Musings: Hands Off

Maybe it's because I have a cold that I feel a little scratchy— though I did see nesting turtle tracks on the beach for the second morning in a row, and before that, heard a Newell's shearwater, all things that make me smile.

Or maybe it's because the fricking low-flying helicopters — green harvest? or re-routed tour guys? — are buzzing my neighborhood for the second day in a row.

At any rate, when I finally got around to reading The Garden Island article today about the HGEA endorsements, I noticed it specifically states that County Council incumbents JoAnn Yukimura, Tim Bynum and Dickie Chang didn't get endorsed, nor did state Rep. Jimmy Tokioka.

Yet the article never mentions that Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvlaho didn't get the nod, either. What, is there a hands-off policy when it comes to Shay?

Too bad Hawaii — and Kauai — aren't hands-off when it comes to RIMPAC. Yes, the Navy is planning its biggest “war games” gathering ever, with more than 40 ships, six submarines, 200 aircrcaft and 25,000 personnel set to deliver five weeks of guns, destruction and electromagnetic energy disturbance, starting June 29.

Dr. Carl Berg of Surfrider nailed it when he said on the radio today: “We don't like the idea that we're having war against the environment and calling it a game.”

No shit.

As he noted, with that many ships out there, the probability of something happening is really high, as in running over or smashing into marine mammals, fish kills, sewage dumps, chemical spills. Not to mention all the toxic emissions into the air and sea from the millions of gallons of fuel that they'll be burning.

I know, the new "green" Navy spent a cool $12 mill to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuel — a mixture of algae-based fuel and fuel developed from used cooking oil and non-food-grade animal fats — but that's just to power its aircraft carriers. The rest will be burn in the same old fossil fuels.

Besides the usual bombs and bullets, the combatants plan extensive use of sonar, which kills whales, dolphins and seals outright, or disorients and deafens them so they die later. The mad scientists/engineers at DARPA, meanwhile, will test an advanced blue laser-based submarine through-water communications system.

As an interesting aside, when I was researching that blue laser stuff, I came across a Wired article about how Darpa handed out seven research awards worth $15.5 million under its “Living Foundries” project, which “aspires to turn the slow, messy process of genetic engineering into a streamlined and standardized one.”

Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield “new materials, novel capabilities, fuel and medicines” — everything from fuels to solar cells to vaccines could be produced by engineering different living cells. But the agency isn’t content to wait seven years for each new innovation. In fact, they want the capability for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits the military’s immediate needs.

It's no coincidence that GMO companies are snuggled up around PMRF. And it's no coincidence that our state lawmakers won't touch them.

Anyway, this year's super-sized RIMPAC is just a preview of what's to come. The draft EIS the Navy is now accepting comments on was prepared because it wants to greatly expand training exercises in the area that runs from Hawaii to the coast of Southern California.

“The level they're doing right now is unacceptable and they want to do more,” Carl said.


Surfrider Kauai wants folks to watch for anything unusual during that time, and report it immediately. You can post on its Facebook page or call Dr. Gordon LaBedz at 337-9977.

So what to do, besides keep an eye out for fallout, and report it so it can't get spun or buried? Well, Nina Monasevitch, chair of Kohola Leo, believes that folks can stop the war training if they put enough pressure on lawmakers.

“Writing one letter represents 250 constituents, so it's a powerful tool,” she said on the radio today. “If enough people speak up, by the hundreds of thousands, eventually we can turn the tide.”

To get you in the mood for irate letter-writing, here's a video of the U.S. and our Aussie allies busting up the Big Island. Think of it as the Army's mini land-based version of RIMPAC.