Musings: Absolutely Safe

After seeing shooting stars and planets aligned with a crescent moon for a couple of mornings running, today I was greeted with clouds, though I wasn't disappointed, because they turned a delightful salmon color as they bumped into one another atop the summit of Waialeale.

Seems we keep bumping up against the Navy and its claim to the westside shoreline. Today's headline in The Garden Island says it all: “Citations issued for driving on PMRF beach.”

The local paper is now perpetuating the myth that this stretch of public beach belongs to the Navy. And then it dutifully, and unquestioningly, regurgitates this absolute nonsense from PMRF shill Tom Clements:

“We are aware that some of our neighbors are concerned about beach access fronting PMRF. PMRF and the U.S. Navy respect state and federal law and our security personnel will continue to work with state and county officials, observing and reporting illegal activities which occur on the shoreline fronting PMRF.”

Actually, Tom, our concern is with the way you guys stole five miles of public shoreline under the sham of “national security.” So if you truly respect state law, which gives people access up to the highest wash of the waves, then let the citizenry use our beach.

And since you're gonna be calling DOCARE and the cops if you see people doing anything “illegal” on the beach, who should we call when we see you guys blasting rockets from sacred dunes or contaminating the ocean with your toxic chemicals or deafening sea life with sonar or sinking ships offshore? I mean, since the Navy is so law-abiding and all.

Speaking of ships, I had to laugh a little when Ron Wiley posted on Facebook the other day, wondering if that 160-foot super-yacht is appropriate for Hanalei Bay. I wrote about the controversy back in mid-July, prompting a friend to observe, “well, that shows you it takes about a month for stuff to trickle out to the mainstream media.”

And sometimes it never does.

Meanwhile, as the military and federal government fritter away billions on the shadowy and never-ending wars on terrorism and drugs, we've now got a Presidential ticket that thinks the real money-wasters are all those old people and poor people. You know, the ones who need food stamps and Medicare and meals on wheels and Pell grants.

It's a ticket that thinks the wealthiest individuals and multinational corporations should pay less taxes and the poorest should pay more. And that women should no longer have any control over their bodies: no legal access to abortion, no funding for birth control. But fertilized eggs, like corporations, warrant full personhood.

Just when you think the right can't get any more wrong, they surprise you and trot out a wacko like Paul Ryan to run with a man who is all about perpetuating privilege for rich white boys. Ryan, a devout Catholic, is an obviously conflicted follower of the novelist Ayn Rand, who “described altruism as 'evil,' condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as 'phony,' and called Arabs 'almost totally primitive savages.'” I read Ayn Rand in high school, but as I matured, I saw the fatal flaws in a system based on intense selfishness and unbridled capitalism. 

Still, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we're seeing the emergence of the ultraconservative right as America's economy declines. Isn't that when fascism usually takes hold?

And across the Pacific, scientists are finding “severe abnormalities” in butterflies exposed to the Fukushima radiation. As BBC News reports:

By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.

"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.

Six months later, they again collected adults from the 10 sites and found that butterflies from the Fukushima area showed a mutation rate more than double that of those found sooner after the accident.

The team concluded that this higher rate of mutation came from eating contaminated food, but also from mutations of the parents' genetic material that was passed on to the next generation, even though these mutations were not evident in the previous generations' adult butterflies.

Previous studies have indicated birds and butterflies are important tools to investigate the long-term impacts of radioactive contaminants in the environment.

But don't worry. Everything's fine. As the government repeatedly assures us, the fish is absolutely safe to eat.