Musings: Here and There

It's ironic that I'm here in Portland, land of big rivers,

near vertical tumbling streams,

windswept beaches,

wildflowers,

and clear-cut hillsides,

at the same time that Portland activist Paul Cienfuegos is on Kauai, touting an admittedly illegal ordinance that would allow the county to “expel any corporation that threatens the health and safety of the community.”

By which is meant any industry they don't like — anti-ag activists Bridget Hammerquist and Gary Hooser joined Cienguegos — but not those providing conveniences they do like, such as gasoline, electricity and airport trips from Portland.

Cienguegos is a member of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which uses a strategy similar to the one employed by the anti-GMO movement: target small, easily manipulated, rural communities and dufus politicians and enlist them as pawns in a national political strategy:

We are not a typical environmental organization. We assist communities to develop first-in-the-nation, groundbreaking laws to protect rights – including worker, environmental, and democratic rights, and rights of nature. CELDF provides free and low cost legal services, grassroots organizing, and education, to communities, states, and countries facing injustice.

It's exactly what Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice did with the anti-GMO bills. While these strategies benefit the "nonprofit" groups that push them, both in legal fees and fundraising tools, they also cost taxpayers big money and create significant community polarization.

We see Hawaii Center for Food Safety director Ashley Lukens trot out that same “injustice” claim in an article on pesticides published in this month's Hawaii Business magazine.

The story ends with Ashley saying Malia Chun's undocumented claim that seed crop pesticides gave her asthma “illustrates the class issue raised by pesticide exposure in Hawaii. It's significant, Lukens notes, that it's been places like rural Kauai where the debate has been focused, and where pesticides continue to be prevalent even after apparent exposure at local schools.”

Uh, the debate has been focused on Kauai because that's where CFS and Earthjustice found a chump politicians (Hooser and Bynum) willing to carry their flag and an anti-GMO group willing to stir up fears in the populace and a bunch of newbies willing to jump on the bandwagon so they could feel like they belong on the island.

Meanwhile, state tests found the highest level of pesticides in streams on urban Oahu, in upscale Manoa, not rural farm communities.

But hey, since when have the facts, or logic, ever had anything to do with what is at heart a blatant attempt by non-Hawaii folks to wrest political control of the Islands — at any cost?