and found this most interesting description of the day's significance:

In a nutshell, on the Winter Solstice the Sun at its max reaches its lowest point on the horizon in the northern hemisphere. It appears to “stop” for three days and on the 3rd day (Dec 25th or so) begins to slowly rise day by day until it reaches its highest point on the horizon on the Summer Solstice. This event is the description of the Christ, only here we are not talking about a person, we are talking about light and consciousness rising.

Sorry to have to break the news to anyone who thought Jesus was actually born on Christmas Day. But now you know the allegorical roots of that enduring story. And it does make sense, considering that plants and animals, including people, were tuned into the return of the light long before Christianity was ever invented. And it's always easier to get people to buy into something new when it's rooted in something familiar, old.

So what stories have you been telling yourself lately, about who you are and what you can and cannot do and why the world is the way it is and your particular personal role in the overall scheme of things? Are they true? Do they serve you well? And if not, can you let them go?

Musings: Payoffs and Promises

2011-12-20T08:44:00.001-10:00

The moon, a thinner sliver today than yesterday, and in the company of a few stars, shone down intermittently, obscured at times by drifting wisps, when the dogs and I went walking this morning, skirting puddles left by showers that fell frequently in the night. At the end of the street, clouds massed, a dull mustard-yellow, promising more rain, but also some sun.

What sort of promises, or payoffs, or both, do you suppose were made to those who paved the way for the Hawaii Superferry, from inception through delivery to the Navy at rock bottom prices? 'Cause yup, it's official, that's where the two big boats are headed.

It seems the National Defense Authorization Act, which I've written about recently, contains more than just alarming language that allows the military to lock up folks indefinitely — apparently even Americans in America — on the mere suspicion of terrorist activity. It also includes this provision:

“SEC. 1026. TRANSFER OF CERTAIN HIGH-SPEED FERRIES TO THE NAVY.
(a) TRANSFER FROM MARAD AUTHORIZED.—The Secretary of the Navy may, subject to appropriations, from funds available for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2012, provide to the Maritime Administration of the Department of Transportation an amount not to exceed $35,000,000 for the transfer by the Maritime Administration to the Department of the Navy of jurisdiction and control over… M/V HUAKAI… [and]... M/V ALAKAI… [to be] administered as a Department of Defense sealift vessel….”

A link to the story, which was reported by Defense Industry Daily under the headline “Hawaii Superferry’s Bankruptcy = US Navy Opportunity” was sent to me by a journalist friend in California, along with the message:

Here's something in an obscure military newsletter I get on the Super Ripoff.
we all called this fucking thing for exactly what it is.
I figure these MFs had help from inside the agencies, too. Well paid with "fees," too.
During our time together we have seen this whole conspiracy unfold. Wonder who all got paid off in Hawai'i.....

Yeah, I wonder.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence, but I did spot an announcement a few weeks back that Admiral Thomas B. Fargo, (Ret.) — remember him? President and CEO of HSF Holdings/Hawaii Superferry and Managing Director of J.F. Lehman and Co., the firm founded by former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman that was the controlling private investor in the HSF project, putting up $85.2 million of the $92.9 million issued in preferred stock? — had been appointed to the Board of Directors of Alexander & Baldwin, one of Hawaii's largest landowners. The release press release said he was picked for his “extensive maritime and leadership expertise...and his deep commitment to the Hawaii community.”

Umm, I suppose that's one way to spin the background of a guy who tried to shove an enterprise that ultimately went bankrupt down the throats of folks who didn't want it, spawning virulent protests, lawsuits and a state Supreme Court decision that found Gov. Lingle had erred, even though she still claims she didn't.

And interesting how Colleen Hanabusa, head of the state Senate when they passed the sham law allowing HSF to run while it completed an EIS it should've done from the get-go, is now in Congress.

Getting back to the Defense Industry Daily article, it reports:

In his April 6/09 discussion of the FY 2010 budget Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said that the US military wanted to charter another 2 “JHSV-like” fast catamaran ships from 2009-2011, until the JHSV ships begin arriving.

One obvious stopgap option is the Hawaiian Superferry catamarans, a larger pair of Austal-built ships that resemble the Westpac Express. They were even pressed into service when Haiti’s disaster struck, but the actual sale of the ships by US MARAD has been a much slower process…

Dec 19/11: The Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which will soon become law, looks set to settle this issue, and send both Superferries to US MSC alongside the future JHSV vessels:

Queries to MSCFE reveal that the larger Huakai ferry will replace the HSV Westpac Express, supporting CG III Marine Expeditionary Force between Okinawa, mainland Japan and Korea, with occasional runs to the Philippines and Thailand. That won’t happen immediately, however, because MV Huakai “will need significant mods before she can support III MEF mission.” The Huakai is expected to have longer range than Westpac Express’ 1,200nm maximum, and they expect her to be ready before October 2012.

The mission for the smaller ship, MV Alakai, is said to still be under review. Both the Caribbean/Latin America (SOUTHCOM) and AFRICOM are seen as strong possibilities.

It all kinda makes me think of a comment that former Sen. Gary Hooser (one of those who didn't vote for the sham law) left on Andy Parx's blog last week:

We need good people on the inside willing to work with the system and people on the outside banging on the walls and doors, reminding all about what democracy is all about.

Oh, we be banging, Gary. But we just can't seem to dislodge those bad people on the inside.

Musings: Ticky-Tacky

2011-12-19T08:24:00.000-10:00

After a night of frequent heavy showers, the dogs and I took advantage of a lull in the rain this morning to go out walking beneath a fat wedge of golden moon floating in a wisp of cloud. It's headed toward new on Saturday, and we've got the winter solstice — the true start of the new year — on Wednesday, so it's a big week of transitions and fresh starts ahead.

Let's hope that's true for North Korea, now that its “leader” — if one can even use that word for a person who has devastated his own nation — is dead.

Unfortunately, some of the more troublesome provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are not. The $662 billlion spending bill, which got an aye vote from Reps. Colleen Hanabusa and Mazie Hirono, is now on its way to be signed by Obama. The U.S., which has always prided itself on being a nation that promotes the rule of law, is about to enact a bill that allows the military to indefinitely jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world — without charge or trial.

While it's still unclear whether the provision applies to American citizens on U.S. soil — a question that may ultimately need to be resolved by the courts, and hopefully not while a suspect is languishing in jail — how can anyone who believes in due process support detaining anyone indefinitely on mere suspicion alone? What kind of example are we setting for the rest of the world?

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta weighed in on whether the long, expensive, bloody Iraq war was worth it with a comment that shows the Administration is deeply mired in wishful thinking:

“As difficult as [the Iraq war] was,” and the cost in both American and Iraqi lives, “I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world,” he added.

"There is no question that the United States was divided going into that war," he said. "But I think the United States is united coming out of that war. We all recognize the tremendous price that has been paid in lives, in blood. And yet I think we also recognize that those lives were not lost in vain."

Mmmm, I guess he didn't see the opinion polls that showed 67 % of Americans say the Iraq war was not worth the loss of American blood and treasure. But then, it wouldn't be the first time a government official was out of touch with the people.

Speaking of out of touch, if you've been wondering what Grove Farm plans to build after it evicts 13 families and destroys a charmingly distinctive century-old plantation camp, take a look at this. Tip: to avoid gagging, turn down your volume first.

Reminds me of the song: “and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same....”

Musings: Worth It?

2011-12-18T11:18:00.004-10:00

Pink clouds were closing in on the waterfall that streaked down the face of Makaleha and a rainbow shaft had just touched the top of Waialeale when the dogs and I headed to the beach this morning.

Strolling on coarse sand washed clean by the receding tide, I made the unusual find of two golf balls and thought of a golf bag I'd spotted just 10 minutes earlier sitting, oddly enough, in the tiny outdoor foyer of the post office at Anahola. It seems, sometimes, like the universe is trying to tell me something, though I'm not always sure exactly what it is.

To my right — or starboard, as I recently learned — big waves rolled in, frosted with glossy bright-white icing. The ascending sun cast a long silver shimmer across the water, where Paele and I swam, and onto the rocks, where I sat and watched turtles graze on the reef and recalled an article I'd read on my iPhone when I found myself awake at 2 a.m.

It was about the wind-down — it's hard to say "end" when the last troops that left this morning are still massed across the border in Kuwait, just in case, and 16,000 Americans will remain in our fortress-like embassies — of this nation's nine-year war on Iraq. One paragraph in particular caught my attention:

The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.

I'm not sure that's true.

I imagine you'd get an enthusiastically affirmative reply if you asked the folks who grabbed some of the $12 billion in American cash that disappeared, or the war profiteers like Halliburton, Blackwater and KBR, among others, that made out like bandits, or the art collectors who nabbed some of the priceless stolen antiquities, or repugnant media cheerleaders, like the late Christopher Hitchens or that creepy cabal in the Bush-Cheney administration that deliberately and deviously sold us a bill of goods about weapons of mass destruction and exporting democracy.

The American public, on the other hand, has already been polled, and two-thirds of us say no.

It's likely you'd get a similar response from the 30,000 Americans who were wounded, or the families of the thousands more who committed suicide or suffer from PTSD, or the Iraqis who are still enduring the death, destruction and disarray of an American occupation, not to mention the lingering effects of depleted uranium contamination.

Or as Warrant Officer John Jewell put it: "The innocent always pay the bill."

Can we remember that, and stop ourselves, the next time we're tempted to go in?

Musings: Many Questions, Few Answers

2011-12-16T09:51:00.000-10:00

Mist clung to the summit of Makaleha, softening the jagged edges of the range, while white clouds raced across a pale blue sky when the dogs and I went out walking on the first sunny morning in quite some time. As if to express their appreciation, the birds filled the air with loud, melodic song.

Residents from around the island attended a community meeting in Koloa last night to sing out against Grove Farm's plan to evict the tenants of Koloa Camp. You can read my account of the meeting here.

I was glad to see Councilmembers JoAnn Yukimura and KipuKai Kualii in attendance, but Grove Farm VP Mike Tresler, who ordered the evictions, was a no-show. Apparently he had a flight to Oahu that just couldn't be changed. Mmmhmm.

Still, Kepa Kruse, a really outstanding young man that I wrote about here, said it was actually a good thing that Tresler didn't come. Otherwise, the meeting might have been so confrontational as to foreclose any chance of working out an alternative. He's still hoping to convince the company to move the project across the bypass road.

Instead, Grove Farm sent VP David Hinazumi, a Koloa boy who came home to work for Grove Farm. David started the meeting by saying that he, his wife and their two kids had to live with their parents for a time because they could only recently afford to buy a home. Another young VP was in the same boat, he said, which underscored the need for this "affordable" housing.

This prompted Koloa resident Dan O'Flaherty to note, “Doesn't that tell you something, that even top executives from Grove Farm can't afford to buy a home on this island?”

I found it surprising that plans to use 8,000 cubic yards of fill to raise part of the land above the flood plain on a parcel bordering a stream doesn't trigger any sort of environmental assessment. In fact, the only approval needed is a Class 3 zoning permit issued by the county planning department. And you know what a cozy relationship it has with Grove Farm.

The general consensus seemed to be that the only ones who could afford to buy the homes are mainlanders, which prompted David Denson, himself a mainland haole who married into a Hawaiian family in Wainiha, to say, “When you get all these haoles with water in their houses, they're gonna sue your ass.”

Another interesting tidbit surfaced about Waita reservoir, which reportedly holds 1.3 billion gallons of water. Koloa resident Sonny Cayetano, the county's former Civil Defense administrator, asked if Grove Farm had a contingency plan in the event that the dam broke. “All of Koloa town would be inundated,” he said.

Though many questions and concerns were raised, few answers were given. It seemed from David Hinazumi's comments that Grove Farm hasn't yet explored a lot of the issues raised by residents. Yet it's still planning to push ahead with a mid-March start date.

But the most ludicrous comment of all came from Keith Yap, Grove Farm's director of finance, in his apparent attempt to ease community fears that Koloa Camp tenants would be evicted and their home destroyed, only to have the project stall, as has happened with other proposed developments in the town.

“Grove Farm is committed, even though things are bad [economically] now,” he said. “We feel the timing is right. We could end up where you guys can't buy it, where no one could buy it, but we're committed to building housing.”

So let me get this straight. You're gonna make people homeless so you can build housing that no one may buy.

Sounds like a plan.

Or as KipuKai noted afterward, if Grove Farm is truly committed to building housing that is indeed affordable, why doesn't it form a nonprofit and do it?

Musings: Steamroller

2011-12-15T08:48:00.002-10:00

I came home yesterday to find Jeremy, the yard guy provided by my landlords, preparing to do some weedeating. I apologized for creating extra work for him by putting in garden beds where he used to mow, but he waved it off. “No problem,” he said cheerfully. “I am totally committed to supporting you in your gardening efforts.”

I wanted to give him a holiday tip, but had just $3 in my wallet, so I left a bag of longan and a piece of homemade chocolate cake on his truck instead. And I thought, yup, he's another one of those people working their asses off in the sun all day, sucking down dust and dirt, for not that much dough, just so he can live on Kauai.

And it brought to mind an observation that a Portland visitor recently shared: “It seems you can live rich on Kauai, or you can live poor, but there really isn't a place for the middle class.”

No shit. That's why we've got Grove Farm trying to pass off as "affordable" modular homes from China with price tags ranging from $260,000 to $485,000. According to The Garden Island's coverage of the Koloa Camp eviction story I broke yesterday, Grove Farm VP Mike Tresler is basing that on “a local median household income of $76,300.”

Except if you look at the U.S. Census data, the median income for Kauai County is $55,723. And the way it works is, if you can't move the so-called affordable houses within a certain amount of time, you can sell them at market rates. So tell me, how many folks do you know who could qualify for a $485,000 mortgage, much less come up with a down payment, on the wages paid on this island? Maybe if you're pulling down a hundred grand working for your buddy the mayor, but otherwise, no way.

But what really jumped out at me was the heartless, screw you attitude evident in this comment:

When asked whether Grove Farm would consider allowing the tenants to remain longer, Tresler said, “That’s a tenant-landlord issue. That’s a private issue … They’re trying to make it a public issue and we’ll push back and just say it’s nobody’s business.

Tell me, Mike, why shouldn't they make your dirty deeds public when they feel like they're getting the royal shaft? Why shouldn't they have the right to publicly question your development plans? And why isn't it the community's business what you're doing to our friends and neighbors and the character of Koloa town? You've got 40,000 acres of land on this island, yet you've got to kick out longtime families so you can make a quick buck on some cheaply constructed housing.

But that's exactly what's wrong with Grove Farm and so many other developers on this island. They know they can steamroll right over the people because our elected officials and the yes-men on the planning commission let them do pretty much whatever they want.

While we're on the topic of steamrolling, let's look at the debacle known as the Hawaiian Roll Commission, which I wrote about here. You've got a law passed by the state that allows the governor to appoint a panel of people who will decide who is Hawaiian for the purpose of creating a self-governing body.

The process is being financed by Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency, and it's headed by former Gov. John Waihee III, who is in so deep with OHA that he delivered its State of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs address yesterday.

Come on! This process has been so thoroughly co-opted by the state as to be meaningless in terms of representing a broad spectrum of kanaka maoli. And yet it's chugging along, despite cries of foul by independence groups, Hawaiian nationals and patriots who are likening it to the second overthrow because they're gonna be excluded.

Of course, you wouldn't know there was any dispute at all over this process from the Star-Advertiser's "everything's groovy" coverage, which left me wishing I hadn't wasted my 99 cents for a day pass to read it.

The article included this bit:

Entertainer Henry Kapono performed "Kalama Ku O Kamehameha" during the event. The deep, resonating voices of Palani Vaughan and Kanohowailuku Helm filled the church during their performances.

The reporter apparently didn't know any of the backstory about these musical performances, which were arranged by state Sen. Brickwood Galuteria. I was privy to an email exchange in which Palani Vaughn was getting a little flack from some for agreeing to perform.

His response:

I felt it would be important to contribute, at least, one mele, a song, that is inclusive of our brothers & sisters who continue to, persistently and intelligently, call for the restoration of our true Hawaiian Kingdom Sovereignty...a song that refers to our people as "Hawaiian Nationals", citizens of the true Hawaiian Kingdom Government...a song, that urges our "Na Poki'i" to "Reclaim Our Hawaiian Kingdom Nation"....a song, that speaks "Hawaiian Kingdom Sovereignty" for us the "Ka Lahui Hawai'i.”

If there are those of you who doubt my sentiments and motivation, I ask you to look at my life's record. I have willingly and openly, without fanfare, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with you to "Protest The illegal Annexation Of Our Hawai'i"; to "Protest The Fake State", etc.

We have to try to awaken the "others" to "see the light of truth and join with us in seeking justice" for our Queen Lili'uokalani.

This prompted longtime activist Skippy Ioane to reply:

lucky you go be there, bum bye only puka shell, dig up the bones kanaka. when you sing i can hear the pain, the rage, and the hope.

Musings: Losing Lifelong Homes

2011-12-13T23:08:00.003-10:00

Another piece of Kauai's history is on the chopping block. Grove Farm has issued eviction notices to 13 families living in Koloa Camp — the oldest remaining plantation camp on the southside.

Ironically, Grove Farm wants to demolish the low-rent homes so it can build, mmm, affordable housing. Except the new units would be the China-made modular kine.

The residents, including multi-generational families and seniors who have lived their entire lives in the homes, must be out by March 8. They got notice just two weeks before Thanksgiving, casting a pall over the holiday season.

“The biggest thing that really breaks my heart is a local company like Grove Farm would do that to senior citizens. It's almost shameful,” says Kepa Kruse, a Na Hoku Hanohano award-winning musician who grew up in the camp. His father, John Kruse, who sailed on Hokulea and formerly chaired the Kauai-Niihau Island Burial Council, still lives there.

“A lot of these people have nowhere to go, so I think they're just gonna stay here,” Kepa says. “It's hard to relocate your lifestyle. This is real local style. People raise chickens and have gardens. We're gonna lose the old style Kauai charm.”

The 24 acres scheduled for redevelopment lie behind Koloa Post Office. The land borders the parcel where monkeypod trees were cut down three years ago, despite intense community opposition, to make way for the Shops at Koloa. The mall stalled when major tenants sued to break lease, leaving the developer, Eric A. Knudsen Trust and David Nelson of Detroit, unable to get financing.

“The developer had big dreams and cut down all the trees and the land is just sitting there, infested with rats,” Kepa says. “We fear the same thing will happen here.”

He says 30 families living in another camp near Waikomo Stream and Hapa Road were previously evicted and their homes destroyed to make way for an affordable housing project that still hasn't broken ground.

“Developers see these old plantation homes and think, that would be a nice development,” Kepa says. “But for local people, that's their childhood, the buildings they grew up in. Even though it's old, it still has value. It's meaningful.”

Residents are wondering why Grove Farm is pushing for the evictions when it apparently hasn't yet submitted plans its plans for the project to the county. Kepa says the land is in a flood zone and borders streams inhabited by the endangered Koloa duck, factors that could delay or prevent development. The community is also concerned about how the proposed 50-unit project would affect traffic on narrow Wailana Street.

“These are valid questions we're bringing up and it's like they're trying to keep it hush-hush,” he says. Residents have been trying to get answers from Grove Farm, to no avail. So they went to the Koloa Community Association for help, and a meeting is now scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Koloa Neighborhood Center to discuss the issue. Grove Farm Vice President Mike Tresler has been invited, although Kepa is uncertain whether Tresler will show. “He doesn't want to meet with us.”

Koloa Early School also has received an eviction notice, and the Koloa Canoe Club would be similarly displaced.

“We as a community feel it's a very reasonable thing for Grove Farm to address these concerns and also delay the evictions until these concerns are addressed,” Kepa says.

In the meantime, residents have been meeting each Sunday afternoon to discuss strategy.

“It's really amazing to see the community coming together to fight this,” Kepa says. “I know with some of the developers their intentions are good, but I wish they would open their heart to the community before they press on the gas pedal. Kauai is pretty special, and if we lose the things that make it that way, you might as well move to Oahu.”

The residents have organized under the name Save Koloa Camp, and you can check out their website here. I hope to attend the Thursday meeting and hear what the developer and some of the other residents have to say.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering whether all those folks who were upset about the monkeypods being cut will be similarly motivated to support the families who are on the verge of losing their lifelong homes.

Musings: Somebody's Watching You

2011-12-12T08:51:00.003-10:00

As some Kauai folks worry about KIUC's foray into “smart meters” and an 88-year-old lodges a complaint after being forced to show her colostomy bag to TSA agents, a far greater threat to the privacy and security of American citizens is unfolding: the growing use of Predator drones by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

A report in the Los Angeles Times details a case in which North Dakota cops called on a Predator owned by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to determine the location of three men on their 3,000-acre farm. Though it marked the first time that military spy planes were used in the arrest of American citizens, the article revealed that law enforcement is starting to use them for basic police work.

And once you start down that slippery slope of militarizing the police, well, no telling where we'll end up. Except it's certainly nowhere good.

Or as former Rep. Jane Harman, who helped beat back efforts by Homeland Security officials to use imagery from military satellites to help domestic terrorism investigations, noted:

Using Predators for routine law enforcement without public debate or clear legal authority is a mistake, Harman said.

"There is no question that this could become something that people will regret."

Interestingly enough, though the men (after being Tasered by cops earlier in the day), were arrested over some disputed cows, they are reportedly members of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an antigovernment group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. In other words, they are just the kind of people who could be labeled “terrorism subjects” under the pending National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow the military to arrest and detain them indefinitely.

As Michael Edwards observes on Infowars.com:

This incident too comfortably fits the new narrative which seeks to justify an expansion of the War on Terror by including America as the new war zone, thus enabling all military hardware to be used, and eradicating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. These Sovereign Citizens, as “extremist and violent” by decree, have received the very same treatment as those in the Middle East and North Africa who are suspected insurgents or enemy combatants.

Well, not exactly the same, because they weren't blown to bits. But you know how one thing leads to another....

Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who wrote extensively about the “growing menace of domestic drones” in posts last Tuesday and again today, puts it quite clearly:

A prime aim of the sprawling Surveillance State — justified in the name of Terrorism — is to empower the government domestically.

It’s beyond obvious that policy planners and law enforcement officials expect serious social unrest. Why wouldn’t they: when has sustained, severe economic suffering and anxiety of the sort we are now seeing — along with pervasive, deep anger at the political class and its institutions — not produced that type of unrest? Drones are the ultimate tool for invasive, sustained surveillance and control, and one would have to be historically ignorant and pathologically naive not to understand its capacity for abuse.

It takes little imagination to see the dangers of this militarization of domestic police powers; in fact, it takes extreme denseness and authoritarian trust to dismiss it as “paranoia” or “hysteria.”

Just a little something for folks to think about here in "paradise," an occupied nation that is also the most heavily militarized (fake) state in America and the only place where martial law was imposed.

Musings: Eclipsed

2011-12-11T09:14:00.001-10:00

I wasn't sure what I'd have to do to see yesterday's lunar eclipse, given that rain had fallen repeatedly in the night and clouds were stacked up over the mountains where the moon was bound to set.

I figured I could always head west, if need be, though the prospect of a wee hours sojourn to the other side, where the weather service was also predicting showers and clouds, wasn't especially appealing.

But as is so often the case, I didn't need to go anywhere looking for anything: it was all right here, just out my back door, when I went to check at about 3:15 a.m. The unplanned timing was perfect — again, as is so often the case — because right after I spotted her — big, bold, beautiful; brilliance dimmed by a mask of soft gold sliding slowly across her face — she disappeared behind the clouds. A minute more, and I would have missed her, would not have known I had a perfect view of the course she would take on her descent behind Makaleha.

So began my grateful witnessing of dance between moon and clouds as I started out standing, head back, then moved to sitting in a lawn chair, then finally stretched out on a towel laid atop the wet grass, a dog on either side, a blanket pulled over the three of us, and still Paele shivered. The wind sighed through the ironwoods, rustled palm fronds, and every now and then, the moon would suddenly appear in all her eclipsing glory, which was golden, and not the red I'd seen in previous obscurations. More often, she was a glowing apparition behind scurrying clouds, slipping in and out of view, adding magic, mystery, to the ethereal scene.

We laid there for a couple of hours, past the time when she was fully darkened, though never black, until the brightness began to glimmer around the edges, expand into a crescent, and then we went back into the warmth of indoors and after breakfast, to the beach, where I discovered that the watching mode still lingered, prompting me to stop and look at a flock of ruddy turnstones feeding in the grass, an egret collecting nesting materials.

And I marveled at how my senses had opened, in that short span of being transfixed by an eclipse, and I thought, how would I change if I began to spend more time lying out there, watching, in the cool, quiet darkness, before the cars and people start to stir? But gusting winds, and the three-quarters of an inch of rain that fell heavily in the night, kept me snug in bed, and glad for it, this morning.

Musings: All Over the Map

2011-12-09T08:38:00.000-10:00

The thermometer read just 68 degrees and I could hear a lot of dripping from rain showers that passed in the night when the dogs and I went out walking this morning. A few stars were spattered across a sky shared with shapes I knew to be clouds, though it wasn't yet light enough to discern texture and color, and so a sense of the weather the day might bring.

Paele, always slow to wake, balked at the wet grass, but Koko charged on, leading us both, as she did when we took the eastern ascent, from the Houselots, up onto the belly of the Giant as the sun rose yesterday. And as always happens when I'm out around tourists with my poi dog pair, I was asked repeatedly, “what kind of dogs are those?” One man even took a picture.

I was more struck by how much open land — agricultural land — remains between Lihue and Kapaa, and as I gazed out on it, I thought, that's our “bread basket,” right there. Close to markets and labor, plenty of water and sun.

Yet the stuff on the makai side of Kalepa Ridge is under the jurisdiction of Hawaiian Homes, which at one point planned massive residential development there, financed by another resort near the Wailua River mouth. We know that ain't gonna happen, at least not any time soon. So couldn't it be farmed in the interim?

And though the acreage on the mauka side of the ridge is “state” land that has actually been designated for “we the regular people” kine ag, it's languishing in governmental bureaucracy. Meanwhile, pieces are being poached here and there for projects like the mayor's new dump and that albezia-to-energy debacle.

Oh yeah, we're all committed to agriculture — so long as it's GMO seed crops and “solar farms.” Our addiction to profit and energy has turned us into those little cocaine-addled lab rats that choose blow over food. Speaking of which, did you know there are some 200 million animals (dogs, cats, rats, mice, guinea pigs, monkeys, chimps, apes, cows, pigs, sheep, and more) trapped in cages and used for experimentation? Pretty sick. We've got some evolving to do, folks.

Which means as well that we do not allow our cops to repeatedly dose people with 50,000 volts of electricity — “don't tense up now, or it'll only make it worse” — even criminals. Yes, I'm talking about the lawsuit brought by LeBeau Lagmay, and the Council's vote to approve $40k to hire outside lawyers to fight it. This is in addition to three deputy county attorneys also on the case. Mmmm, can you spell overkill? And wouldn't it be cheaper to just give that money to Lagmay?

Still, I can see why they're scared, because Lagmay is being represented by Dan Hempey, Greg Meyers and Myles Breiner – attorneys known for being passionate and pono, who don't file bogus claims.

I'm thinking the county's taking a strong stand for the same reason the cops and the prosecutor's office have been so vigorously fighting the right of Hawaiian nationals to carry a badge: they don't anyone challenging the absolute authority of the state. Never mind that there have been 513 Taser-related deaths involving a disproportionate number of persons of color in the U.S. since 2001.

What I'm wondering is what will happen to Eric Caspillo, the cop who wielded the Taser, if Lagmay prevails. If a citizen can get 20 months for assaulting a cop, shouldn't a cop go to jail for assaulting a citizen, and not just have the county pick up the bill for a civil payout?

The rain and sun are taking turns reigning over the day as I write this, and weather forecasters are predicting cloudy skies on the east side tonight. That means those of us who really want to see the
Gemini full moon total lunar eclipse — you can watch the process on this nifty video link sent by a reader — may have to head for the westside to catch the maximum coverage at 4:32 a.m. Who needs sleep when there's something way cool like this to observe?

Then tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon there's the Surfrider Foundation's Tsunami Debris Mini-Conference at KCC, which you can also catch on live video stream. Thanks to Dr. Carl Berg for getting this together and to Dr. Robert Zelkovsky for the video stream.

New Reporting on Hawaiian Issues

2011-12-07T14:54:00.000-10:00

I recently complained that media coverage of the proposed settlement between OHA and the state over the so-called “ceded lands” revenue claim failed to include any voices of opposition. So I wrote a cover piece for Honolulu Weekly that does, while also providing quite a bit more information about the agreement and how it fits into the guv's grand schemes for Kaka`ako.

It's related to another issue — the work of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission to identify Hawaiians for the purpose of forming a government, a politically hot process I write about here.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency, is a key player in both initiatives, which is precisely what has some kanaka concerned. This is a key time for Hawaiian issues. Stay tuned!

Musings: Go Look

2011-12-06T21:53:00.001-10:00

I knew the moon was out there, because I'd seen it, hovering over the part of Nounou that is closest to the Wailua River, already risen, and white, in the late afternoon when a pig came sauntering out of the valley below a friend's house, so casually I thought it was a pet, and it came very near before it spotted me, started and did a little bucking, zigzagging run across the lawn to a thicket that offered safety.

So later, as I stood in my kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner and debating whether I could be bothered to walk 200 feet to a garden bed to pick some fresh greens, I thought, you've got to be kidding, don't be ridiculous, and besides, the moon is out there.

She was, right above me, egg-shaped, still white, but gleaming now, almost too bright to look at it, but not quite, and so I did, as the finest, laciest clouds drifted over her face and across the narrow band of black blue that separated her from beaming Jupiter. Eventually I tore myself away and picked greens still quenched with raindrops, wondering that I ever could have hesitated to go out and get them, and returned to the house and made them into a salad.

I decided to eat on the screen porch and began turning off lights in the house one by one until I was sitting only in the glow of moonlight so silvery brilliant that it illuminated the dark clouds hanging over the mountains and the only sounds were crickets and the rushing of the stream, the occasional rooster crow or dog yelp.

Though not a person who typically says prayers before meals, the gratitude was so overwhelming that the blessings happened spontaneously and I stayed in that place for a little while, feeling fullness of a different sort, and then I ate, watching, listening, basking, really tasting.

When I had finished, and sat there for a while longer, hearing the rain approach and then arrive, and then depart, seeing the moonlight peek out, then re-fill the sky, it occurred to me that I had planned to write about radioactivity, the whole mess at Fukushima, and I thought, time enough for that. Right now I want only to write about the moonlight, about remembering to look, to go out there.

Thanks to Anonymous who left a comment about Saturday's total lunar eclipse — check it out at A Darker View — and got me thinking about the moon today!

Musings: On FEAR

2011-12-05T08:28:00.000-10:00

So much of what's being fed to us these days is Fear, with a capital F.

But what is fear all about, anyway?

In the absence of wild animals preparing to devour us, or a crazed ideologue hunting us down with a Predator drone, it seems so many of our fears are based not in any real danger or threat, but in our thinking, which is lost in those places that don't actually exist: past and future.

So I liked the way author Susyn Reeves, who was recently interviewed on New Dimensions, developed some reverse acronyms intended to “reframe fear so we don't have to be afraid.”

Here are four that she created:

Forgetting Everything's All Right

Failure Expected And Received

Finding Excuses And Reasons

False Evidence Appearing Real.

I'm sure the many clever readers of this blog can come up with a few more. Have at it!

Musings: An Observation

2011-12-03T13:08:00.000-10:00

Not to focus on the negative

....or anything
but it seems like every year the surf

delivers up
more plastic

than shells.

Do you think there's a connection?

Musings: North Shore Madness

2011-12-01T10:13:00.000-10:00

It seems a cat is trying to adopt me, in the way that the wild kitties do on Kauai. First I saw it hanging in all four corners of my yard. Then I spotted it walking the perimeter in daylight. Next came the dead bird offering on the stairs leading up to my porch. And then this morning, it was sleeping on the front door mat, a cozy retreat in a night of heavy rain.

So far it hasn't let me get close, but slowly and surely it's building up its courage.

I was thinking about courage when I read a Democracy Now! report from a correspondent who has been covering the revolutions in Egypt and Libya:

”One of the things that was really remarkable over the past year that I saw in both Egypt and Libya is the fearlessness of people," [Anjali] Kamat says. "I was really taken aback by the scenes of crowds of people running into armed tanks, running into vehicles that [opened] opening fire — people just without any fear."

And I wondered, what would be the equivalent in America? Braving the “midnight madness” of a Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart? Or simply daring to open your mouth about the madness at all?

Speaking of madness, two story assignments took me to the North Shore recently, where I was stunned to see what's happening to the road at the Lumahai overlook. It's like they're taking down an entire mountain there, and all I could think was, whoa, that's an awful lot of soil to have exposed on the rainiest part of the island in winter.... Crazy.

I couldn't get a picture, because the traffic was backed up and there was nowhere to pull over. But on the way up, I did stop at Kalihiwai Road, as I'd heard that two fishing accesses there had been closed.

Sure enough, I found this:

Though the gate, which was installed some time back to keep dogs out of a shearwater colony there, wasn't locked, the message — beat it! — was quite clear, at least to those who don't know this is a public access.

To put the location in context, this access runs between property owned by oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart on one side:

And on the other side is land owned by actor Ben Stiller:

For a bit of background, this traditional fishing access used to run through the land on Stiller's side, but when he bought the property, he didn't want people going there anymore. So he worked with some of the local fishermen to realign the access off to the side of his lot.

I'm not sure who put up the Posted Keep Out No Trespassing sign on the gate. It could've been Anne's staff, seeing as how they already installed irrigation heads in the access, which makes it often muddy and creates a tripping hazard, and planted palms right along the fence, so that fallen fronds block the way at times.

Or it could've been Ben's people.

I know it wasn't the KISC guys, who are treating a serious infestation of fire ants introduced a decade ago by Anne's landscape contractor, Dan Shook, because I asked their leader, Keren Gundersen, and she said, “We can't close that off because it's a public access.”

But the KISC crew did recycle an old David Henkin for Lt. Gov. sign, which they posted at the head of another long-used fishing trail on the west side of Ben's property warning folks about the fire ants there.

Keren said that trail apparently does run through private property, and when I stopped by it was informally closed off with hazard tape:

So in the madness that has become the lives of the rich and famous on the North Shore, you introduce a nasty pest and two coastal accesses get closed off. But you don't care, because you're hardly here, anyway, and besides, you already made your own — private, of course — trail down to the beach.

Musings: Difficulties of Discernment

2011-11-30T07:54:00.000-10:00

It was dark when the dogs and I went out walking this morning in a misting rain that wasn't heavy enough to soak, but was damp enough to chill. The landscape was just barely beginning to brighten, enough so that it was possible to identify the outline of the mountains, but not so much that one could easily discern a rubbish can from a human being, as Paele attested with his growl of warning.

Even in full light it's becoming increasingly difficult to discern rubbish cans from human beings and Democrats from Republicans, at least in terms of ideology, as evidenced by the extremely alarming National Defense Authorization Act now making its way through the Senate.

Introduced by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and championed by failed GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 680-page bill primarily authorizes military spending. But buried within its verbiage is a provision that would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect, anywhere in the world — even the U.S. — without charge or trial. Another provision would repeal the executive order banning torture.

As Democracy Now! reported:

So we’re talking about indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens, of lawful U.S. residents as well as of people abroad.

So, you’re picked up off the street and you have no trial.

And it could be for things you’ve done here in this country. If you communicate with Al Qaeda, you’re suspected of being even a supporter of Al Qaeda in some way or of Al Qaeda’s associated forces. And the U.S. gets to decide who they think is associated with Al Qaeda, and that list grows longer almost every day.

Now again, suspected. This is not that you’ve been convicted.

Yesterday, in a 38-60 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have withdrawn the provision about detainees. Our own Sen. Daniel Inouye, who is seeking re-election, was among those voting against the amendment.

As Huffington Post reports, the President has threatened a veto — but not because it represents a radical encroachment on civil liberties. No, he's got a different concern:

"It is likely that implementing such procedures would inject significant confusion into counterterrorism operations," the White House argued in a Nov. 17 statement.

In other words, a turf battle between the FBI, Homeland Security and the military.

I loved the naïve comment from Sen. Dianne Feinstein: "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."

No, we assassinate via drone instead.

The Democracy Now! guest, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First, made an interesting observation about another motivation for the controversial provision, which was approved by the Armed Services Committee without a hearing:

[I]t extends the transfer restrictions. It means you can’t transfer anyone out of Guantanamo. And the worst thing...is it would prevent the transfer of detainees out of Bagram and Afghanistan. So, we have about 3000 detainees being detained indefinitely in Afghanistan at the Bagram Air Base. Now, the U.S. wants to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. This would make it almost impossible to do that, because you wouldn’t be able to transfer these detainees to Afghanistan because Afghanistan could never meet the conditions that are set out in the bill to accept detainees from the United States.

How convenient. And now we've got Biden over in Iraq, trying to prolong the occupation by leaving behind 3,000 to 4,000 troops under the title of “trainers.”

The message from Washington is clear: The wars must continue at all cost.

Musings: Monday Mix

2011-11-28T08:38:00.001-10:00

This morning's utterly gray and gloomy skies likely won't make it any easier for folks to trudge back to work after a four-day weekend ushered out last evening by a thin moon drifting in a swirl of sunset hues above the mountains.

I always feel a little sorry for tourists who visit this time of year, as so often the weather doesn't serve up the tropical idyll that Hawaii marketing promises. I reflected on this while eating lunch at Anini Beach a few days back, watching visitors gamely spreading their beach towels in a wind so brisk it was blowing the locally-grown greens right off my fork while enroute to my mouth.

Yet still they keep on coming. As The Garden Island reported, quoting a First Hawaiian Bank forecast:

“[T]he snapback in Kaua‘i’s tourism has been strong” and has led Kaua‘i’s economy, with visitor numbers easily topping other islands and the state as a whole. It attributes the gains to strong brand image and a stable time-share segment.

But as economist Ken Stokes, now under contract to the county, notes, although a high visitor count does generate money for the local economy — and right now, it's about the only thing that is — it doesn't appear to stimulate job creation, especially in the hotels.

That's because so many are now staying at the aforementioned timeshares, as well as vacation rentals, both of which generate fewer jobs, typically with no benefits.

Still, in working on an article about “farm-to-table” endeavors on Kauai, it's clear that tourism does help to boost agriculture — except, of course, when ag land is sold to them for second homes, a trend that may be on the decline, seeing as how the island has lost 40 percent of its Realtors.

Visitors also comprise the bulk of those attending farmers' markets — they account for a whopping 75 percent of the traffic at the Waipa market — and many of the veggie farmers count on sales to the high-end restaurants, which are frequented most often by tourists, to help keep them afloat.

Speaking of the high-end restaurants, I've noticed that many have begun using brown, waxed-cardboard boxes for leftovers and take out orders. I don't know how the price compares to the ubiquitous white foam containers, but there's definitely a workable alternative should the County Council see fit to ban the plate lunch boxes that surely clog the landfill to a much higher degree than the now-prohibited plastic shopping bags. And unlike the bags, foam boxes can't be recycled here and are not typically re-used.

I was thinking the other day, while using a fork made from corn to eat the salad purchased from the Lilikoi lunch wagon at Anini, of the massive amounts of trash generated by our relatively new desire/need to eat and drink on the run. But rubbish, whether biodegradable or not, is only part of the story. China alone is producing some 57 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks each year, primarily for export, contributing to the rapid loss of Asian forests.

So now that I know that, why haven't I slipped a pair of non-disposable sticks into my purse, backpack, glove box? Note to self.....

Musings: Bottom Line

2011-11-23T09:09:00.000-10:00

The dogs and I went out walking this morning to find the mountains clear and a breathtaking sky all streaked with orange-red in the east and above that, a pale blue sphere edged on the bottom with the thinnest sliver of gold.

Yes, we're headed toward a new moon tomorrow, another fresh start, and in a similar fashion, the County Council is taking up measures that will be considered by the state Legislature when it reconvenes for a new session in January.

Among them are a resolution calling for a ban on aquarium fish collecting in the state, which the Hawaii County Council approved last month and our Council endorsed last week. And today the Intergovernmental Relations Committee again takes up a resolution proposed by Maui County that would require all genetically engineered foods to be labeled.

It's an issue that's been hotly debated around the world, so it's not surprising that it's generating controversy here, as well as some of the usual bogus arguments spouted by the GMO companies. One of my favorites is that those who produce foods without GMOs are free to label their products as such. Um, yeah, great, except remember how Monsanto, which created the disgusting bovine growth hormone, Prosilac, sued a Maine dairy to prevent it from doing precisely that?

Then there was the perennial claim that requiring such labeling would be burdensome and expensive. I'm sure the same argument was made when food manufacturers had to start disclosing the presence of additives and preservatives, as well as nutritional information. But hasn't that been a good thing?

What it really comes down to is the GMO/chemical companies, like Monsanto, Dow and the rest, are opposed to labeling because they know some consumers won't buy products containing genetically engineered ingredients. If consumers won't buy them, the food industry won't purchase GE crops, which means the farmers won't grow them. And then the chemical companies won't be able to sell their GE seeds and accompanying herbicides and continue to monopolize the world's food supply.

Awww, poor tings dem!

Bottom line: consumers have a right to know what they're eating so they can make a choice.

If the chemical companies think their products are so safe and so great, they should be proud to have that fact disclosed to consumers, instead of fighting labeling tooth and nail.

But even if the Kauai Council joins Maui in passing the resolution, there's still a big battle ahead at the Lege, where the chem companies have a substantial lobbying force and wield a lot of clout, which is why it's been so difficult to get any kind of controls on the GMO seed industry here.

Still, the “neighbor island” counties can have an impact, which is how proposals to protect coffee and taro from genetic engineering have prevailed.

Musings: That Militaristic Ooze

2011-11-22T08:40:00.002-10:00

The rain came heavily in the night, but before it did I had the good fortune of being outside, where I could see Jupiter, Pleiades, Triangle and millions of stars I don't know burning white against a background of endless black.

It's the time of year when white things bloom and fruit: snow bush, pungent noni, naupaka berries, spicy mock orange, musky hinano hanging from hala. It's also the time when workers all around the island, as I observed yesterday, are roping off sections of parking lot that will soon hold imported Christmas trees. A Salvation Army volunteer was already soliciting contributions to the kettle in front of the Big Save in Eleele.

I was out at Kekaha recently, and shocked to see that the Navy still has a miles-long stretch of sandy beach — you know, the land that unquestionably, absolutely for sure belongs to the public, all the way up to the highest seasonal wash of the waves — closed off in front of PMRF.

It's been 10 years since 9-11, and coastal military installations all around the nation have reopened the beaches that front their bases, but for some reason PMRF is still excluding us from our public beach.

“I thought the Navy reopened all this,” I said to the westside friend who had taken me down to that stretch of sand. “Why aren't you guys fighting against the closure?”

“We have been,” he said. “We fought for a long time and they finally reopened part of it. But I think people just got burned out.”

It seems there's another dynamic at work. The base, like the GMO seed companies, is a big employer on the westside, so a lot of folks don't want to speak against it. What's more, some of the local guys who work there apparently have developed a syndrome known as identification with the aggressor, and have tacitly endorsed the closure as a way to keep haole surfers out.

All I saw that evening were local fishermen, who had to turn around at the place where an armed civilian guard sits, 24-7, watching DVDs in an SUV and telling folks who don't already know that the beach is closed, so beat it.

How can PMRF justify this closure? The guys I know who work on the base tell me there's really nothing that sensitive going on there. If that's true, then why close the beach? Equally disturbing is the lack of enforcement action by the State of Hawaii, which leases the land to PMRF. How can the state justify this closure?

Some may dismiss the public's loss of the beach between Kekaha and Polihale as no big deal. After all, there's still plenty of sand on either side and folks can access some points if they get a pass to get onto the base. But it's very important to pay attention to this blatant and ongoing land grab.

Why?

As I reported in a 2007 article on the military's plans for PMRF — an issue that escaped the attention of many Kauai activists, who were instead obsessed with the Superferry — the Navy intends to ooze far beyond the boundaries of PMRF:

Future plans call for extending military activities well beyond the boundaries of the 1,800-acre base. The Navy also wants to test unmanned boats at Kaua’i’s Port Allen and Kikiaola Harbor, install a new antenna at Makaha Ridge, enhance its fiber optics infrastructure at Kokee State Park and add an underwater training area off Niihau.

As the Navy starts stretching out its tentacles, what other accesses and public lands might be lost, temporarily or permanently, on the westside?

While we're on the topic of the Navy, you might be interested to know that it wants to buy the two fast ferries that Austal built for Hawaii Superferry. Well, surprise! surprise! surprise! As the Virginian-Pilot reported yesterday:

The Navy "is working with the U.S. Maritime Administration to permit the transfer of the two high-speed vessels, formerly Hawaii superferries, into the naval service of the United States," Lt. Cmdr. Alana Garas, a Navy spokeswoman, said Friday.

The Maritime Administration took the ferries, the Alakai and the Huakai, in July 2009 after a bankruptcy judge ruled that the owner - Hawaii Superferry Inc. - could abandon them to lenders, who at the time were owed nearly $159 million.

And finally, I'm always blown away by America's blatant hypocrisy, as in the warnings issued to banks in an effort to enforce compliance with sanctions against Iran. As Reuters UK reports:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said any bank that deals with Iran's central bank or other financial institutions runs the risk of supporting Iran's "illicit activities" such as its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism and efforts to evade sanctions.

Ummm, let's not forget that the U.S. is the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons against another country and our reliance on unmanned drones in nations where we are not even at war can most certainly be defined as terrorism — especially by the civilians who are so frequently targeted.

But looking past all the sanctions and saber rattling, is Iran's so-called race to build a bomb even real? As journalist Seymour Hirsch noted in a recent Democracy Now! Interview:

It’s just this—almost the same sort of—I don’t know if you want to call it a "psychosis," but it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously.

I can tell you, there's not much you can do in Iran right now without us finding out something about it. They found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization. In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities for building a bomb. This is simply a fact. We haven’t found it, if it does exist. It’s still a fantasy. We still want to think—many people do think—it does.

He then goes on to tell how the only thing that's different is there's a new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a guy the U.S. pushed hard to put in place, and since he shares our views about Iran, voila, he releases a report to that effect.

It's called propaganda — you know, the same thing we're always accusing other nations of doing — and it has one purpose: to feed that militaristic ooze.

Musings: Something's Missing

2011-11-18T09:58:00.001-10:00

The proposed settlement between OHA and the state over revenues from the so-called “ceded lands” points out the big failing of daily media in Hawaii: it's press release and press conference driven. As a result, it continually reinforces a certain viewpoint that is reflective of government and its agents, but not necessarily the people.

In reading the reports published by Hawaii Reporter, Star-Advertiser, AP and Civil Beat, I was struck by how they all contained essentially the same information, which was provided by the governor's office and OHA.

Not one of the articles included comments from any Hawaiians who are not in government, even though the settlement proposed in 2008 was highly contentious and heavily contested, as I reported in a Honolulu Weekly cover article at the time.

So I'm left wondering, do the reporters who wrote these articles not know any kanaka in the independence movement to call for comment? Or have they just decided that their voices and views don't count?

As a result of their coverage, which is pretty much all that's out there right now, folks are left with the impression that this proposed settlement is "landmark" and the greatest thing since sliced bread — though one email I received likened it to OHA getting one slice while the state keeps the bakery.

The same is true of the Associated Press and Star-Advertiser reports on the Army's successful test flight of a hypersonic weapon, which traveled from PMRF to Kwajalein Atoll in 30 minutes. It's part of the military's plan to develop technology that could deliver a warhead (supposedly nonnuclear) anywhere in the world within an hour.

Both stories are essentially a reprint of the Army's press release. Again, no one sought out an opposing view, even though Kyle Kajihiro of DMZ Hawaii had something interesting to say in a comment posted on the Moana Nui Facebook page:

I would imagine that it can also deliver a nuke warhead. We spoke out against this when the navy did its programmatic eis years ago. At the time there was little to no information abut the hypersonic weapons, so the environmental impact analysis was incomplete. I never saw a supplemental study prior to their actual testing of this weapon. They are using the entire north pacific as their playground.

It's sad, even tragic, that journalism has deteriorated to such a state. Still, there is some humor to be found in the firmly entrenched belief that mainstream media is providing fair and objective reporting.

Musings: Nation of Wimps

2011-11-17T09:46:00.001-10:00

I was driving along yesterday, listening to the radio, when musician Makana came on the air for a live interview.

“You're my hero,” gushed the programmer, echoing the sentiments of thousands who have left comments on the youtube posting of the protest song he sang at last Saturday's dinner for APEC's big cheese, as well as the many web accounts of his subversive action.

I've been fascinated by the response to Makana's decision to sing that song because it again raises the question: why is it so hard for Americans to speak truth to power? Even in, as Makana described his own actions, “a low-key, subliminal way?”

Some have attributed the reticence of locals to speak up to the lingering effects of “plantation mentality,” but that doesn't explain the apparently fear-driven silence among so many on the U.S. mainland.

Henry Curtis broaches the same topic on Disappeared News, recounting a litany of wrongdoings, from the bank bailouts through the atomic tests in the Marshall Islands to Honolulu police surveillance of an interfaith gathering in Waikiki, while repeatedly asking, “where are the voices of passion and justice?”

To be sure, there have been some voices of passion and justice raised; indeed, generalized outrage is largely what's fueling the two-month-old Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to cities around the world.

But even though thousands have recently taken to the streets in America — a pretty paltry number in a nation with more than 300 million citizens, some 46 million of them impoverished — and hundreds have been arrested, for hundreds of thousands more, it's business as usual, even though at least some of them sympathize with the outrage. As BBC news reports:

Gene Williams, a bond trader, joked to the Associated Press that he was "one of the bad guys" but said he empathised with the demonstrators.

"They have a point in a lot of ways," he said. "The fact of the matter is, there is a schism between the rich and the poor and it's getting wider."

Mike Tupea, a taxi driver and Romanian immigrant, had been stuck amid the traffic and protesters for 40 minutes.

"I have to make a living. I pay $100 for 12 hours for this cab. I am losing money every minute,'" he told Reuters. "I have all my sympathies for this movement but let me do my living, let working people make a living."

Yes, the cops have gotten rough. Some “Occupy” protestors have been tear-gassed, and at least two seriously injured from rubber bullets that police fired into the crowds. But we haven't seen anything even close to the seven-month-long lethal crackdown in Syria that has left some 3,000 dead.

Yet Syrian protestors keep returning to the streets, even in the face of death, while folks in the U.S., who risk little or no danger by exercising their First Amendment rights, are thrilled by the daring of a musician who softly sings a protest song at a dinner of big wigs.

How did people get so fearful, in the near-absence of real threats? Or to put it another way, how did a nation founded on revolution produce such wimps?

Which is not to knock Makana, who has used the publicity surrounding his performance to urge people to “speak truth to power," as well they should. Because even those who don't feel comfortable with civil disobedience surely see wrongs every day that could begin to be righted if they would only speak up and out — or as the Quakers would say, bear witness to truth and integrity.

Surely everyone who is feeling uncomfortable about the state of our nation, the course of the world, can find the courage to at least do that.

Musings: Moving Past Fear

2011-11-16T08:38:00.001-10:00

A fat, more-than-half moon was directly overhead and the eastern sky was streaked with red when Koko, Paele and I went out walking this morning. Before us, Waialeale stood as an imposing blue hulk, her flat top visible as white puffy clouds billowed up from the lowlands.

It's decidedly fall, heading toward winter — the time when even folks who like to sleep late can see the sun rise, and the Laysan albatrosses return to Kauai. It struck me, as I drove through Kealia the other day, that this is the first year in 24 that I haven't encountered a dead Newell's on the road. I'd like to think it's because the factors that contribute to the fall out have been controlled, but I believe it's more likely due to the fact that their numbers have dropped so dramatically that there are far fewer left to be killed.

Though I really don't mind getting older, it's sobering to think I've been around long enough to see species disappear, both on this little island and in the rest of the world. But then, at the rate we're going, with humans causing the greatest mass extinction since the demise of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, that's no longer such an anamoly.

I visited a 95-year-old friend of mine yesterday, and she showed me a photograph taken from a Japanese Zero that was preparing to drop bombs on Pearl Harbor. I was struck by how barren the landscape was around the harbor in those days, the massing of truly sitting-duck ships. She had been sent the picture as part of a fundraising appeal from the aviation museum there, in advance of the 70-year-anniversary of the attack.

Wow, 70 years already. I remarked on how World War II had still seemed fresh when I was taking history classes in college during the late '70s and early '80s, and she replied that it was still fresh to her, because she had been in it.

We talked of the recent Veterans Day events, and she reminded me that it had begun as Armistice Day, marking the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when fighting ceased between the Germans and the Allies in the first World War — the “war to end all wars.”

“And there have been so many armistices since then,” she remarked.

Indeed.

It's obvious there will be no war that ends all wars, unless it's a nuclear holocaust that ends us, too. But still, we act as if militarism is the ultimate answer; it's the threat so frequently levied when leaders casually remark that everything — as in killing, maiming, destroying, extinguishing — is still on the table.

I thought about all this as I saw the Star-Advertiser headline reporting news that Ian Lind had broken the day before, about how the Marine Corps plans to dramatically increase airfield use at Kaneohe Bay. It's yet another indication of the ramp-up that reflects Hawaii's ongoing, and increasing, military importance in the Pacific.

Meanwhile, Obama has forged a new security agreement with Australia, even as he claims we're not afraid of China.

Well, then, what — aside from medical marijuana, just about everybody in Pakistan and all those people still occupying public places — are we afraid of?

How do we move past that fear?

And I recalled the words of shamanic healer and teacher Sandra Ingerman: “It is not what we do that changes the world, but who we become.”

Musings: A Different Sort of Future

2011-11-13T12:22:00.000-10:00

After checking out the garden, which is chugging along on nature's cruise control, juiced up on interspersions of rain and sun, the dogs and I headed down to the sea. It was a shimmering expanse of sparkle, with big, white-frothed waves repeating the pattern they've perfected over countless eons: open and shut, open and shut.

And as I sat there, lulled by the shush and the boom, I got to musing about the very different world views reflected in events surrounding the APEC meeting, and what sort of future each would usher in, should it prevail.

First, there was Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's speech, with its ominous reference to "the Participation Age, where every individual, regardless of gender or other characteristics, is poised to be a contributing and valued member of the global marketplace” and equally ominous pledge to "systematically and relentlessly pursue more economic opportunity in our [?] lands" and beef up America's military presence in a vast area that extends "from the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas:"

One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in this region."

“After a decade in which we invested immense resources in these two theaters [Iraq and Afghanistan], we have reached a pivot point. We now can redirect some of those investments to opportunities and obligations elsewhere. And Asia stands out as a region where opportunities abound.”

"A more broadly distributed military presence provides vital advantages, both in deterring and responding to threats, and in providing support for humanitarian missions."

"What will happen in Asia in the years ahead will have an enormous impact on our nation's future. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and leave it to others to determine our future for us."

And then there was the earnest antithesis to Clinton's comments articulated in the statement produced from the three-day indigenous-led Moana Nui conference, the antithesis to APEC:

We, the peoples of moana nui, connected by the currents of our ocean home, declare that we will not cooperate with the commodification of life and land as represented by APEC's predatory capitalistic practices, distorted information and secret trade negotiations and agreements.

We invoke our rights to free, prior and informed consent. We choose cooperative trans-Pacific dialogue, action, advocacy, and solidarity between and amongst the peoples of the Pacific, rooted in traditional cultural practices and wisdom. E mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono. A mama. Ua noa.

It was bolstered, inadvertently, but just as earnestly, by Makana's artistic/political statement at APEC's gala world leaders dinner last night. Once on stage, he opened his suit jacket to reveal the words OCCUPY WITH ALOHA written on a tee-shirt, and for 45 minutes played different versions of a strongly worded protest song, “We are the Many,” he'd released earlier that day. A few sample lyrics:

Ye come here gather round the stage-- the time has come for us to voice our rage – against the ones who trapped us in a cage --to steal from us the value of our wage

From underneath the vestiture of law --the lobbyists at Washington do gnaw – at liberty the bureaucrats guffaw --and until they are purged we won't withdraw

We'll occupy the streets --we'll occupy the courts --we'll occupy the offices of you – until you do --the bidding of the many not the few

In a separate video, released after the show, he discussed his song choice:

It was an incredible experience to sing those words to that group of people.

I found it odd that I was afraid to do it at first. I found that disturbing. I didn't like the idea of being afraid to sing a song I created. If that's what we've come to in the world, where we're afraid to say certain things in the company of certain people, I think that's a dangerous place to be. And so for me to move out of that space I had to sing the song, and that's what I did.

So what if we, the many, all dropped our fear and sang our songs, our truth, our longing for a different sort of future than the same-old-same-old pitched by APEC and its participants?

Musings: Choose Love

2011-11-11T09:26:00.001-10:00

Driving along the Kapaa bypass last night, full moon on my right, dense clouds and rain on my left, looking, hoping, for a moonbow crowning the Giant, though none appeared. Just as I arrived home, the rain overtook the moon and each time I awoke from sleep — or perhaps that is what woke me — I heard it drumming on the roof, splattering against the window, pouring from the eaves.

It's the season of rainy weather, and so of rats trying to come inside to stay dry. Paele is out on the screen porch, whining and circling the washing machine, beneath which a rat may very well be hiding, but it ain't coming out so long as Paele is there, and he won't leave unless I drag him away.

And so they continue their game of hide and seek, in much the same scenario that is being carried out on battlefields around the world.

It's Veterans Day, and though I hate war, I have nothing but respect and compassion for the men and women sent, willingly or not, to risk or give or mess up their lives fighting for causes that generally have nothing to do with truth, justice and the spread of democracy, even though that's how they're invariably packaged.

In his remarks at an Arlington Cemetery ceremony, Obama, ignoring the blood on his hands, proclaimed: "The tide of war is receding."

Would that it were true. But even as he ends the occupation of Iraq, mostly because they're kicking us out, we are stepping up drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and god knows where else, and pouring billions into a vague “war on terror” even as programs that benefit veterans and others are slashed.

In light of all that, it's interesting to note that on this day of honoring warriors, we're also observing the date 11-11-11, which in metaphysical circles is seen as extremely significant, since 11 in numerology is a master number. As The Cosmic Path describes it:

We are all here in this lifetime, at this point in time and space on this planet, to master our lower selves and evolve into more enlightened beings. It’s why we’re here and here we are. We are getting it, at last, that it is a group consciousness, made up of individual aspects of the oneness. Step into Love today, which is another way of saying step into your Self, because from here on in it will be a different world.

I don't know if a line up of the numbers actually can initiate change, but certainly, change is needed, and as I see it, part of “getting it” is honoring and supporting the re-emergence of the feminine. And here's one good reason, articulated in an article about why all those coaches and Penn State officials failed to call the cops when they learned of allegations that Sandusky was abusing young boys:

Also, female groups tend to connect around doing the right thing. “When women get together,” says [Harvard Medical School associate clinical professor William] Pollack, “they assess what the right or best thing is, and then decide as a group how to accomplish it.

“But male groups bond by suppressing shame and promoting the idea that their group is invulnerable,” he continues. “So their focus is on one another and not—in this case—the victim.”

In light of that alone, wouldn't you rather see women run the world — or at least have equal standing in it? Which is not to knock men, just some of the systems they've created, largely because they've been conditioned and programmed, like all of us, to behave certain ways.

But that which has been layered on can be peeled off.

So when I set my intention, both personal and planetary, on this potentially portentious day — because why not behave as if our thoughts matter? — it will be to peel off the layers that prevent us from choosing love.

And on that note, let me leave you with an amazing little video that serves as a good reminder to keep looking up.

Musings: Sparkling, And Not

2011-11-09T09:38:00.000-10:00

Heavy downpours in the night left puddles in the road for Koko, Paele and me to skirt as we took our morning walk beneath a sky that was trying to brighten even as dark clouds were rolling in. And sure enough, rain began falling while the sun was out, making the whole world sparkle.

Similarly, some sparkling bits of news have emerged amid the usual dark doom and gloom. Mississippi voters rightly rejected a Constitutional amendment that defined life as a fertilized egg, which would have greatly restricted women's rights and opened the door to a serious attack on Roe vs Wade.

I'm also glad that those who protected the perp in the Penn State young boy sex scandal are going down. Most people have no idea just how devastating sexual abuse is to the victim. And it's great that more women are finding the courage to speak up about sexual harassment from GOP President candidate Herman Cain, despite the usual backlash that further victimizes them.

Uncomfortably closer to home, I've learned our planning department is facing its own allegations of sexual harassment from a female employee currently on administrative leave. Or in other words, her career is on indefinite hold. So now we've got allegations of sexism and racism plaguing that department. What's it gonna to take to clean that place up?

In the meantime, the county Planning Commission, at the recommendation of Director Mike Dahilig, denied appeals by three ag land vacation rental owners whose applications were initially turned down as incomplete. Their attorney, blogger Charley Foster, missed the deadline for filing an appeal, arguing that the clock should have started ticking when the denial letter was postmarked, rather than signed. That may be legit, but still, if you had any doubt about the deadline at all, wouldn't you check, rather than make an assumption?

None of the three applicants live on island, and at least one bought the property recently, which underscores the objection that many of us have to so many of the ag TVRs: they have nothing to do with supporting local farm families and everything to do with commercial investments for mainlanders.

The Garden Island has Dahilig saying “only” 81 ag TVR owners had applied by the Aug. 16 deadline, which doesn't sound like a lot — until you consider that we had only 48 farms growing veggies and only 45 producing taro, according to the most recent (2009) Dept. of Ag stats. And how many ag TVR owners do you suppose didn't even bother to apply, because they figured, quite reasonably, given the county's history, that the likelihood of getting busted for their illegal operation was pretty darn slim?

Getting back to national news, it's obvious the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is having some impact on both voters and the media, with Reuters publishing an article that outlines just how the 1% have been able to accumulate so much more wealth than the rest of us:

Income inequality couldn't be more of a mainstream issue as some 70 percent of Americans surveyed want wealth shared more equally.

The reasons for the growing disparity, which the CBO [Congressional Budget Office], without irony, measured by an increasing "Gini coefficient," were buried deep in the report. It's how income was taxed that allowed the ultra-wealthy to keep more of what they earned compared to middle- or lower-class Americans.

Of course, fixing that disparity becomes more challenging when you consider that so many federal legislators are part of that 1 percent, with the 10 richest members of Congress — all of whom voted to extend the Bush tax cuts — worth an estimated $2.8 billion, according to a report in Mother Jones.

And finally, I was amused to read a report from a former Navy SEAL who rejects just about everything in the official account of how Osama bin Laden was killed. So if we can't believe the Obama Administration's story of how he was killed, how can we, in the absence of any sort of documented proof, reasonably believe that they took him down at all?

Or to borrow an old line from Pink Floyd: “Haven't you heard, it's a battle of words, and most of them are lies?”

Musings: Best of the Worst

2011-11-07T08:46:00.000-10:00

Out in the night, watching Jupiter chasing a waxing moon across a star-dappled sky, clouds drifting lazily over the mountains, where the waterfalls have grown thick and vivid from a week of heavy rain, which returned this morning for another hard soaking before the dogs and I got up and walked in the yellow light — oh yes, the sun! — as thunder rolled in the distance.

Everything looks so vibrant, lush, alive — except the civilians the U.S. keeps killing with its not-so-secret drone attacks in Pakistan, our latest undeclared war. As Democracy Now! reports, the most recent victims are a 16-year-old boy, who attended an anti-drone meeting to learn how to document civilian casualties from strikes near his home, and his 12-year-old cousin.

I don't think most Americans have any idea how widely drones are being used, and how many people, including civilians and kids, are being killed. As journalist Pratap Chatterjee reports:

[I]n every village around Mir Ali, Miranshah, there are drones, often 24 hours a day.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where I work, has created a database of everybody that has been killed since these drone strikes began a number of years ago under Bush. Eighty-five percent of them have taken place under Barack Obama. And we have used the most conservative counting methodology that we can. It has to be reported by multiple sources. And using that methodology, we have counted over 2,300 people that have been killed, and as many as 3,000. Waheed Khan, age 12, and Tariq Aziz, age 16, were the 174th and 175th documented child casualties in this war.

Yet another example — and I've been meaning to post this one, about how the Obama Administration is cracking down on state medical marijuana dispensaries, even though he promised he wouldn't, by going after media outlets, including California's few remaining independent newspapers, that advertise the clinics — of how Obama isn't much different than Bush, except he vacations in Hawaii.

The Prez will be here again this week as part of the APEC meetings, which include not just the leaders of some 20 Pacific nations, but top-ranking business executives from the region, too. As a report in the Star-Advertiser noted:

"The summit is unlike any other event in the world, allowing senior business executives to engage with world leaders and have an immediate impact on economic policy decisions," [APEC 2011 US Host Committee Monica] Whaley said in a statement. "These discussions move markets."

In other words, Hawaii residents are paying millions for security measures, and enduring road and beach closures, though fortunately not drone attacks, so government and industry can do its usual back-slapping, glad-handing, arm-twisting, palm-greasing lobbying and deal-making in safety, comfort and style.

Aurai! We're so blessed!

Meanwhile, even though most citizens remain clueless about APEC and how globalization adversely impacts the masses and the aina, the high muckety-mucks are getting a tiny bit worried that the struggling peasants may wake up and pick up pitch forks:

"In the context of APEC, I would argue that the major problem we are facing this year is the increase of this disparity in income between the rich and the poor," [UH APEC Studies Center Director Tung] Bui said. "This is not only happening in the developing countries like China and Vietnam and the Philippines, but also in the United States."

He added that he expects that, in their declaration on economic growth, leaders will recognize "that growth has got to be inclusive for everyone -- there should be a fair share for the rich and the poor as well."

By George, that's it! Just make a bigger pie! Because even though we live on a planet with finite resources, and our back is right up against the resource-depleted, global-warming wall, we can just grow right out of the depression, grow right out of the inequity, keep on growing forever, right?

Is that the best that the supposedly best minds in government and business can give us?

Musings: Beliefs

2011-11-05T10:39:00.000-10:00

The thunder rumbles, cracks, rolls on. Koko paces and pants nervously, her tongue dripping like the eaves outside as the mid-morning sky slowly brightens to a lighter shade of gray.

A virgin garden bed, freshly fluffed in the pale silver-pink of last evening's dusk, lies open to the nitrogen-fixing effects of lightning, awaiting the seeds that I will sprinkle upon it at some point this day.

It's been just nine weeks since I planted the first seeds in the first bed — one bed has grown to six, each progressively larger — and yesterday I completed one full cycle: pulling up the scraggly survivors of that original arugula crop, adding them to the compost heap, returning compost to the soil.

In the first light of day, I walk through the garden, pulling weeds as I go, checking on everyone and everything. Tiny beans hang from pink-flowered vines, cucumber tendrils reach out to the kale and must be re-directed to the trellis, daikon greens shoot out flamboyantly, encroaching on the green onions. I pull back the honohono grass and the strangling vine that snakes into the soft, fertile soil of the taro trench, re-establishing the always fluid border between wild and tended.

We humans aren't the only ones to go for the easy pickin's, sprawl, intrude on territory inhabited by others so they must struggle harder to survive.

Later, I look out my window through steady rain at my garden, go on-line, browse the news sites, feel the conflict, the polarization, recoil, and think of a recent conversation with a friend, who remarked, “People defend their beliefs like they are their children.”

It strikes me that I have an awful lot of kids; which ones are truly worthy of defending? And will any, if given an equal quantity of tending, yield a bounty equal to the plants in my garden?

The thunder rolls on.

Musings: Miraculous

2011-11-02T19:34:00.001-10:00

It's been the best kind of day, as in dominated by rain, and I had the chance to really watch it, falling straight, with spaces between the drops, floating in through the bamboo, creeping past the peaks of Makaleha. The sounds were mostly drips, and in the distance, the river, rushing ever more loudly, and much nearer, the birds, which chirped as they took cover during the heaviest showers and chirped when they returned, in the lull times, to feast on the insects and worms that must surface, or drown.

The dogs and I followed the pattern of the birds: taking cover in the screen porch, which though technically inside, feels almost outside, when the rain came; walking among the glistening plants, atop the quenched, nourished soil, in the short spells when it departed.

During one of the taking cover times, Farmer Jerry called — people who really love the rain call each other on days like this, to share in the exultation — and somehow we got to talking about how it's hard to be an atheist when confronted with a seed, especially on a day such as this, when everything is so alive and thriving. And from there it was an easy enough segue into how the legendary six days of creation did not end on the seventh, but continue each and every day, an ongoing miracle evident to anyone with a farm or garden or connection to things that grow.

I am a believer in miracles — the kind that grow, the kind we can't explain or barely understand, the kind that change people, upend beliefs and their associated systems.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in saying it feels like the world is waiting for a miracle, a paradigm-busting event on the scale of discovering the earth rotates around the sun, an atom can be split. It's gotta be something really major, seeing as how the global economy is teetering, the planet is warming, the population is skyrocketing, solutions are scarce, our collective will is weak.

But what if there isn't any savior out there who's gonna give us the answers, and instead, it's up to every one of us doing something really daring, like living as if each time we witness someone having an emotion, taking an action, the very same neurons that are firing in them, are firing in us, too?

Because they are. We're that alike, that interconnected.

What sort of profound impact do you suppose it would have on how we treat one another, behave in the world, heck, choose what to watch on TV, if we really, truly understood that dynamic?

Perhaps nothing short of miraculous?

Musings: Image Problems

2011-11-01T09:34:00.001-10:00

The dogs and I managed to slip out for a walk this morning beneath a smattering of stars, between showers, which were looming in a black, billowy mass at the end of the street and resumed shortly after we returned to the house and then turned heavy in a winter-weather sort of way.

Flashlight in hand, I checked my car, where a rat had been captured the night before. It must've been in the bin of junk mail, which I'd carried from a shed out to the car that morning along with a pile of cardboard, enroute to the recycling center. Paele started sniffing around, and then I saw a flash of gray scuttling between the seats and he went nuts, madly pawing at the space beneath the glovebox where the rat had taken refuge. I left my doors open for the rest of the day, hoping it would leave, but it didn't, and since I couldn't bear the thought of driving my car with a live rat inside, I called a friend to bring over some traps after work.

Meanwhile, I found the empty, half-gallon plastic bottle at the bottom of the recycling bin where the rat, apparently pregnant, had made a comfy nest of leaves and torn bits of newspaper. And while I was sad that the rat hadn't escaped, I was glad not to have a litter of rat babies in either my car or shed.

Perhaps it was the thought of rat babies that led me to read the AP article about a pregnant woman's “horrifying experience” at a Honolulu Safeway, where she and her husband were arrested, and their toddler taken into protective custody overnight, after failing to pay for $5 worth of sandwiches eaten while shopping.

What struck me most, though, were the comments that were posted, with readers talking about how expensive Hawaii is, how stupid the state is and how racist the people are. One person noted that if the woman had been local, they would've congratulated her on her pregnancy and given her another sandwich.

Hawaii clearly has an image problem, because how many times have you heard the same complaints, or perhaps even voiced them yourself — anonymously, or privately, of course? We sometimes even see these simmering animosities taken to the extreme, like the Anahola man who allegedly chased down and punched out a visitor who had passed his car on the road.

Yet these deep-seated issues are regularly swept under the table, with the thought that if we just spend more on promoting tourism, if we just try to cast Hawaii in the most favorable possible light, no one will notice all the ways in which “paradise” is rough around the edges.

Elected officials like Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle play right into this. In response to citizen complaints about security measures that will block public access to public places during the upcoming APEC meeting, he was his characteristically callous and dismissive self. As The Associated Press reports:

"Even though we live in Hawaii, where the sun is shining and it's beautiful, there are some people who grumble every day," Carlisle said in an interview Friday.

"It's very clear to virtually all of the leaders in the entire state that APEC is a golden opportunity that we have to be extremely thankful to President Obama for affording us," Carlisle said.

And if takes spending millions on excessive security measures, ridding the city of its hordes of homeless — temporarily, of course — and making parts of Waikiki look like it was hit by a neutron bomb so that the delegates with their questionable business dealings can feel comfortable and Honolulu looks good on TV, well, that's what they're going to do.

Still, I can't help but think that one resident had it right when she suggested they could have met instead on one of the island's many military bases. Heck, they occupy some of the most beautiful beach fronts in Hawaii, and have lots of experience in keeping people, especially protestors, out.

Musings: More Trick Than Treat

2011-10-31T09:41:00.000-10:00

It's mostly murky at both the six o'clocks now, as darkness extends its reach into either end of the day. But dark is good for Halloween, the time of the year when the veil between the realms is thinnest, our shadow sides closest to the surface, daring us to take a good, long look — it it a trick or treat?

I couldn't find a pumpkin to carve into a jack-o-lantern yesterday, though bags of junky candy were plentiful. I heard the other day that Americans eat 135 pounds of sugar each year — nearly a third of a pound each day. That's way, way up from the 15 pounds a year consumed in 1830, and off the charts when you think of how humans evolved without any refined sweeteners. It is it any wonder that obesity, diabetes and cancer are rampant?

And soon much of that sugar will come from sugar beets that have been genetically engineered to withstand direct applications of Roundup. Still, that's not the only sweet trick ahead for human guinea pigs. Monsanto also plans to start selling genetically modified sweet corn — its first GE product developed specifically for consumers, to be sold unlabeled, of course, to the unsuspecting.

As I suspected would be the case, the mayor's pick, Mike Dahilig, has been confirmed as planning director. I was heartened to learn that Mike is keenly interested in food security and is actually taking some enforcement actions against vacation rentals. Still, I couldn't help but feel profound dismay in reading The Garden Island's account of his appointment:

Commissioner Hartwell Blake said Tuesday that in the numerous discussions among commissioners, there was a feeling that perhaps they should have advertised for the position, because the perfect candidate could have been “out there.”

Blake said it would have been nice if a “perfect candidate” was really out there, but the commissioners will never know.

Ah, yes, there are so many things that planning commissioners will never know, because they just don't ask.

I asked Police Chief Darryl Perry to respond to a rumor I'd heard, that he'd directed the cops to stop confiscating driver's licenses, badges and license plates issued by the Reinstated Hawaiian Nation and Kingdom of Atooi. His response: “Absolutely not.”

As he sees it, such items are evidence, and so must be confiscated in order to prove the alleged crime, be it driving without a license or registration, or impersonating an officer. Needless to say, he did not agree with Judge Watanabe's ruling ordering the cops to return Dayne Gonsalves' Kingdom of Atooi marshal badge, a decision that's been sent up to the Intermediate Court of Appeals.

Meanwhile, I heard that some Kingdom members had used their badges to try and get money from the westside seed companies, claiming they were using their land, which is not entirely far-fetched, since some of the firms do lease the so-called “ceded lands,” though naturally they balked, as they're already paying the state. And I also heard that some Kingdom members had demanded folks pay $35 to park on “their land” at the Andy Irons funeral, and that some unsuspecting motorists complied. Now, that sort of trick does not build sympathy for a cause.

Fittingly, Halloween 2011 has been chosen as the day when the Earth's population of humans — a species with seemingly infinite demands — hits 7 billion, a milestone that's gotta be more trick than treat for a planet with finite resources and countless other species.

It's a strange world we've created, what with genetically altered plant and animal organisms being regularly introduced into the biosphere, to what end we do not know. And now the corporations are moving on to humans. As Democracy Now! reports, “In the past 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on [human] genes alone—many more patents are pending.”

So what to think and do about it all?

Just the other day, I was listening to a New Dimensions interview with neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, who spoke about human evolution, and how initially, those who were fearful and irritable were more likely to survive.

But though circumstances in our environment have greatly changed, our responses have not. We're still reacting in the same old way, living in a state of chronic sympathetic over-activation and arousal that no longer serves us well, Dr. Hanson argues. Instead, it works to depress the immune system and prompts the release of excessive stress hormones, which harm our cardiovascular and digestive systems.

A few simple actions — consciously undertaken — can help us move out of old reactionary behaviors, he says. These include yawning, touching our lips and exhaling, all of which create “a felt sense of safety,” he says.

I've found that getting out in the garden has a similar effect, with the added benefits of fresh veggies, physical exercise, greater connectedness with the natural world and a profound sense of satisfaction.

"The currents of society are pushing against us,” Dr. Hanson says. “If we want to be healthy and happy, we have to swim against the tide. We have to decide, I want to be a hammer rather than a nail."

Musings: Fair Play

2011-10-27T08:37:00.001-10:00

I couldn’t wait to get back to my garden, where a bed was waiting beneath a blanket of banana leaves, and last evening, taking advantage of the ideal planting conditions of a Scorpio new moon, I peeled back the covers and thrust my digging fork into the soft, dark ground. A shama thrush perched nearby, waiting to pluck insects and worms from the newly fluffed soil, and just as I finished covering the seeds, the rain came and did the watering, returning with another nourishing sprinkle in the golden light of dawn.

I was off-island when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rightly rapped KIUC/Free Flow Power for claim jumping on the Westside. A lot of people thought KIUC wasn’t playing fair when it sought permits to study hydro on the same irrigation ditches that Pacific Light and Power, a locally-owned firm, was already trying to develop. What's more, the move spoke volumes about the utility’s insensitivity.

Yet even after receiving such a solid slapdown, KIUC apparently still plans to push ahead. As Vanessa Van Voorhis reports in today’s The Garden Island:

KIUC CEO David Bissell said the co-op will continue to pursue member-owned hydropower on the ditches despite FERC’s ruling and PLP’s license. He called FERC’s “claim-jumping” comment “an unfortunate choice of words” and added that KIUC has been pursuing hydro on the ditches since 2001. When asked in what way, he said through assessments.

The article goes on to state:

[Bissell] said the primary reason “we went down the FERC road” was the co-op didn’t want to spend a lot of member’s money doing site feasibility studies and end up competing with other energy developers for the same site.

So why in the world would KIUC continue to pursue projects on those particular ditches, knowing that it’s directly competing with PLP, and lacks support from FERC? There’s something stinky here.

As for the “claim jumping” comment, well, it may be unfortunate, but it’s true. As I reported back on June 27, it’s Free Flow’s MO to gobble up permits willy-nilly, even some that compete with other developers. In fact, it got so bad on the lower Mississippi River that FERC had to step in and stop it.

People recognize unfairness when they see it, which is why the "Occupy/99%" movement continues to gain ground. As the Associated Press reports:

The distribution of wealth in the United States is among the most unequal among industrialized nations, according to a study by the independent Bertelsmann Foundation, based in Gutersloh, Germany.

The United States ranked in the bottom five on a combination of issues including poverty prevention, health and access to education — ahead of only Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey — according to the study on social justice in the 31 developed nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Distribution of wealth in the United States is the most unequal among the nations examined, with more than 17 percent below the poverty line. Of those living below the poverty line in the U.S., some 21.6 percent of them are children, who also suffer from a lack of access to equal education, it showed.

Meanwhile, as Democracy Now! reported:

A new congressional study has found the incomes for the wealthiest one percent of Americans nearly tripled over the last three decades, far outpacing income growth for all other groups. Between 1979 and 2007, the average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent for the wealthiest Americans. Income grew by just 40 percent for middle-class Americans during the same period.

The study also found the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans made more money in 2007 than the rest of the country combined.

Mother Jones magazine has also published a number of charts that graphically depict the glaring inequality.

So I think Glenn Greenwald summed it up best when he noted:

"What this movement is about is more important than specific legislative demands. It…is expressing dissent to the system itself. It is saying that we believe the system itself is radically corrupted, and we no longer are willing to tolerate it. And that’s infinitely more important than specific legislative or political demands."

You know dat. To borrow a quote from Albert Einstein: ““We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Musings: True Equality

2011-10-26T08:08:00.000-10:00

I returned yesterday from California, where one might find a sign in an elevator advising that it contains materials known to cause cancer in humans, which raises such questions as, why, then, are they still using that stuff, and what am I supposed to do it about it now that I’m enclosed in this toxic box?

I was reminded, after engaging in some limited commerce there, that Hawaii lawmakers have not yet begun to tax: the general sales tax is nearly 9 percent, though it’s not applied to groceries, and the rental car bill included such charges as a "daily ff fee” of $4.50, a tourism fee of $5.17, a concession recovery fee of $20.78, a customer facility charge of $10 and, of course, sales tax.

On the other hand, the park bathrooms were clean and stocked with toilet paper, even those getting heavy use, and at one beach, a sign reminded folks that the water they were using came from creeks used by fish, so please conserve.

I’m all for getting people to think about how our behavior impacts other species, which is why I enjoyed writing an article about Robin Torquati, a Kilauea woman who raises organic garden starts and is “into befriending plants.” As she observed:

”People look at plants as a lower life form. They aren’t. They’re equals. They evolved alongside humans. They’re complex organisms. They give us air to breath, for starters, and they feed us. And they’re way more ready for any climate change than we are.”

People also tend to look down on animals, as if that isn’t what we human beings are, too. At the conference, I heard some scientists giving the usual rap about how only big-brained mammals are capable of empathy, emotion and communication, though one guy noted that slime mold, an organism lacking a nervous system, is able to efficiently navigate a maze to reach food. Another spoke of the sea squirt, a creature that begins life as an animal, then devours its brain and turns into a plant, which might be a worthy aspiration for we thought-mired humans.

And it struck me, as it did when I reported on plans to relocate nene to the equivalent of concentration camps on the other islands and to put monk seals from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands through the same kind of forced relocation suffered by numerous Indian tribes, that our wildlife management actions are so frequently governed by the paternalistic attitude of we know best. Or more accurately, we know what’s convenient and desirable for us.

The dismissive language that was used by some in the meeting about the nene relocation — “they’re just geese, after all” and “they make such a mess with their poop” — is not unlike the language used by aggressors in World War II and modern day Afghanistan — “they’re only Poles, Jews and dirty towel heads, after all.”

And the patronizing language used in describing the monk seal translocations — “these are hardy, curious animals that can easily adapt to new surroundings” — was not unlike the language used in moving Native Americans thousands of miles from their homelands: “these people are savages. They can live anywhere.”

Where did we get the idea, which I believe is patently false, that humans beings — members of a young, upstart, destructive species unable to live in harmony with its environment — are at the top of the evolutionary ladder?

Maybe one day we’ll give other animals, plants and even rocks the credit they’re due, just as we're slowly beginning to treat women and other ethnic groups with more (though sometimes grudging) respect. And just as we once believed blacks and women weren't capable of casting an intelligent vote and newborns weren’t aware of their surroundings and couldn’t feel the pain of circumcision, we’ll come to understand that other inhabitants of Earth also have consciousness.

After all, if the universe is comprised solely of energy, are we really so different in the beginning, or the end?

Musings: And Contemplations

2011-10-24T05:46:00.001-10:00

A white crescent moon floated in a barely brightening sky edged with wisps and swirls turning the faintest pink when I went walking this morning, still in the land of my youth. Canada geese and ducks lifted off from a lagoon and flocks of squawking crows flew down from the rounded brown hillsides that are such a contrast to Kauai's jagged green peaks. In the distance, I watched a hawk whirl suddenly and dive, perhaps scoring its first meal of the day.

I've been attending a conference on Science and Nonduality while also visiting some of the Sonoma and Marin County beaches and redwood groves that have always shone as bright spots in my childhood memories. They're more beautiful than I remembered, though my childhood home, now occupied by others, is much smaller than I recalled. I haven't been in this area since 1979, and while some parts have changed beyond recognition, others are much the same, like me.

My head is filled with facts, speculations, musings, theories, contemplations -- some of them my own, some of them voiced by others. We're all trying to make some sense out of the world and our places in it as we wrestle with such weighty concerns as the nature of time, existence, reality, and how to blend -- and for some, whether to blend -- a spiritual practice with activism.

Even in a conference devoted to exploring nonduality, we take sides: some advocate engaging fully in life, while others tend toward passivity, taking the position that nothing we do matters in a universe where free will is an illusion. I'm far more inclined toward the former than the latter, though thinking more in terms of how to effect change without simultaneously beating my head against a brick wall.

It will take a while for me to sift through it all, but a few things I've heard stick with me, earning a special, easy-to-find place in my notebook:

"It takes a lot of courage to live in the world today and not just be a dream head, totally asleep."

"Denial, as in don't even know I am lying."

And my favorite: "It's important for people to know there's another reality besides the official one."

Musings: Notable

2011-10-20T08:02:00.001-10:00

I arrived late last night in California, and as the plane approached the airport, it struck me that the stars here are on the ground, in the form of countless lights, rather than in the sky. Still, I did see a few glowing up above in the darkness of an eight-lane freeway little traveled at that hour, and driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, which glowed orange in the fog-trapped light, was a chicken skin experience.

Anyway, I'm a little disoriented, so I'll direct you to a few items of note, starting with The Garden Island's coverage of a breakfast meeting with U.S. Senate candidate Linda Lingle, the former guv who so endeared herself to Kauai during the Superferry fiasco. I found this revelation rather intriguing:

She said the national debt has to be brought under control, but PMRF has to be funded. At a time when the federal government is looking at major cuts in the military, PMRF should be preserved, she said. The base sits in a strategic location, brings roughly $50 million to the local economy and employs about 900 people.

PMRF’s location, she said, is crucial for protecting Asian countries in case of war. It affects the entire world, because if the Asian countries can not grow in a peaceful world the global economy will not be able to recover, she added.

Oh, really? PMRF is Asia's police man? And we're supposed to believe that having a base like that here doesn't make our island a target?

While we're on the topic of questionable land uses, I want to point you to an article I wrote for the Honolulu Weekly on the Public Land Development Corp. This new state entity has a lot of power and bears watching. As I report, in part:

Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to approve the Public Land Development Corp. (PLDC), which was billed as a way to generate revenue for the cash-strapped Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) by privatizing state land, buildings and resources.

But Act. 55 “is so far reaching that it opens up opportunities for abuse” and could trigger a development rush similar to the one that followed statehood, says Marti Townsend, executive director of KAHEA, an alliance of Hawaiian and environmental interests.

Leases and the proposed transfer of land and development rights from the state to private entities will have just one hearing before the Board of Land and Natural Resources...

The bill passed with very little public attention, but I wasn't concerned until I watched the video of the legislative briefing held by Sens. Malama Solomon and Donovan Dela Cruz, who spearheaded the bill. They were pretty much licking their chops as they spoke about using the PLDC to create density around high-speed rail stations and spark the development of state harbors, rural areas and geothermal energy. It became clear that they, and likely other lawmakers and their developer cronies, have their pet projects that will be pushed right through.

Another big issue is how these long term leases and land transfers could affect the so-called "ceded lands" that comprise the bulk of the state's holdings.

And finally, if you've got some spare time on Saturday morning, join the Surfrider folks in removing a discared fishing net at Moloaa Bay. I participated in one of their "net patrols" at a favorite beach in Anahola, and found it to be one of the most rewarding conservation activities I'd ever done. It reminded me of just how powerful a group of people can be, and how effective, when they're working together toward a common goal. No meetings, no hierarchy, just action and immediate results.

You can learn more about it by reading the article I posted on forkauaionline.com It's a really cool concept, because the nets that are collected are burned to make electricity on Oahu.

Musings: Speaking Up

2011-10-17T09:02:00.000-10:00

It was all gold and glimmery in the east when the dogs and I went walking this morning, providing light enough to find our way, though the world was still predominantly dark, and I thought of how the night before, even a sprinkling of stars had provided ample illumination to navigate.

So it is as we try to dig our way out of this deep socio-economic hole.....

Before I headed out to cover Saturday's “Occupy” event on Kauai, I was talking on the phone to a friend who lives in Tijuana. From his vantage point in that hard scrabble border town, the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” movement isn’t especially inspiring.

“Their message is inchoate, but what it sounds like to me is they want a bigger piece of the pie — a pie that is already unjust,” he observed. “It’s like receiving stolen goods. I keep waiting to hear what they’re willing to do without to achieve justice on a global scale. Because even the poorest American has so much compared to others in the world, and that insatiable appetite is what’s feeding America’s wars. I still have that button you gave me years ago. It’s right here, glued to my desk: Materialism breeds militarism.”

A baby boomer friend had a similar perspective when I talked to him the next day. “In the 60s, the message was, ‘you can keep it all, I refuse to be party to the machine.’ Now it’s, ‘we want a piece of the action.’ Philosophically, it’s very different.”

I thought about that when I saw a graphic on Facebook that said something to the effect of “show Wall Street what you really think, do your holiday shopping at a small neighborhood merchant.”

Mmmm, yeah, but what about don’t do any holiday shopping at all? Or donate the money you would have spent to a famine relief organization or some other worthy cause?

Because yes, there’s a huge income disparity in this country, but there’s also a huge income disparity between Americans/Western Europeans and the rest of the world, like the Congolese enduring violence and earning a dollar a day to mine the coltan needed for our cell phones and computers. Btw, here’s a link to a very engaging video series on just that.

Still, I’m always glad to see people standing up and speaking out, because it’s empowering to link up with like-minded folks and be reminded you’re not alone in recognizing that the system needs a major overhaul, even if you’re not yet entirely sure how to pull it off.

Unfortunately, the county Ethics Commission would not let Councilman Mel Rapazo speak at all when he came before them with his complaint about the possible conflict of interest in the relationship between the Salary Commission, Boards and Commission’s Administrator John Isobe and Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s administration. I gave more details on the issue in my Sept. 30 post.

The matter was scheduled for the Ethic Commission’s meeting last Friday, but as Mel noted in an email when I asked him how it went:

It didn't go well. Deputy County Attorney interrupted the start of the meeting and advised the Board to not allow my matter to be heard because it would be a violation of the Charter. She advised them that I was using the review process to file a complaint, and that all complaints should be heard in exec session. This was a strategy to stop me from exposing the corruption. After an hour of discussion by the members, I was not allowed to testify on a publicly posted item. They said that they would defer the matter to a special meeting but the fact remains that they violated the Sunshine Law by not allowing me to testify on a matter that was properly posted. Simply unbelievable. I will be taking action on this, probably through a private attorney. The good news is that the entire fiasco was videotaped by a school's media class so I will get the video in the next few days. This is ridiculous and illegal.

The Commission knew exactly what was in Mel’s complaint, so why put it on the regular agenda and then forbid him to speak? Unless, of course, you’re just trying to stall…. or use the old wear ‘em down until they give up approach….

Once again, this raise the issue of county attorneys serving three masters: the Administration, the County Council and the various Boards and Commissions. How can they possibly be effective in representing the various, and often divergent, interests of all three, especially when complaints arise about one of those masters?

Musings: Taking it to the Streets

2011-10-15T19:49:00.001-10:00

This afternoon, I stopped by the — well, I really don't want to call it "Occupy Kauai," because that has a whole different connotation in colonized Hawaii, so let's just say it was Kauai's show of solidarity with the "Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99%" movement that had people taking it to the streets all over the globe today.

It was a good-sized crowd, and there was a positive, upbeat vibe, with a lot of motorists whooping and hollering and honking to show support as they drove by. Here are some photos from the event:

You can see more photos and read my article here.

Musings: Exaggerations

2011-10-13T07:42:00.001-10:00

The moon — big, golden and encircled with a halo — was about an arm’s length from bright Jupiter, and both were sliding down, when the dogs and I went out walking today in the chill air of pre-dawn.

I was at the beach the other day, listening to a surfer friend tell me the latest story going around — a guy claims he was surfing Tunnels when a baby monk seal jumped on his board, and after he pushed it off, the seal got eaten by a shark — and expressing disbelief about every aspect of the tale when two seal pups suddenly appeared before us, swimming gracefully in unison in the shallow nearshore waters, as if to confirm that reports of their death had been greatly exaggerated.

You can’t believe everything you hear — and most certainly, not everything you read — in an age where information is abundant, but much of it is wrong. And once it gets stuck in people’s heads, it’s so hard to get it out, like some of the crazy ideas that formed once folks read The Garden Island’s reprint of the Civil Beat story on relocating nene away from the airport, which led with a greatly exaggerated cost of the project.

I attended a meeting yesterday on the plan to move nene away from the Lihue Airport, and you can read my report at ForKauaionline.com.

Moving to the international level, it seems NATO may be exaggerating its claims of knocking off Taliban leaders in order to make its campaign appear more effective, according to a a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

The report also shows that although the night raids have been portrayed as surgical strikes, eight other people are killed for every “leader” taken.

As The Guardian reports:

The report notes that in briefings to the US media, aggregate claims made for the number of Taliban leaders killed or detained over a given period were sometimes much greater than the numbers recorded in the daily press releases.

"The use of the word 'leader' is intended to convey the impression that the masterminds of the Taliban are being taking off the battlefield. That's a misrepresentation," [researcher Alex] Strick van Linschoten said.

"It is meant to be taken as meaning that we are taking out the brains behind the Taliban off the battlefield, but that claim doesn't really measure up."

The report, entitled A Knock on the Door, echoes a study published last month by the Open Society Foundations. That study said that although Isaf had made strides in reducing the number of civilian casualties, the 12 to 20 raids a night over a sustained period, with thousands of arrests, many of them of non-combatants, were alienating the population and undermining the international coalition's aims in Afghanistan.

Musings: On Social Unrest

2011-10-11T09:02:00.002-10:00

The bright light from a moon that turns full today seeped into my consciousness, my dreams, all through the night until finally the dogs and I got up and went out walking beneath a blue-black canvas daubed with white clouds and stars. Jupiter glowed yellow in the west, a rat raced along the telephone wires above us, and in the east, the heavens began to flush with the approach of the sun until the sky resembled the chunky embers of a dying campfire.

As that big moon was rising last night, a friend stopped by and we got to talking about an accident he’d recently been in: a vehicle crossed the center line on the southside and totaled his truck. The cops, after a lengthy phone consult with unknown person(s) confiscated my friend’s Kingdom of Atooi driver’s license.

Why do the cops keep doing that, when such seizures are clearly unconstitutional? Besides, as my friend observed, “It’s so stupid, because we can just make another one.”

I think it all boils down to a power struggle, fueled by the persistent attempts of “the system” to exert its control over any upstarts, kinda like the over-the-top security preparations taking shape on Oahu in anticipation of next month’s APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) shindig, hosted by the Prez.

Over on the Moana Nui 2011 Faceback page, Kyle Kajihiro of DMZ Hawaii posted maps showing the “ocean exclusion zones” — swaths of coastal waters at Waikiki, Ala Wai and Ko’olina that will be off-limits to we the people during the forum — with the message:

“This is what APEC looks like. It takes over land and sea like cancer.”

Meanwhile, as Democracy Now! reports, the Occupy Wall Street protest is expanding, despite ongoing arrests, and people across the nation are staging their own actions in solidarity. I know planning is under way for some sort of demonstration on Kauai this Saturday.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin reported in The New York Times:

What’s the message?

At times it can be hard to discern, but, at least to me, the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.

And that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge — as we’ve seen in some European countries — if our economy continues to struggle.

I think we’ve got a ways to go until Americans in large numbers feel that uncomfortable and that dissatisfied, just like folks are going to have to get a lot hungrier before they get serious about protecting ag lands and promoting food security.

In covering the Important Ag Lands process, I was interested to learn that some 90 percent of Kauai residents would need to be involved in food production in order for us to feed ourselves. We’re not likely to see that level of participation until the grocery store shelves are bare.

Meanwhile, I ran across a blurb about how in 1950, the average U.S. household spent 3 percent of its income on health care and 22 percent on food. By 2010, health-care costs had risen to 16 percent of income, while food costs dropped to 7 percent.

“Food has gotten so cheap that people just don’t appreciate or value it anymore,” said Farmer Jerry, when I called him the other day to chat about the IAL.

True, that. Unfortunately, a lot of what passes for food these days isn’t anything to value or appreciate — it’s cheap junk that provides little or no nutrition. Is it any wonder that health care costs have risen dramatically as food has gotten crappier?

Which brings me to a comment that a friend made, when I asked him what I should do with a couple of kids who would be in my charge for the day.

“Take ‘em to McDonald’s,” he advised. “If you do that, they’ll be good all day.”

As I flashed on the studies that have shown junk food is as addictive as drugs, it struck me that it’s no surprise the kiddies quiet down once they’ve gotten their fix.

Until, of course, it wears off, as all drugs do, and the craving and crankiness begins anew.

So perhaps the key, then, to sparking massive social unrest is to shut off the supply of junk food and see what happens when tens of millions of Americans start jonesing.

Musings: On Legacies

2011-10-10T08:43:00.002-10:00

Sometimes, when I’m walking in the mountains, or along the beach, as was the case yesterday afternoon, a small stone, a pohaku, catches my eye, calls out to me, and when I pick it up, it feels as though it was in other hands before mine, hands that used it as a tool, wearing it down so that it fits just right beneath thumb, within palm, between fingers.

And I wonder, because so many millions have walked this island before me, used stone tools for hundreds of years, if it once belonged to one of them, and then I get to thinking about the legacy each of us leaves, and if it matters, in the end, whether it’s associated with a specific individual or if it’s important only that it endures, like a well-worn rock.

I’ve been visiting the Apple web site recently because I’m buying a new MacBook Pro to replace my aging MacBook — the most important tool of my trade, besides my brain — and each time I am confronted on the homepage with a photograph of Steve Jobs and the dates 1955-2011, which mark the span of his short, yet remarkably productive life — a life that had such a positive and far-reaching impact on mine, though I never met the man or even heard him speak.

The first computer I ever bought was a Macintosh, back in 1984, the year it came out. I still recall seeing it in action, with its tiny little screen, marveling at functions like cut and paste, which I’d done prior to that in newsrooms with scissors and rubber cement, and thinking, as I have only one other time in the decades I’ve been on the planet: “This will change my life.” And it did, dramatically.

Though I quickly saw how much easier writing, and later desktop publishing, was on a Mac, I never fully appreciated the beauty and innovation of the technology until I saw a guy on a plane reading an inches-thick book entitled, “How to Manage Your Hard Drive,” and realized, with deep gratitude, that as a Mac user I’d never had to even consider such a thing.

Most of us will not leave such a profound legacy as Jobs; instead, our contributions will be progeny and other creations not of the flesh, kindnesses, service we’ve given to others, the public good. And that leads me to Peter Nakamura, and the news that he’s stepping down as County Clerk after 12 years to work as a senior planner in the Planning Department.

Peter has served the county extremely well as Clerk, which in my mind is a pretty crappy job, seeing as how you have to sit through the protracted tedium of County Council meetings without rolling your eyes or otherwise revealing your true thoughts, and run the elections and navigate the whims of a new set of bosses, some of them power hungry and ego driven, every two years. He was always professional, courteous and super responsive to public requests for information, and I’m sure he’ll bring the same traits to the planning department, which can certainly use his expertise and institutional memory now that longtime planners like Keith Nitta, Rick Tsuchiya and Brian Mamaclay have retired.

So it’s really unfortunate that The Garden Island, which seems to bear some sort of grudge against Peter, chose in reporting on his job change to dredge up the unsubstantiated smears about his pay raise and vacation time that were leveled by Councilmembers JoAnn Yukimura and Tim Bynum when they wanted someone different as Clerk, but didn’t have the votes to get their way.

Instead, they trashed Peter (and former Council Chair Kaipo Asing in the process), with JoAnn saying she hadn’t had time to really verify her allegations before making them — or to use her words, conduct due diligence — because she didn’t have full access to county records before taking office.

Well, JoAnn, you’ve been on the Council for nearly a year now, with ample time to dig up dirt, and yet you still have been unable to prove your allegations. Remember how you promised, back in a Dec. 16, 2010 letter to the editor, that you would publicly apologize if you were wrong? Now might be a very good time — unless, of course, you’re too busy trying to make sure that you direct the process for selecting the next County Clerk.

The Garden Island also falsely reported, as it has numerous times before, that Peter, as Clerk, was the highest paid county employee. In fact, both the County Auditor and County Prosecutor earn the same rate of pay.

As senior planner, he’ll be making substantially less. But you know, when you consider the shit factor, and the long hours associated with the Clerk’s job, he’s actually gonna come out ahead. And he’ll continue to build his legacy of notable public service.

Musings: Facing Future

2011-10-09T11:12:00.000-10:00

I attended the Kilauea session of the county's Important Ag Lands meeting yesterday, and you can check out my full report at For Kauai.

I found the IAL meeting to be fascinating, primarily because of the profound questions about our island’s future being raised by this process. To me, the main one is this: do we really want to become food and energy self-sufficient?

Because as I found out, we do have the raw resources — land, water and sun — to make that a reality. So is that what we want? I’d love to see more island-wide discussions on precisely that topic. Because if we decide as a community that we do want it, I’m sure we can overcome some of the other obstacles, like farm labor.

But whether we’ll have such a discussion remains to be seen. A lot of people are pretty fixed on the idea that the boats and planes will keep coming and Costco will always be full of super-sized stuff.

For others, the thought that we might have to function independently and self-sufficiently, either as an island or an archipelago, is too scary to consider because it means, as one friend described it, “a total collapse of the system.”

But rather than take the doomsday approach, why not look at is as a chance to gain more control over our existence, to pursue true community-based development, to maintain the island’s rural lifestyle that so many of us cherish?

Because right now, we still have that option, and if the economy does rebound, and development resumes, that’s not going to be the case for long. On the other hand, if the economy tanks and we do have to fend for ourselves, it’s best we get started now.

At any rate, though we’re two years into the IAL process, it’s only at the beginning, in terms of the political process that will determine the ultimate outcome.

And while the maps and other documents that Dr. Karl Kim and the IAL team have compiled provide some way-cool planning tools, the IAL process has also raised a lot of tough questions.

Like, do Grove Farm and A&B get to keep all the water in the reservoirs that feed the acreage that they’ve set aside as IAL, since water is a key component of that designation? Or do they still have to return some of that water to the streams?

What role do seed corn, and even coffee, play in a self-sufficient future, seeing as how they’re our number one crops, in terms of acreage and value, but they don’t generate food or fuel for local consumption?

And how can we get more people involved in crafting answers to these questions, plotting our island’s future?

Musings: Money Keeps Talking

2011-10-06T09:46:00.001-10:00

The rain came, steady and strong, while I was still snuggled in bed, and as I listened, pulling the blanket closer against the chill, I thought of the garden bed I’d finished fluffing the day before and covered in its own blanket of banana leaves to await the weekend’s Pisces moon planting, and how the moistness being delivered from the heavens would make it even more appealing to worms.

The heavens in the past couple of days also delivered the chatter of intrusive “green harvest” choppers — so loud and low over my house this morning that it set off the dogs into frantic barking. A friend noted yesterday that while two helicopters had been deployed to seek out marijuana plants, only a single chopper was sent to search for the two missing tourists, one of whom apparently drowned off Polihale.

‘That’s because there’s no money in looking for drowned tourists,” I said, “but there is in looking for marijuana.”

There’s even more money in development. So when it came time to draft an ordinance implementing the 2008 charter amendment limiting resort-oriented development on Kauai, developers and their attorneys — many of them formerly in the county’s employ — immediately began talking about vested rights, takings and litigation.

Those are the magic words that make the knees of county officials buckle every time, and such was the case again when the Council speedily and unanimously passed the bill, and a floor amendment from Councilwoman Nadine Nakamura, that came before it yesterday.

Carl Imparato of the Coalition for Responsible Government, which initiated the charter amendment, spoke to that reality in his testimony before the Council:

In order to explain the essence of the bill, it needs to be considered in context. The reality is that prior to the passage of the Charter Amendment, the Planning Commission had approved more than 4,000 additional tourist units since 2000. Possibly 1,000 of those units have come on-line; so there is a "backlog" of about 3,000 units (some say it is as high as 4,000, but I believe it is closer to 3,000) that have been granted permits and whose owners could argue that their "vested rights" would be harmed if the Charter Amendment's provisions were applied to such projects.

In a sense, these are horses that were already let out of the barn; and while it is possible that some of them could be forced back into the barn (by adding phasing provisions to their permits that require them to wait in line to build), trying to do this through Bill 2410 would create threats of litigation against the County. (Developers cite legal precedents related to "vested rights" and "zoning estoppel.")

Regardless of whether or not these threats have solid legal bases, it is understandable that the County Council, the county administration and the county attorneys want to avoid litigation. They recognize that the developers have very big economic interests and therefore lots of money to fight for what they perceive to be their rights.

This is the environment in which we have had to pursue remedies to the problems in the original version of the bill.

Carl is not unhappy with the final bill; indeed, he supported it, though not all members of the Coalition do. In an email this morning, he wrote:

On the whole, I believe that the bill is a reasonable and legal implementation of the Charter Amendment's annual growth limit option, when all of the realities (such as the size of the backlog of approved-but-not-yet built projects, and the impacts of the economic slowdown on their construction schedules) are factored into the bill's mechanisms, and in light of the County’s fear of litigation threats. I also believe that this is the best product that the process will be able to create. More talk and more time wouldn't result in anything better.

Carl is a realist. Though the Coalition could have pressed harder for a tighter bill, it’s very challenging for grassroots groups to collect money for litigation, and few Kauai attorneys are willing and financially able to do land use cases pro bono or at a discounted rate.

And while many folks are happy to sign their names to a petition or cast their ballot at the polls, it’s tough to get them educated on the complexities of this particular issue and rallied to apply political pressure. Besides, how many times have we heard the citizenry shout no and the politicians still voted yes?

So while this bill ensures that pretty much everything in the hopper — and we’re talking thousands of units — is still good to go, it does throw a few bones to the voters who overwhelmingly approved the charter amendment. Like instead of issuing 750 new certificates for transient accommodation units (TAU) every five years, the county will issue 500. And if the backlog gets built out quickly, that figure will drop to 250. Further, any un-issued TAU certificates will not be rolled over into the next five-year allocation cycle.

Or as Carl summarized in his testimony:

What does that all add up to? Bill 2410 is complex, but I believe that for almost all credible future growth scenarios, the mechanisms above mean that compliance with the 1.5% growth cap will be achieved within the next 20 years.

He then went on to say that citizens must get involved in the next General Plan update, “as that process will maintain, strengthen, weaken, or completely undo everything that has been achieved so far.”

I think we need to go a little deeper than that and look at the faulty premise behind our approach to development. We are continually told that we must have more visitor accommodations, be they vacation rentals, timeshares or hotel rooms, to keep construction and tourism thriving and the economy robust.

But the burst of frenetic development in the first decade of this century did not protect us from the current economic downturn, with its unemployment and sluggish visitor counts and stalled out construction projects and anemic real estate values. As a whole, we’re no better off than we would’ve been, although some individuals and companies have profited wildly and still want more.

In short, what’s happening on Kauai is essentially a microcosm of what’s happened to the nation, where the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer and the government has aided the former a helluva lot more than the latter.

So while I happen to personally like some of the people who hold public office, I have to agree with the comment that Naomi Klein made on Democracy Now! today about the ongoing occupation of Wall Street:

Protesters are seeking change in the streets because it won’t come from the ballot box.

Musings: Right 2 Know

2011-10-04T08:57:00.000-10:00

Rain, tantalizingly light, fell before dawn and then departed, leaving the ground barely dampened when Koko and Paele and I went out walking. Before us, the ever-green summit of Makaleha was draping itself in a cloak of soft white, while behind us, at the opposite end of the street, a bank of gray clouds revealed its scarlet underbelly.

Pioneer Hi-Bred hid its not-so-pretty GMO underbelly when it hosted an open house on the first day of October, which just so happens to be World Non-GMO Month.

While Pioneer was luring in unsuspecting kids with a petting zoo and playing up the dismal prospect of its business being the future of agriculture in Hawaii, a 16-day Right 2 Know March was getting under way in New York. Participants are headed for the White House, where they will demand labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms. Simultaneously, the Just Label it Campaign went live today.

GMO labeling could affect an estimated 65 to 80 percent of the packaged foods sold in America, where 90 percent of the soybean crop, 93 percent of the canola crop and some 75 percent of the corn crop is genetically modified. And before you dismiss the marchers as lunatic fringe, a 2010 Thompson Reuters Pulse survey found that 93 percent of respondents felt genetically modified foods should be labeled, while a CBS poll found that 87 percent of American consumers would like to see GMO foods labeled, just as they are in Europe, Japan and Australia.

So why aren’t they labeled here? Because the powerful biotech industry knows that a lot of people would stop buying their products if they knew they contained GMOs. Because Obama has failed to deliver on yet another of his campaign pledges. Oh, and because labeling would supposedly violate corporations’ First Amendment right to not speak. Ahem....

Meanwhile, unsuspecting consumers chowing down on fast foods, convenience foods and just about all processed foods are serving as guinea pigs. As an article in Mother Jones points out:

[S]tudies on the long-term effects of of GMOs are few and far between. But here's the kicker: scientists who do manage to conduct independent research have tended to find disturbing results, FWW [ Food and Water Watch ] shows:

A 2009 International Journal of Biological Sciences study found that rats that consumed GE corn for 90 days developed a deterioration of liver and kidney functioning. Another study found irregularities in the livers of rats, suggesting higher metabolic rates resulting from a GE diet. And a 2007 study found significant liver and kidney impairment of rats that were fed insect-resistant Bt corn, concluding that, “with the present data it cannot be concluded that GE corn MON863 is a safe product.”

Research on mouse embryos showed that mice that were fed GE soybeans had impaired embryonic development. Even GE livestock feed may have some impact on consumers of animal products: Italian researchers found biotech genes in the milk from dairy cows that were fed a GE diet, suggesting the ability of transgenes to survive pasteurization. [Note: there are footnotes to each study mentioned in the FWW report.]

Now, it's important to stress that none of this research definitively proves that GMOs are contributing to the vast load of chronic conditions affecting Americans. We need more research—independent of industry influence. But surely, it repudiates that FDA's practice of casually granting "generally regarded as safe" status on GMO foods based on industry assurances.

Then, of course, there’s also the question of how all that glyphosate used on the GMO crops, most of them designed to withstand direct applications of herbicides, is affecting human and environmental health.

In short, with GMOs we’ve got yet another example of how corporate greed and self-interest is adversely dominating a key part of our lives: food. At the very least, all consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they buy. And Kauai residents surely have the right to know exactly what our “good neighbors” on the south, west and east sides of our island are really growing and doing — not just what they choose to showcase in a warm and fuzzy open house.

Musings: On Forests and Humanity

2011-10-02T12:08:00.001-10:00

A beautiful early morning slipped away in the garden, where I was engaged in the strenuous, addictive — I’m hot, I’m thirsty, but just a little bit more — and deeply satisfying act of digging a new garden bed. Last night, a mere month after sowing seeds, I enjoyed a salad tossed with the first tender leaves of arugula, daikon, kai choi and kale, and as I sat on the screen porch and ate, I looked around in excitement at all the places in my yard that can be transformed, through patience and toil, into productive pockets of sustenance.

As I dug, and Koko and Paele cleaned the last bits of meat from coconut husks, I thought about a New York Times article I’d read the day before on how the world’s forests are dying off at a remarkable rate due to climate change-related heat, drought, fires and insect invasions.

The article was especially interesting because it got into how forests play such a crucial role in absorbing the carbon dioxide that is released by burning fossil fuels. Indeed, according to the article:

It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.

The question before all of us, and most especially the scientists who study such things, is at what point we may succeed, through the climate change caused by our carbon emissions, in killing off the forests that are now so effectively absorbing them.

If forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air — as is already happening in some regions. That, in turn, could speed the warming of the planet, unlocking yet more carbon stored in once-cold places like the Arctic.

Ironically, some forests are growing faster due to the increased availability of carbon dioxide, their primary food. But scientists aren’t sure if they ultimately will be able to withstand the heat and water stress associated with climate change, and generally agree emissions must be dramatically slowed.

“I think we have a situation where both the ‘forces of growth’ and the ‘forces of death’ are strengthening, and have been for some time,” said Oliver L. Phillips, a prominent tropical forest researcher with the University of Leeds in England. “The latter are more eye-catching, but the former have in fact been more important so far.”

And that comment made me wonder if the same might be true for humanity. Consider this:

On Friday, already deeply disturbed by the news that our government now openly conducts political assassinations of its own citizens, I agreed to meet a friend for a picnic dinner at Kealia.

As I was driving down Kawaihau Road, a young, male pit bull wandered into the road in front of me. I stopped, of course, and it looked around in confusion, prompting a motorist in the other lane to pause briefly before proceeding. As I waited for the dog to move, a jacked-up pickup truck pulled alongside me and a young man yelled down into my open window, “JUS BANG DA FUCKER!!”

Disgusted, and a bit shaken, I continued on to the beach. The picnic table was entirely covered with graffiti, which had begun spreading like a rash onto the ceiling of the pavilion. The ground was thick with cigarette butts and beer bottle caps, and across from me was a sign that read, “Respect the beach pack your trash,” because yes, some people still must be reminded of something that basic.

It’s depressing and discouraging to be continually confronted with the words and actions of people who exist at such a low level of consciousness, though they may in fact hold high positions in our society.

Yet that day I also had interviewed a woman who has spent a decade marshalling volunteers to help her successfully eradicate weeds in the forests of Kokee, and I had received emails from people who are involved in a wide range of activities aimed at not only raising their own consciousness, but in lifting up those mired in unconsciousness and its "forces of death" allies: violence, fear, apathy and greed.

So yes, even as the forces of death are strengthening, so, too, are the forces of growth, of life, and while the former get far more media coverage, the latter have been much important thus far.

But we're still waiting, like the forests, to see whether the forces of growth will triumph over the forces of death, or eventually succumb, overwhelmed.

In the meantime, all I can think to do is keep digging, sowing, tending, caring.

Musings: Questions of Accountability

2011-09-30T09:24:00.001-10:00

A steady, welcome rain subdues the morning light as I write this, but my memory is stuck on the moon: a thin, golden crescent illuminating the dark whole, sinking down into a bed of clouds atop Waialeale last evening as a sky choked with stars looked on.

It looks like the U.S. has sunk to another low in the “war on terror” with the reported assassinations by drone strike of two Americans who were never even charged with any crimes. Like all the bad, corrupt leaders we’ve supposedly been trying to topple, our President now has his own secret security force that can take out anyone he deems a threat. In this case, that included U.S-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who anonymous officials say is “believed” to have inspired and plotted attacks on the U.S., and Samir Khan, whose “crime” was apparently publishing a magazine that included advice on how to make bombs and use weapons.

How, really, is this any different than the death squads employed by dictators? How has a nation founded on the rule of law gotten to the place where we can justify assassinations of citizens based on unsubstantiated reports released by unidentified persons? And how can “inspiration,” whether for good or evil, be considered a crime?

I’m not the only one asking such questions as the U.S. uses the convenient excuse of terrorism to adopt its own lawless ways. The Guardian report included condemnatory comments from Ron Paul and a U.S. Constitutional law expert, as well as a link to the statement issued by the ACLU:

The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law. As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts.

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the President does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state."

The ACLU previously had filed a lawsuit against Obama on behalf on Awlaki's father to stop the assassination. U.S. District Judge John Bates threw out the lawsuit, saying the father did not have standing and a judge does not have authority to review the president's military decisions. According to an AP report:

But Bates also seemed troubled by the facts of the case, which he wrote raised vital considerations of national security and for military and foreign affairs. For instance, the judge questioned why courts have authority to approve surveillance of Americans overseas but not their killing and whether the president could order an assassination of a citizen without "any form of judicial process whatsoever."

Still, seeing as how Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others got away with torture, what is the likelihood that Obama will be held accountable for his crimes?

While we’re on the topic of accountability, Councilman Mel Rapozo has filed a complaint with the county’s Board of Ethics. He’s asking for an advisory opinion on whether there’s a conflict of interest in the relationship between the Salary Commission, Boards and Commission’s Administrator John Isobe and Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s administration.

At issue is whether it was proper for Salary Commission Chair Charlie King to direct Isobe to draft a resolution — apparently without concurrence or prior guidance of other commissioners — that reflected the mayor’s “salary-setting objectives,” rather than “independently establishing the basis of its salary-setting decisions in public meetings.”

The complaint states that the Commission’s action creates the appearance that it “is functioning as an ‘arm’ of the Mayor’s Administration” rather than as an independent entity.

Rapozo’s complaint also raises the question of whether it was proper for Isobe to include a pay increase for himself — indeed, he would be the only person to get a raise — in the resolution he drafted for the Salary Commission. The complaint says this creates “the appearance of a conflict of interest in the relationship” between the Salary Commission and the Office of Boards and Commissions.

The complaint is set to be reviewed by the Board at its Oct. 14 meeting.

Musings: Cruel and Unusual

2011-09-29T09:03:00.001-10:00

While researching and writing an article on the controversy surrounding plans to bring monk seals down from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — you can read it here in Honolulu Weekly — I got to thinking about how we treat wild animals. Or more specifically, their rights. Because they’ve got ‘em, whether we want to admit it or not, and generally, we don’t.

All of our discussions and actions regarding protection and management of endangered and threatened species are pretty much dominated by the human perspective: our wants, needs and rights; how much it’s going to cost us; ways in which we may be inconvenienced; scientific research (and careers) that can be advanced; laws that must be followed.

I heard just one speaker, Dr. Gordon LaBedz, address the issue of animal rights in the recent public hearing on the monk seal translocation proposal:

“Abducting these animals out of their neighborhoods is cruel,” LaBedz said. “These are highly intelligent, sentient creatures. They have a right to live in their home.”

While I’m willing to believe that those involved in monk seal research and the volunteer monitoring programs have good intentions, I’m not at all convinced their actions are in the best interest of the animals.

Take, for example, this account, posted on the Kauai Seals blog, of how much one seal has been messed with, and it’s not even an adult:

On July 13, PIFSC scientists returned to Kauai to get a full suite of biomedical samples from her, and to change out her larger cell phone tag for a smaller satellite tag. She was also given a de-worming medication to help maximize her nutrition intake by lessening her parasite load.

This de-worming is done regularly, and researchers want to do more. Yet according to the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement created for the monk seal recovery plan, deworming is described as a “potential enhancement tool, should research determine it is effective,” while another reference found it to be ineffective because worm counts didn’t go down and the animals didn’t put on weight.

Scientists also want to use antibiotics, human vaccines and other drugs on the seals, which prompted objections from Dr. LaBedz, as well as Dr. Carl Berg:

“We don’t know the doses and we don’t know the side effects,” LaBedz said, with Berg adding, “We don’t know the true risks of these things.”

But that’s not all that’s ahead for the poor seals:

Plans also call for trying to train seals to stay away from boat ramps, harbors and fishing gear through the use of loud noises, electric shocks and other hazing techniques, as well as chemical behavior modification or euthanasia of aggressive, unruly males. Scientists are also looking to develop new “adversive conditioning” tools in a bid to reduce interactions between seals, dogs and humans, especially fishermen.

Getting back to the seal blog, it reports that weaned seal pups are routinely given flipper tags, pit tags (like the microchips put on pets, some of which have been linked to inflammation and other health problems) and cell phone tags so that every aspect of their lives can be monitored. Researchers also regularly take tissue and blood samples from seals that are lounging around on the beaches, and swab their orifices. All of this is supposedly done for the good of the seals, yet despite all the info collected, their numbers continue to plummet.

Meanwhile, as I’ve reported previously, quite a lot of trauma is inflicted on the seals in the process of data collecting and monitoring. I can’t help but wonder how much stress is caused by the constant surveillance and frequent handling. And couldn’t that be a factor in their decline? But scientists, whose salaries and careers are built on such meddling, and volunteers, who like to be part of that special clique that can get close to the animals and tell others to stay away, are never going to look at, much less admit, how their actions might be harming the animals they supposedly care so much about.

Just as animals have the right to be left in their home territory — and that applies to the Lihue airport nene slated to be sent to internment camps on Big Island and Maui — they also have the right to be left alone, and to have some privacy as they mate, rear their young and live their lives.

The latest proposal to kidnap pups and haul them down here, then take them back to the compromised habitat of the NWHI in three years, while possibly well-intentioned, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. It's also pissing off fishermen and ocean users, and turning them against the seals in the process.

Instead of going through all these controversial contortions, and pursuing intensive, expensive and questionably effective management actions, why not focus all efforts on improving the habitat? Because as we have seen over and over with Hawaii's endangered species, that is where the bulk of the problem lies.

Musings: At a Crossroads

2011-09-27T08:30:00.000-10:00

The blackness of a new moon night lured me out to lie on the grass and look up at the smoky swirl of the Milky Way, contemplating the vastness of the universe and those who gazed upon it in the centuries preceding me.

At the first faint light of morning, Orion and bold Jupiter remained, along with a smattering of stars, though Waialeale, exquisitely clear for the past two days, had pulled the veil back over and around her. An orange mass in the east hinted at both the arrival of the sun and the possibility of rain, which we now so badly need.

How much ag land do we need to feed ourselves, possibly grow some fuel? Or as some others might ask, how little ag land can we get away with saving so we can develop the rest and make money?

Those are some of the questions that will come into play as Kauai County prepares to take the draft final report of its Important Agricultural Lands study out for public review next weekend. (Here’s the link to the general website.)

Already, though, at last Friday’s meeting of the Hawaii Congress of Planning Officials, attorney Max Graham was asking the question that matters most to those in the land development industry: what will happen to the ag lands that aren’t deemed “important?”

Because there’s a sentiment that anything not classified IAL is wide open for non-ag exploitation. And it's gaining momentum in the current economic drought, where construction, real estate sales and development — not to mention all the lucrative lawyering that goes with it — has slowed to a trickle.

But there are those who are bucking that tide.

“The mantra has to be, nothing changes,” says farmer Jerry Ornellas, one of the few real tenders of the soil to serve on the IAL committee. “This not going to be the second Mahele.”

Indeed, there is nothing in Act 183 that says ag land not designated “important” is suddenly taken out of the ag district, automatically rezoned or looked upon more favorably for development. The only thing that Act 183 does is outline the process for designating IAL, while Act 233 sets forth the significant incentives that can be leveraged to coax developers into actually using their ag land for agriculture.

The only way that our county can make the leap that any ag lands that don’t get the IAL designation are not important for farming, and thus suitable for non-ag development, is if our planning department, planning commissions and politicians adopt that mind set.

Unfortunately, the stage is already being set at the planning commission, where vacation rental owners are coming in and claiming one of two scenarios: either they can’t possibly use their ag land for agriculture, and so they need a permit for a commercial use, or their fruit trees and horse constitute a bonafide farming venture.

Either way, the farm dwelling agreement they signed be damned as politicians like Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura look the other way, making public comments like heck, nobody follows the farm dwelling agreement.

While we’re on the subject of the planning commission, I find it interesting that on the agenda for today’s meeting, as well as the previous one, there is an executive session for the purpose of evaluating the interim planning director. For those who don’t know, that’s Michael Dahilig, the former deputy county attorney whom the mayor, in violation of the County Charter, appointed to run the department after pulling Ian Costa off the job. That was 10 months ago, and Mike is still running the show.

Back in May, when the mayor invited me in for a little talk story session, I asked why Ian had been removed as planning director. His answer:

Ian was not doing a good job managing and supporting the commission. And that became even more important now that we’re beefing up enforcement.

I’m not sure if any such beef up is actually under way, and perhaps Mike was helpful in cleaning up the department a bit. But the fact remains that he is the mayor’s pick, not the Commission’s, and no one else was considered. The Commission should be actively recruiting for that position and reviewing a wide range of applicants. Why evaluate Dahilig unless you’re contemplating keeping him on, or conducting the personnel equivalent of a sole source bid?

We all know the Commission is essentially a rubber stamp for the mayor and County Attorney’s office. I recall Commissioner Jimmy Nishida telling me, “We just do what the attorneys say so we no get sued,” and thinking, a) what a chicken shit approach to planning; and b) what makes you think the attorneys know what they’re doing, especially in a county that invariably hires outside counsel whenever they want to win?

Meanwhile, here's a story on how the decision to rezone ag land on the southside for the massive, and super luxe, Kukuiula project has turned out. The title says it all: How one Hawaiian Paradise Became a Ghost Town.

We’re at a land use crossroads right now on Kauai with the IAL study coming out and the economy way, way down. To ensure the the best route for our county is taken, we need a transparent, accountable planning department and planning commission, and an active citizenry. In other words, we need a miracle.

Musings: Shifting

2011-09-23T09:57:00.001-10:00

The dogs and I observed the bookends of the overnight shift into the autumn equinox, walking the beach beneath the fiery clouds of sunset, walking the road beneath the thin moon and shiny stars of pre-dawn. Despite what the calendar says, all the signs of fall were already in evidence: cooler nights, north swells, shortening days, golden slanted light.

I fluffed up the remaining empty garden bed and planted green beans, tat soi, more arugula, and before the day ends, I will press seeds collected from especially tasty kabocha and sunrise papaya into tiny pots for later transplanting. Soon, I will start digging again, preparing new beds, hoping for abundance, yet always aware that harvest depends on the vagaries of nature.

Hopes of material abundance are starting to diminish, at least for all but the upper echelon, as the U.S. and other Western nations face the reality of a prolonged economic downturn.

I was talking to Sen. Ron Kouchi at the monk seal hearing last week, and he spoke of the budgetary challenges facing the state Legislature. He said he’d been out chatting with constituents, and one woman asked if things were going to get better, or if it was time to hunker down.

He advised her to hunker down, and told me, “We haven’t even seen the bottom yet.”

Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing reports that many federal entitlement programs, including Section 8 housing subsidies and food stamps, will be facing dramatic cuts — up to 50 percent in some cases — in the years following the presidential election.

What that means is the prospect of more homeless, more hungry, more people living in precarious economic conditions.

At the hearing, I heard numerous fishermen, worried about the future of subsistence fishing at a time when they might need it more than ever, object to possible increased competition from monk seals brought down from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

More than a few uttered some variation on the theme of “I’m sick of people from other countries and other nationalities telling me what do in my own country.”

It’s a sentiment I’ve heard expressed often, and I wondered if the often uneasy relations between locals and everyone who wasn’t born here will be further strained by rough economic times.

As the saying goes, “high water covers the snags…”

I mention this not to create fear or worry, but to encourage us to start thinking of how we might assume more responsibility for ourselves, and others. How can we take care of those less fortunate, when the government gravy train slows or stops running? How can we become more self-sufficient, more self-reliant? How can we help facilitate the transition from rampant exploitation to sustainable harvest, with the same ease that summer shifts into fall?

Musings: From the Inside Out

2011-09-21T07:32:00.001-10:00

A white moon just a whisker short of half was darting amongst the clouds beneath the steady gaze of Jupiter when Koko, Paele and I went walking this morning. Along toward the end, of both the road and our walk, pink began to creep out and claim first the sky and then the land, infusing it all with rosy color.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the land lately, particularly the battles over how to use it, because I just completed a piece on the state’s Legislature’s thoughtful gift to the people — or at least, the people with connections, the people with investment capital. I’m talking about the Public Land Development Corp., a Honolulu-centric entity with the power to run roughshod over any local development concerns, much less cultural, environmental and historical considerations.

The PLDC seems to be aiming the final shot between the eyes at all those who have struggled since statehood to bring some sanity into the land development process; to look out for the interests of poor folks and cultural sites displaced and destroyed, respectively, for some dubious project or another; to level the incredibly uneven playing field that exists between economic growth and cultural-environmental protection.

I’d been thinking about it before I even started the article, while researching a book chapter on Kauai land struggles stemming from the 1970s. The list read like a sad litany of battles lost: Niumalu-Nawiliwili, Nukuolii, the Hyatt, the Westin (now Marriott), Running Waters, and in more recent years, Kealia Kai, Kealanani, Grove Farm’s ugly oozings all around Lihue, the travesty of Kukuiula, the two new Coconut Marketplace resorts — unbuilt, but still alive — and Joe Brescia’s house, built atop the bones of people who once were alive.

Sure, there were small successful skirmishes along the way, little bits of land here and there tucked away in conservation easements, accesses given as others were taken away, costly delays, a Supreme Court ruling on shorelines that the state and county continue to ignore.

But in looking back over the past 40 years, pretty much every developer who came to Kauai has gotten his way. And when they were stymied, ever so briefly and slightly, by the County Council’s moratorium on resorts, they simply turned the entire North Shore into a resort, via vacation rentals, and then bullied the county until it caved in and legalized their illegal minihotels, even those on agricultural land.

All the heated public hearings, the contested cases, the lawsuits, the protests, the pickets, the arrests, have pretty much come to naught.

Attempts to make changes through the system have hit similar dead-ends. Just look at what the county is trying to do to the citizen’s charter amendment on growth. We’ve even watched in dismay as former land use activist Jimmy Nishida turned coat and sided with developers once he got appointed to the Planning Commission.

(Speaking of which, how many meetings is a commissioner, even a lousy one, allowed to skip? Jimmy has been missing in action for many months now. It’s time for him to resign, so the mayor can appoint another rubber stamp.)

My point in all of this is there’s got to be another way, a better way, to influence land use decisions. The current approach has not worked. It will be even less effective in a crappy economy, where it’s gonna be even more all about the money, honey. And it's going to prove especially ineffective under the PLDC process, which gives citizens just one opportunity, at a Board of Land and Natural Resources hearing, to comment on proposals to transfer public land and development rights to private investors, who in turn are exempted from all zoning and building code restrictions.

Yup, the door has been opened really, really wide. It’s time for those of us who care about the Hawaiian culture and the natural world to develop some new strategies for resisting the relentless push to give it all away for mere pennies on the dollar.

From what I've seen, major change cannot be affected within the current narrow, corrupt political system. We need to stop bashing our heads against that hardening concrete wall, stop fighting the battle on their terms, in their arenas.

The only thing that will help us now is a complete overhaul of our institutions, starting with our own values, actions, beliefs that, inadvertent or not, still serve to perpetuate the injustices, the wrongs, the destruction and desecration.

In short, we need to wage a revolution from the inside out.

Fortunately, it’s already under way. Wake up, get conscious, and join us. The hour is getting late.

Musings: On Time

2011-09-18T05:47:00.000-10:00

Take 3:39 minutes out of your life and watch this.

"The concept of time creates what we call the self. What is the 'I' without time?"

If prominent scientists say that time is merely an illusion, than what are we?

"The world is more than it appears to be." — Socrates

Musings: Indigenous Rights & Fire Ants

2011-09-16T08:11:00.000-10:00

A heavy rain fell in the night, so heavy that the ground was thoroughly saturated — much to the delight of the garden — when the dogs and I went out walking beneath a waning white moon snuggled up to golden Jupiter. Clouds draped themselves around the summit of Makaleha as I inspected the taro patch, where every huli transplanted from a Wainiha loi has firmly rooted and is sprouting new leaves. Yes!

Growing taro makes me happy, not only because it’s beautiful and tasty, but because the hardiness and resiliency of the plant that is the ancestor of the kanaka maoli gives me hope for the Hawaiian people, the Hawaiian nation.

Of course, not everyone would like to see the resurgence of an independent Hawaiian nation. According to an article in Indian Country Today:

The U.S. feared that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) would help Indigenous Peoples assert their right of sovereignty over their lands and resources, according to cables released by the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks. The cables also reveal an almost obsessive preoccupation on the part of the federal government with Bolivia’s democratically elected President Evo Morales and the indigenous leaders who admire him and oppose laws opening Native territories to oil, mining and logging companies.

Initially, the U.S. was one of only four nations to vote against the declaration, which later was signed by President Obama.

Thus far, only Kauai attorney Dan Hempey has been akamai enough to use UNDRIP to advance the rights of kanaka maoli, successfully invoking it in his defense of Dayne Gonsalves and his right under the declaration to carry a Kingdom of Atooi badge. That case is now headed to the Intermediate Court of Appeals after county prosecutors objected to Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe’s ruling in favor of Hempey’s motion.

Apparently, this sort of judicial review is precisely what the U.S. feared. When Morales signed UNDRIP into Bolivian law, worried U.S. embassy officials sent a cable that read:

“The new law contradicts existing land laws, and therefore will be subject to judicial interpretation when it begins to be cited in legal cases.”

The Indian County article goes on to report, still citing from an embassy cable:

"Although most indigenous leaders seem to view the UN Declaration as a ‘feel good’ document that will give them more inclusion in the public sector, some leaders are citing the Declaration in support of concrete aims like self-governance and control over land and resources.” The “post,” meaning the embassy, promised to “watch for further developments, particularly with regards to property rights and potential sovereignty or self-rule issues.”

Now this is going to be an interesting case to watch.

Moving on to another subject, I feel compelled to come to the defense of actor Ben Stiller, who was implicated in an article that appeared in yesterday’s The Garden Island about the ongoing efforts to eradicate fire ants from properties on Kalihiwai Road.

Yes, Ben does own one of the parcels being treated for fire ants, but he had nothing to do the infestation. That credit goes to his neighbor, Anne Earhart, one of the heirs to the J. Paul Getty fortune, who insisted on having mature trees imported from the Big Island for a palmarium that a mainland landscape architect had designed.

I, and others, tried to warn her, stating the very real concern of importing invasive species on such massive root balls, but she wanted she wanted, and couldn’t wait for smaller trees to grow into maturity.

Her local landscaper, Dan Shook, obliged, and sho nuff, the ants came, too. Now, 12 years later, they’re not only still present, but apparently have moved onto Ben’s property, which he purchased three years after the ants were introduced. I wonder if he knew? And I wonder if KISC, which is always short of cash, is billing the landowner for the protracted eradication efforts.

Musings: It's Sad

2011-09-13T08:25:00.002-10:00

It’s sad to read articles like the one printed in Civil Beat today — and reposted in The Garden Island — about the nene being “kicked off” Kauai.

It’s sad because the article, and the subsequent question posed to spark discussion — “What do you think about the decision to spend $7.2 million to ship endangered birds from Kauai to Maui and the Big Island?” — work so effectively to turn people against endangered species by making it all about money.

To the average person, $7.2 million sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But given Civil Beat’s emphasis on telling the bigger story, it would have been nice to see the article put that figure in some sort of context, like how much is currently being spent on bird control at state airports, the cost of bird-related aircraft crashes, or even the cost of implementing our fear-based Homeland Security programs at the Lihue Airport.

Because this is supposedly all about protecting us humans, right?

And it missed the big question: where is the money coming from?

What’s really sad, though, is that the article fails to get into how this, like all endangered species “problems,” is caused at root by humans: our needs, our wants, our values, our fears, our priorities and in this case, one person’s bad decision to establish a nene population at Kauai Lagoons.

Instead, it just serves to make people blame the birds, rather than the federal aviation officials who are pushing this project to forestall the relatively remote possibility of a nene air strike.

Dumping on the nene, turning this into yet another "us against them" scenario, as the media did with the Newell's, is so much easier than examining our own behavior, or own shortcomings as a species.

So I did get a laugh from one totally unconscious comment left on The Garden Island article:

Any organism that is so pitiful that it can't adapt to new problems to save its life deserves to die and make way for those that can.

Ya know, buddy, you're right, and that's exactly where the human organism is headed.

It was also sad to see The Garden Island article — or more accurately, press release reprint — about how Grove Farm land will be used to grow crops to help provide fuel for a bioenergy plant on Oahu.

Aside from the obvious question of why Grove Farm couldn’t have reached a similar agreement with KIUC, so that the use of our water and ag land would benefit our island and our goals of energy self-sufficiency, how in the world can it be considered “green” to burn fossil fuels to ship biomass to another island so its power plants can avoid burning fossil fuels?

There’s a certain insanity in some of these “green energy” proposals that seem to have a lot more to do with the color of money than environmentally sound proposals.

Musings: Pile on the Poisons

2011-09-12T08:55:00.001-10:00

The full moon, which I watched rise from a purple-black mass and beam a shimmering path across a dappled sea, had long since been swallowed by the thick bank of gray atop Waialeale when the dogs and I went walking this dawn beneath a pale sprinkling of stars.

The moon is in Pisces, which I have always found to be a fine time for planting, and sure enough, some of the taro huli that I tucked into the soil yesterday morning had already begun to leaf by day’s end. Every time I look out there, I think of how I was told I had to use poison to get the guinea grass under control. Instead, I dug it up and created an organic garden.

When are we going to stop drenching the `aina with poison? Especially since new research published in the respected journal Pediatrics has linked pesticides in food to Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). According to an article published on msnbc.com:

Children with substantially higher levels of a breakdown product of neurotoxic organophosphate pesticides were twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.

"It's mainly exposure through food. Diet is the driver," says pediatrician and public health expert Phil Landrigan, MD, professor and chair of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "For most people, diet is the predominant source. It's been shown that people who switch to an organic diet knock down the levels of pesticide by-products in their urine by 85 to 90 percent."

The study looked at organophosphates, a class of pesticides that includes the ubiquitous Roundup, which is sprayed so wantonly all over our beautiful island.

The problem is compounded by the proliferation of genetically modified food — pretty much all the corn and soy products found in the supermarket — because those crops are engineered to withstand massive applications of Roundup.

Just something to think about as our “leaders” continue to embrace the GMO-intensive, pesticide-drenched seed industry that has taken over the Westside.

The article reports the conclusion of university researchers: parents should buy organic for their kids.

That's great, except organics generally cost more. So it’s the rich people’s kids who get to stay healthy and the poor people’s kids who get to consume the pesticide-contaminated food that makes them prone to develop ADHD, which in turn makes it hard for them to do well in school and gets them branded as troublemakers and too often results in a prescription for some sort of drug that will further screw up their health and thus their lives....

Of course, the production of these poisons has its own downside — tons of molten slag — as a photo and caption in Discover pointed out:

The slag, which typically includes some radioactive uranium and radium in addition to calcium minerals, is the waste product from the conversion of phosphate ore to phosphorus. Monsanto operates the only such plant in the United States and uses the phosphorus to produce glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. According to the EPA, each pound of phosphorus produced generates about four pounds of slag. Monsanto’s Soda Springs plant produces more than 200 million pounds of phosphorus each year.

Ah, yes. Better living through chemicals.

As for me, I'll just keep digging up the guinea grass, one clump at a time.

Musings: True Security

2011-09-10T08:13:00.002-10:00

I woke often in the night to the sound of rain, that steady, straight, persistent rain that delivers the deep drenching that we really need, and my thoughts each time were on my garden, both the nourishment it was getting and the soil that was softening so that I may easily dig more beds.

Don’t plan on lounging about in bed tomorrow morning. Our mayor has ordered all on-duty cops and ambulance drivers to gather at the nearest fire station so they can let the emergency vehicle sirens rip in unison for a full minute at 7 a.m. The island's dogs are gonna love it, because it gives them an excuse to bark and howl, but I’m not quite sure how that constitutes a fitting tribute to the tenth anniversary of the Twin Towers going down.

Notice I didn’t say “Al Qaeda terrorist attacks,” because to tell ya the truth, I’m still not convinced it wasn’t an inside job. Let’s not forget Building 7, and the thousands of SEC files on corporate fraud and God knows what else lost there. Yes, I know anyone who questions the official story is dismissed as a “conspiracy nut,” just as anyone who questioned the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq was deemed “unpatriotic.” But if you don’t believe our government would harm its own people for a political/economic agenda, just look at how many Americans have been killed, maimed and jailed for political/economic agendas in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea and yes, the good old U.S.A.

But regardless of who pulled off the dirty deed, it certainly has been an effective tool for mind control of the sheeple, and the anniversary gives yet another opportunity to drill the fear message deeper — right down to the latest hype over a commemorative terror threat.

Like the Christmas decorations I saw in Ace Hardware the other day, the build up to the anniversary began well before the big day. “A nation transformed” read the special coverage headline on the Yahoo home page, and though I don’t watch TV, a friend who does tells me the TV networks are filled with similar pronouncements.

Americans are fascinated by that one bad day in our history, and aside from the families of Sept. 11 victims who have traveled to Afghanistan, most appear oblivious to the long string of bad days still being endured by the nations we’ve so wrongly punished for it.

Over the past decade, we’ve waged wars, undermined civil liberties, committed torture and launched Predator attacks, all in a futile attempt to guarantee our populace some mythical, and unattainable, sense of control and security. Billions have been spent, untold tens of thousands killed, and yet we are told we still must stay that course or risk more attacks.

Though I, and other longtime residents of Kauai, can’t claim to know the pain and trauma endured by those who experienced the collapse of the Twin Towers, we do know something of the human response to destruction and loss, of having our world turned upside down on Sept. 11.

That was the unforgettable day in 1992 when the Civil Defense sirens screamed, the sea boiled into a steaming witch’s cauldron, coconut trees flew by like paper airplanes. When the 200-mph winds of Hurricane Iniki departed, we were left with what then-Mayor JoAnn Yukimura termed “complete devastation.”

That was only the beginning. The next day brought the sweeping vistas — and scorching heat — that follows the loss, en masse, of shade-providing leaves from all the trees. With it came the equally stark realization that survival and clean up would dominate our lives for the foreseeable future, eclipsing every other plan, goal, dream.

In the hectic weeks that followed, armed National Guardsmen drove through the streets and the whump-whump-whump of low-flying helicopters was heard constantly overhead. It was not unlike living in a war zone — without, of course, the maiming and death, the opposing sides. We had our fear, though, and it slept lightly in some at-the-ready primal place, re-awakening with each storm warning, each strong gust of wind.

Then came the months of deprivation and disorder, the dreariness of rain-drenched ragged landscapes dotted with sodden debris. I remember most especially the huge mounds of trash — moldy mattresses, corrugated iron roofing twisted into odd shapes, ruined appliances, torn and splintered wood. The cherished “stuff” that comprises the foundation of our materialistic culture was no longer a joy, but a burden.

What became important instead were relationships — friends to help with the heavy work, bring news, share a meal and a laugh. With telephones, cell towers and electric lines down, we had to venture out to engage, come together for entertainment. And people did. We stopped hiding in front of our TVs, sitting on the sidelines, keeping our distance.

Though life eventually returned to “normal,” a powerful lesson from that time — security and control are complete illusions — reshaped my own way of thinking and living. Our lives can be upended at any moment, our world irrevocably altered by outside forces, and in truth, there’s no way to prevent or guard against it.

All we can do is respond, preferably well, in a resourceful, cooperative and yes, even loving manner. We’ve seen many examples of how we already excel at that as individuals, neighborhoods, communities. So why not as a nation? Because that’s where our true safety resides, not in airport scanners, Homeland Security, a nebulous, never-ending “war on terror.”

When we as a citizenry can truly grasp that concept, and demand our elected officials live by it, rather than react with drone attacks, ethnic profiling, wiretaps and waterboarding, then perhaps we can honestly proclaim ourselves “a nation transformed.”

Until then, it's pretty just the same old-same old Testament eye-for-an-eye, defense contractor-friendly business as usual bullshit in America.

Musings: Askew

2011-09-08T07:43:00.000-10:00

Rising in the night to grab another blanket, I take the opportunity to go out and adore the stars, splendidly strewn across their eternal black canvass, a sight that always fills me with wonder, awe, joy.

Later, at the first glimmer of pink light, I pull on a flannel shirt and venture out with the dogs to check the garden, which is happily, or so I imagine, soaked with the night’s passing rain. Green onions and kai choi sprouts have joined the line up.

Walking in the cool, golden light of a September morning, gazing at the pale green cragginess of Waialeale, its midsection draped with clouds that have sidled up to the summit of Makaleha, causing it to appear snow capped, I think of an article I read that reminds me every cloud has a silver lining: it seems many young people nationwide are too fat to join the military.

Something’s got to get us out of these endless wars...

The sun rises like a fireball behind us, turning Waialeale purple, shimmering the raindrops atop the grass, and I think of the animals and plants that are fleeing north to escape global warming, even as some humans deny its existence.

I think, too, of all the people I know who are ready to jump out of jobs, marriages, living arrangements. Situations that once could be slogged through have become untenable; among people unafraid to feel I sense an edginess, a willingness to leap, an inkling that something big is about to happen. Or as my sister described it, it’s as if life has gone askew and now we're just waiting to see which way it tilts.

Musings: Don't Buy It

2011-09-06T07:51:00.000-10:00

The stars, in that dark time between moon set and sun rise, have been spectacular lately, brilliantly arrayed between a line up of planets, well-worth some neck-craning to take it all in. This morning, it was Triangle that caught my eye, pointing the way to a meteor falling in a silver flash toward the black hulk of Waialeale.

Returning to the house, both dogs and a blanket gathered near to ward off the chill of impending autumn, I open my laptop and scan what passes for news: two-thirds of Americans polled are willing to give up some freedoms in the fight against the terrorist bogeyman; fears of another recession — caused in large part by our expensive war against terror — cause stocks to fall; fears of anything related to the supposed home of terror prompt Texans to boot a Brazilian-born Al Jazeera journalist from a high school football game.

Ugh. I don’t want fear influencing my day, undermining my life. But it’s a steady stream that’s being fed us, especially with the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on the approach, and our government is taking that opportunity to beat ever harder on the war drums: ”we must stay in Afghanistan or risk more attacks!”

I don’t believe it, and like 99 percent of what’s being sold us, from policy to products, I don’t buy it.

So I shut my laptop and went back outside, where the day was waking up and applying a layer of gold gilt to towering columns of cumulus and all the mountains were exquistely clear and thin streaks of pink clouds stretched out, like arms seeking an embrace, from both the summit of Makaleha and the eastern horizon, and there were the dogs and me, walking joyously right smack in the middle of all this beauty, perfection, complexity.

Back at the house, I checked on my new garden: two beds that look like fresh graves, encircled with the dog pens to keep out the chickens, covered with chicken wire to deter the doves.

It was only Friday that I sprinkled in the seeds, covered them lovingly with the soil that I’d dug and worked and then worked some more, and by Sunday the arugula had already sprouted, followed yesterday by daikon and this morning, lettuce and kale.

I looked down at those little starts, the wheel of life turning in my own back yard, the promise of abundance fostered by my willingness to provide a bit of support and care.

I looked and saw the results of directing my energy and attention on love, and not fear.

Yes, energy flows where attention goes.

What would you like to bring into your life today?

Musings: Ticking Time Bombs

2011-09-01T08:00:00.000-10:00

I awoke with a feeling of intense excitement, though I’m not sure why, a sense that I needed to get up and go out, so I roused the dogs and we all went to look at a sky so black and clear and brilliant that it took my breath away, Jupiter gleaming like a spotlight and near it I could count, flesh puckered in chicken skin, all seven sisters in the home constellation of Pleiades/Makalii.

And I thought of a friend, now dead, who spent almost 20 years locked up in Halawa, and he told me that sometimes, if he was in the right cell, he could look through a high window and catch a glimpse of the moon, the stars, and the one thing he missed more than anything in prison was the freedom to go outside at night.

I’ve been on vacation, letting my mind and life run free, following my intuition, rather than any kind of schedule, responding to no demands other than those few made by Koko and Paele, digging garden beds, spending quality time at some of my favorite places on the island.

It was at one of those yesterday that I ran into a man visiting from upstate New York, and though I don’t usually chat up strangers, we got to talking and I asked him, because I often wonder, especially when I see worried-looking tourists trying to turn left onto Kuhio Highway, or pale, sunburned backs still exposed to the sun, or cruise ship passengers ambling through the tawdriness of Anchor Cove, just what kind of visitor experience he had.

Turns out he was an accidental tourist — he owns a timeshare and the only opening was a condo in Princeville. So he came to Kauai with no particular expectations, and found it beautiful and lush.

I pressed him a bit and more details came out, though he shared them mostly without complaint, save for the $30 spent on lunch at the Hanalei Dolphin.

“Was it at least any good?” I asked and he said it was alright, and they were doing a brisk business, which was why he, and perhaps the unsuspecting others, had stopped in.

Then he told of going to the end of the road, and the madness at Kee Beach, where someone had parked kapakahi and blocked in a whole row of cars, including his, so they all had to wait until the thoughtless tourist moseyed back to his vehicle.

“People were so desperate for parking that they were just leaving their cars anywhere,” he observed. “It was awful. I just wanted to get out of there.”

And then there was the incident the night before at Ching Young Village in Hanalei.

He was walking to his car in the parking lot at about 8:30 p.m. when he heard a couple of local boys calling, but didn’t realize initially they were speaking to him. They were mad, though he didn’t know why, and approached his car and demanded he roll down the window, which he did, and one of them started going off, though he couldn’t understand just what the guy was trying to say, and he got a little worried and rolled up the window and prepared to back out, which pissed them off even more, and one of the guys had a rock and smashed it into the passenger side of his car, leaving a good-sized dent that spoke to both a large pohaku and considerable fury.

He called the police, because he knew he would need a report for the rental car agency, and thought that if they went right away, the guys would likely still be there. But the dispatcher told him the station at Hanalei wasn’t staffed at night, so it would take some time before an officer could respond, which was true, because it was about 10 p.m. by the time a cop showed up at his door.

The next day he went back to the shopping center and talked to the manager, who showed him the video cameras that he has mounted all over the place, and sure enough, the entire incident was captured on tape, but the resolution was so poor that they couldn’t make out the license plate number of the perps.

“And he didn’t know who the guys were?” I asked, because Hanalei is a very small place.

“No, but he seemed determined to find out,” said the visitor. “He felt really bad about what happened. He gave me a tee-shirt.”

But what the man really wanted to know was why the guys were so angry, and so angry at him, because he couldn’t think of anything he might have done to offend them.

“Maybe it’s just because you’re a tourist,” I ventured.

He was confused by that, wanting to understand the why behind the animosity.

Because we open our doors wide to visitors, you know, spend big money begging them to come in, talk up the aloha spirit. It’s not unreasonable for tourists to think they’ll be welcomed, or at least free from a violent altercation.

I tried to explain how much the North Shore has changed, how it’s developed so rapidly that the lifestyle has been greatly altered, the locals heavily displaced. I shared the “I feel like a stranger in my own backyard” line uttered by a friend who grew up in Hanalei, told of how some of the guys don’t even want to go to the beach anymore because it’s so choked with tourists.

“So they’ve just given up?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I replied, though of course some have. “It’s more just this simmering resentment, in part because a lot of big money has come in to the North Shore, and some of those super rich guys do look down on the locals and they feel it, and they don’t like it, and meanwhile, the place has gotten all built up with these big bling houses and they’re angry because they feel powerless. And if you throw a little ice or alcohol into the mix, which is so often the case, you’ve got a real volatile situation.”

He felt badly about all that, and I felt sad for him, because it’s not his fault that the flagrantly callous Eddie Bendors and Joe Brescias of the world chose Kauai’s North Shore as the place to increase their fortunes. (Btw, old Joe was on island recently, staying in his house atop the burials, no doubt sleeping peacefully...)

Then he asked if I would show him how to get to the Hindu temple and produced a map that was utterly ridiculous in its near absence of secondary roads or landmarks that might make navigating easier and I thought, good grief, is this the best we can do for our tourists? No wonder so many of them wander aimlessly, lost in the back roads of Kapahi and Wailua Homesteads.

I drew him a map instead and sent him on his way, but not before he told me that he actually hadn’t minded the altercation at Ching Young, because it showed him so vividly how irrationally people can act when they’re consumed by the anger that's born of fear.

And isn’t that the mind state of so many people these days?

As he left, I thought of the speciousness of the industry that is our economic mainstay, of the incessant push to bring in more visitors even though our special places are already bursting at the seams, the willingness to take a wad of their money even though we fail them in such basic ways.

I thought also of the two young guys who had instigated the incident in the parking lot, and what sort of future might lie ahead for them: rage doused by alcohol or ignited by ice, some shitty job cleaning yards, most probably a stint in jail, and beneath it all, the terror of alienation, a prevailing sense that they no longer fit in the place that is their home.

And I thought of how they, and so many other locals, have been pushed away and aside in the mad pursuit of the almighty outsider’s dollar, the bulk of which doesn’t even remain here, creating, in the process, these ticking human time bombs, and I wondered how, really, we had gotten to the place where that could be seen as a reasonable, fair trade.

Blog Break

2011-08-23T06:35:00.000-10:00

I'm giving the blog a little rest while I explore some different dimensions. I'll be back before long. As always, thanks for reading.

Musings: Admission of Submission

2011-08-19T08:55:00.001-10:00

It’s possible to describe the colors — pearlescent, shell pink, baby blue — but not the full effect when they converge with misty clouds atop the green ridges of a mountain range just as the sun is rising to create a soft sort of light, a muted, golden scene, that is so quintessentially Kauai.

Today, there was all that. And like the cherry on a sundae, Makaleha also was topped with a thick rainbow that arched into a sky that in the east was all slashes of gold and scarlet, with a yellowish band of gray escorting a passing shower.

Lucky we live Kauai.

My neighborhood is generally quiet, and this morning it was even more so, with the school bus and most commuters given the reprieve of a state holiday, which a friend dubbed Submission Day. Though Hawaii’s admission to the union occurred on Aug. 21, 1959, it has been conveniently rescheduled — like so many other “noteworthy” days — to the third Friday of August to make a three-day weekend.

I cannot think of Admission Day without thinking of the military’s legacy in Hawaii, since the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom — a sovereign nation — would not have been possible without the military’s assistance, nor would its continued occupation.

It’s no accident that the military controls more land in Hawaii than other state, with some 14 major installations, or that Hawaii has the highest percentage of armed service personnel in the United States. A whopping 13% of U.S. military active duty personnel deployed Worldwide is stationed in the Islands, which seems like kind of plenty for a place that's not an official "war zone."

It’s not just the military’s presence here that’s a concern, but what it’s done and is doing to the wai, kai and `aina, since it operates pretty much with impunity.

As I reported in the current issue of Honolulu Weekly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the Army the lightest possible slap on the wrist for possessing toxic radioactive depleted uranium (DU) on two Hawaii bases — Schofield Barracks and Pohakula Training Area – without a license:

The NRC found that the Army had violated federal regulations, but waived the $3,500 civil fine “to encourage prompt and comprehensive correction of violations.” The Aug. 1 notice of violation came some 18 months after Big Island resident Isaac Harp petitioned the NRC to take enforcement action against the Army. Harp argued the Army had no license to possess the radioactive material, which was contained in weapons used for training in Hawaii in the 1960s.

During a May 10 conference call with the NRC and Army officials, Harp termed the agency’s investigation “a farce.”

Bear in mind that for decades the Army denied it had ever used DU in Hawaii until the Earthjustice law firm inadvertently came across emails with contrary information in 2006.

Since the Army is getting a blanket permit to handle DU on all of its American bases, we’ll likely never know exactly how much DU is in the Islands, or where. The NRC has not yet required the military to conduct a thorough search for the material, which its own website acknowledges “poses some chemical toxicity danger to the kidneys if ingested – either through inhaling dust or drinking contaminated water, for example.

It’s that inhalation and drinking part that worries akamai residents, since the DU is in areas used for live fire training, which allows it to become wind- and waterborne.

As for our own PMRF, it’s already the world’s largest military test range capable of supporting subsurface, surface, air and space operations. And as I reported in 2007, when the draft EIS came out on the Navy’s “planned enhancements” for the base:

Among the projects planned for PMRF are research and development in ‘advanced hypersonic’ and ‘directed energy’ weapons, which could include a high energy laser. Other plans call for testing unmanned boats and aircraft, along with air-breathing hypersonic vehicles that cruise at four times the speed of sound. The navy also wants to operate a portable undersea tracking range and increase its antisubmarine and missile defense activities.

The base would be used as well for testing and training in new weapons systems, including electronic warfare; supporting and rapidly deploying naval units and strike brigades; live fire exercises on land and sea; building and operating an instrumented minefield training area; and expanded international Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises.

[T]he Navy plans ‘to increase the tempo and frequency of training exercises’ throughout the state, and particularly at PMRF.

Which includes, of course, all that sonar activity that has been linked to adverse impacts on marine mammals.

But no worries. According to the final EIS, it’s all good:

The Navy is a global environmental leader. The proposed training and RDT&E activities would not adversely affect the biodiversity or cultural integrity within the HRC [Hawaii Range Complex] including the open ocean, offshore, onshore, or human environment.

And despite all the lies, denials, cover-ups and general environmental and cultural trashing associated with more than a century of military activity/occupation in Hawaii, you can take their word for it.