Musings: Way of the World

Out in the garden at daybreak, dogs sniffing, birds singing, hands deep in soil quenched by rain, the sky a study in contrasts: charcoal black over the mountains, pale gold in the east; a co-existence of light and dark. But then, isn't that the way of the world?

Tomorrow the County Council will consider a resolution to investigate the TVR ordinance, specifically as it pertains to the 16 properties covered in the Abuse Chronicles. Please, folks, send emails supporting resolution 2013-55 to counciltestimony@kauai.gov.

I've also learned the Council is not planning to fund Prosecutor Justin Kollar's request for a deputy who would be assigned half-time to zoning enforcement. So is Justin supposed to cram zoning into an already crowded criminal caseload, or become a good county employee and just look the other way? Maybe he should blow off those petty drug and property offenses and focus solely on rich white people committing white collar crimes.

Heck, I know money is tight, but there seems to be a bottomless pit to fund requests for special counsel. Which will no doubt come in handy when the county gets sued, as it inevitably will, over those illegal TVRs.

If you've had any doubt the U.S. government is doing the bidding of the biotech seed industry, a new reportt by Food and Water Watch will lay it to rest. The organization reviewed 926 diplomatic cables between the State Department and embassies in more than 100 countries and found the agency essentially acting as a shill for the biotech firms.

For instance, the State Department produced pamphlets in Slovenia promoting biotech crops, sent pro-biotech DVDs to high schools in Hong Kong and helped bring foreign officials and media from 17 countries to the United States to promote biotech agriculture. Embassies were also directed to "troubleshoot problematic legislation" that might hinder biotech crop development and to "encourage the development and commercialization of ag-biotech products.”

The cables covered the period 2005-09 and were released by Wikileaks. So why is the U.S. so hot to use your tax dollars help these international chemical corporations? As Food and Water Watch surmises:

Although the U.S. commodity crop market is nearly saturated with biotech seeds, most of the world remains biotech-free. Even 17 years after biotech crops were first introduced in the United States in 1996, only five countries cultivated 89.4 percent of biotech crops in 2012 (the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and India). The seed companies need the power of the U.S. State Department to force more countries, more farmers and more consumers to accept, cultivate and eat their products.

Meanwhile, do-it-yourself types with 3-D printers are already reproducing handguns at home, and even improving on the original model, despite an order from the State Department to remove online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that Defense Distributed posted last week. As with anything released on the Internet, or into the environment, there's no recalling it once it's dispersed.

Yet despite all the insanity, life goes on. Because isn't that the way of the world?