Musings: Path to Implosion

After another night of delicious, sleep-enhancing rain, Koko and I went out walking in a quiet world of soft colors. Apricot–colored clouds nestled up against the dove grey fleece piled atop Makaleha, rosy strands drifted toward the pearly pile-up above Waialeale and a baby blue background held it all together.

Today represents the beginning of the end of the super early sunrises that I love so much. Tomorrow, the sun will rise a minute later and keep on slipping until the winter equinox, although the days will continue to lengthen a bit on the afternoon end for a while yet, offering ample opportunities to get out and about.

That's what the Green Harvest helicopters have been doing for the past couple of days, prompting an uproar that falls upon the deaf ears of a police chief who continues to annoy the populace and waste time and money waging an aerial war on a plant. As The Garden Island reported:

“People are getting angry,” said [Kaua‘i Air Tour Help Line operator Sheila] Heathcote, adding she has never handled as many calls from as many upset Kauaians. “They’re furious,” she said. “It’s been nonstop all day long. It’s been crazy.”

If the cops are flying so low that they’re causing people to get bucked off their horses, then something is really wrong. And it’s the same thing that’s wrong with the way cops drive on the road: they do whatever they want with impunity, because who is going to stop them?

Our police chief, meanwhile, was endorsing yet another major invasion of privacy in the questionable interest of “security”: the full body scanner just installed at Lihue Airport. Now why Lihue got such a system before Honolulu or other major urban airports, or even at all, is as much a puzzle as why the cops stage Green Harvest locally even as the ganja flows in unabated from America and British Columbia.

“From what was presented at a Wednesday briefing by TSA, I strongly believe this system offers a greater level of security for our traveling public and will discourage those with malice in their hearts to use Kaua‘i as a staging area for violence,” said Kaua‘i Police Department Chief Darryl Perry in an e-mail after attending the briefing on the new equipment.

Ummm, Chief, I hate to break it to you, but the only ones using Kauai as a staging area for violence are over at PMRF. And they, like the cops, do what they please with no accountability to the public.

While we’re on the subject of cops, I was deeply troubled by the account of Utah’s execution by firing squad. I was bothered both by the legal murder, and they way they used cops to carry it out:

The five executioners, certified police officers who volunteered for the task and remain anonymous, stood about 25 feet away, behind a wall cut with a gunport, and were armed with matching .30-caliber Winchester rifles.

This is not good. What kind of people would volunteer for such duty? And do we really want guys like that carrying guns and patrolling the streets?

Another form of legal murder continues in the Gulf, where the latest news is that the high concentrations of methane gas being released in the oil spew will potentially suffocate marine life and create "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

And in Afghanistan, which now has the dubious distinction of being the longest running war in American history, with no end in sight. In case you’re still unclear exactly what we’re doing there, consider the recent news that Afghanistan has minerals valued at over $1 trillion. As The New York Times reported:

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists.

As an aside, I couldn’t help but note how the Associated Press, in reporting that the minerals may be worth $3 trillion, described Afghanistan as a “violent country.” Yeah, you try to defend yourself against invasions by two super powers and you get labeled the violent one.

At any rate, the minerals give the U.S. several excuses to avoid a pullout and prolong the war, including the threat that China might try to get the goodies. But as author Tom Engelhardt notes in an interview on Democracy Now! today, the war in Afghanistan helped destroy the Soviet Union, which led to the end of the Cold War — and the start of some hot ones:

But it is striking that our leaders, in declaring [Cold War] victory, decided to go down, in essence, the Soviet path, which was the path to implosion.