Musings: Funnies and Follies

It's been kind of a goofy, crazy month here in the Islands.

First we had a wacky, error-ridden LeMonde article by hack writer Corine Lesnes, who described a nonexistent "agrochemicals factory" in Waimea before interviewing Klayton Kubo on biotech:

“I have no qualifications. I don’t speak like their engineers," he says. "But I do know that they’re spreading massive quantities of poison.” The activist raises his black glasses to show his reddened eyes. “And I don’t consume marijuana!” he says.

All together, the companies spray a total of 18 tons of pesticides every year in Kauai. “It’s more than a farmer [sprays] in his entire life!,” Klayton says.

Yeah, and more than all the Kauai seed companies spray, too. But why let facts intrude? Still, surely even Klayton recognizes this as fiction:

Since the 1990s, seed companies have been forcing sugar cane and pineapple plantations out of business. When they arrived, they were welcomed as they saved thousands of farm workers their jobs. But the indulgence was short-lived and turned into uproar in an archipelago where “Aloha Aina,” the love of the land, is deeply rooted in each inhabitant.

The reporter does offer a pretty good assessment of who is behind the anti-GMO movement:

From Kauai to Molokai and Maui, complaints have multiplied at the initiative of a small group of farmers, organic retailers, educators, “Moms against GMOs,” and Europeans who came to this natural paradise to establish their yoga and meditation centers.

Don't forget the high-end Realtors slathering over that vacant westside land. Corine Lesnes continues:

Kauai, also known as the “Garden Isle,” is the most rural of the archipelago, and the cradle of Hawaii’s demand of “food sovereignty” (85% of fruits and vegetables are imported) and of the right to teach again in Hawaiian to prevent the native language from disappearing.

Huh? Are you sure you're in the right archipelago, Corine? The article goes on to discuss both Bill 2491, which was overturned by a federal court, and the lawsuit that Waimea residents filed against Pioneer:

Anti-GMOs activists believe there’s little hope the federal justice system will validate a local decision that goes in the face of national legislation —especially since companies have a cast-iron defense: they don’t plant or spread anything that isn’t approved and authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Agriculture.

As is often the case in this sort of situation, nobody could prove any irrefutable scientific correlation between the inhabitants health issues (37 cancers in a neighborhood of 800 inhabitants) and the pesticides.

Uh, so what does that tell you?

Then we had the release of “Aina: That Which Feeds Us,” a film that uses footage from who knows where to portray Kauai as having open pit mining, skyscrapers, a packed Chinatown, clear-cut forests, massive cargo container ports, traffic-choked freeways, aerial pesticide spraying, dense suburbs, toxic farm soil, wheat fields, massive chemical plants and Hawaiians who arrived in six-man outriggers. 

It ends by giving special thanks to the Donovan family and Hawaiian Volcanic Beverages, a water source mined "from deep within the sacred island of Hawaii" by “green” (as in big kala) Kauai Realtor Jason Donovan. He was also a proponent of Kauai Springs, and an early investor in that company.

Oh, yeah. Aloha aina, baby. Hooponopono and malama aina, too.. Now gimme all your money.

Then I got a text from a friend: "Fern calling you out!"

Flashback to seventh grade, when Becky Covarubius wanted to beat me up because she thought, mistakenly, that I'd flipped her the bird on the bus. Only this time, it's a different tita: anti-GMO activist Fern Rosensteil. And she's looking for my home address because she doesn't like what I've written about her.  

Hmmm. I always suspected Chris D'Angelo was embedded with the anti-GMO movement when he was working for The Garden Island. And now he's doing the same thing over on the Big Island.

Sorry, Fern, but somebody already beat you to it. 

Yeah, just another uppity haole who never learned her place. Still, I'm not gonna tangle with Fern. She's way bigger. And as my dear departed Mama used to say, "Never get in a pissing match with a skunk."

I'm not sure which of these comments amused me more:

Besides laughs, the comment thread served another purpose: I became thoroughly convinced that none of these people master-minded the anti-GMO/anti-ag strategy unfolding in Hawaii. They're not bright enough. But they are chumps, with egos big enough to make them easy marks.

Meanwhile, their colleagues, the chem trail conspirators, are gearing up. Alarmingly, their ranks include Dr. Lorrin Pang, the state health officer for Maui County, as captured in this eye-popping video. Though Pang was giving an anti-GMO talk, the topic drifted to chem trails, with Pang paranoiacally speaking of tapped phones and how when “they catch wind of you monitoring, they spray the seawater” to cover their tracks.

Those devious buggahs. But he did hear of one pilot who “forgot to turn off the chem trail emitter and landed. Wow, talk about the smoking gun.” Sadly, it's tough to convince others because “it's so easy to disprove everything.”

Yeah, there's that.

“They” aren't gonna fool failed mayoral candidate Dustin Barca, though. He's way too smart for that:

Still, you'll be relieved to learn that, according to Pang, “they” are using chem trails to “cool the Earth”  and not for “mind control.”

Actually, it's not needed for that purpose, which has already been achieved through social media.

The month wrapped up with a giant pu fest that, as predicted, successfully stopped the secret TPP talks at Kaanapali, thus saving activists from being forced to buy more cheap crap from China: 

As one friend noted, "And what about the hundreds of conch shells they used.....do they think they just washed up on the beach, in perfect condition, with no animal inside?" Which was similar to an observation by another friend, “I'm sure they were all sustainably harvested.”

Yup. Nothing like a red shirt with a pu in his/her fist to make the world's corporate leaders tremble in fear.

Even Kauai Councilman Gary Hooser got in the act. Though he couldn't make it to Lihue for the premiere of “Aina,” he managed to fly to Maui for a global photo op meaningful social protest. Hmm. Has he changed his mantra from “bite me” to "blow me"?

As a friend commented, "You can't make this shit up."

Nope. But you can laugh!