Musings: Hero to Zero

A commenter recently noted that he/she “already plunked for [Councilman Gary] Hooser as Joan suggested back in 2009.”

I don't recall ever suggesting people plunk for Gary, though it's true I've gone from supporter to detractor. Hooser's downward spiral is expressed so well by this Savoy Brown song:

I went from hero to zero, and I'm still sinking down. Money in the bank would lift me way off the ground. High, I'm so low ain't much fun, when your time is over and your day is done. Hero to zero. Oh, well the high life was my life, everything has to end. I was once at the top, but I died with my trend. Hero to zero. Oh, I can't go on.

At least he still has the "high three" of his "high five" to bank on, which guarantees him a hefty retirement payout at taxpayer expense. 

Speaking of the dying trend that turned Hooser from a political leader into a failed politician, Hawaii Center for Food Safety has released its latest propaganda:

Wow. Talk about revisionist history.  Center for Food Safety apparently has no clue just how intensive pre-contact agriculture was — far more than what is depicted in their little graphic. They also left out all the many stream diversions created by the Polynesians, as well as the incredible run-off during the plantation era and the aerial crop spraying of that time. 

As for the seed company footprint, it's nowhere near that big or intensive, and there are far more trees in Hawaii now than even 50 years ago.

Why is it so hard for the antis to tell the truth?

And what's up with this either-or bit, making like it has to be one or the other, and that seed companies are preventing food crops? That's simply not the reality of Hawaii agriculture.

I was at the Hawaii Farm Bureau Convention earlier this week, where I heard Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell say that Oahu alone has 23,000 acres of fallow ag land. Now that's the island with the biggest population, the best markets, the most solid ag infrastructure. Yet even it can't find enough farmers to work all its available land.

So once again, I issue the challenge to Hooser, Ashley Lukens and the rest of the “gotta do it our way” activists: Put your muscle and money where your mouths are. You want local food production? You want to replace everything brought in by the cargo containers and jets? 

Go do it. And be sure to use only an  o'o, as pictured in the graphic. Right. Shoots, even Dustin Barca was whining for a tractor.

Oh, and just FYI — best not let the livestock hang by the stream, much less run loose by the crops. And those mauka windmills are a death sentence for the endemic birds that were here long before any agriculture. 

But they won't actually go farm. Not when it's so much easier to bitch about people who actually are doing ag, and make up graphics that push an unattainable pie in the sky vision so they have an excuse to keep begging for donations and support. 

Most recently, we've got Nomi "Babes" Carmona begging for letters of recommendation so she can get a job “investigating supply chains in the food and agricultural industries." Though she deems it a “perfect fit," the rest of us are asking, WTF does she know about that ?

Of course, like the other "leaders" of the antis, Nomi functions on narcissism and delusions of grandeur. What else would prompt her to claim that local government workers and law enforcement officers want her to stay in Hawaii? Hahahaha!  Or to suggest that she's been doing "good work" here? Or to actually believe that she has a "skill set" that is useful to or needed in Hawaii? 

But at least we're getting a closer to the truth:

In other words, Nomi is no longer able to make money off the anti-GMO movement in Hawaii, so she's moving on, after wreaking havoc and leaving a mess for others to clean. Nothing new in that scenario.

Meanwhile, Walter Ritte also has hand out, asking folks to fund a one-hour documentary on his life: "Aloha Aina: The Awakening of Walter Ritte." Is this yet another indication that the anti-GMO gravy train is drying up? Because surely Hawaii SEED, which has been bankrolling Walter as its token Hawaiian for several years now, should have the resources to finance that project. They've gotten a pile of money in recent years, with precious little to show for it, save for Vandana Shiva's over-priced performances.

Of course, we're all still waiting for Walter to actually awaken and get it: He's been used as the kanaka frontman to advance a mainland-based movement that is the neocolonial version of malihini missionaries know best. Only this time, it's the ideology of utopian ag, rather than Christianity, that's driving it all.