• Hagel means less war • SB615 needs a hearing • Stop poisoning our island Hagel means less war The “war on terrorism” went worldwide with 9/11 and is now potentially done with the execution of Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately,
• Hagel means less war • SB615 needs a hearing • Stop poisoning our island
Hagel means less war
The “war on terrorism” went worldwide with 9/11 and is now potentially done with the execution of Osama Bin Laden.
Unfortunately, terrorists are not made on an assembly line that we can locate and destroy. A terrorist is born whenever we upset someone enough to attack us. Our U.S. defense is now offensively eliminating anti-U.S. all over the world.
Terrorism is the worst warfare in that it inflicts innocent deaths rather than strategic goals, an influence of fear. With our U.S. military going into foreign countries we have become the terrorist. Now foreign people die in their own land and their homes, and it’s we who bring the terror.
Our “defense” spending needs major refit to return to defense and not world control. Arguing a country’s having weapons of mass destruction must be invaded due to risk of nuclear war will require facts, unlike the “experts” found to be wrong that the Bush administration started the Iraq war with the resulting military spending was a reason Bush was bankrupting America and more than 4,000 U.S. service men and women lost their lives as well.
To address terrorism we should win more hearts and allow fewer brothers, sisters and children to die in U.S. war zones and engagements. Provide humanitarian support and education that includes counter propaganda and defuses potential new terrorists.
Hagel will fight against more war and represents a new era of more compassion, more truth, and less blood.
Barney Blankenship
Kapa‘a
SB615 needs a hearing
I sure hope Sen. Baker puts SB615 regarding Hawai‘i’s requirement to label for genetic engineering on salmon on the hearing schedule at the legislature.
One small state’s voice does matter. It is important for everywhere to give push back on the unrestrained, reckless experiment that is occurring on the biology of the planet. We are seeing the discord and distress that is present in Hawai‘i, the United States and the world over genetically modified crops that are in the vast majority of our food supply and are contaminating our islands. This technology snuck into our landscapes and our meals unannounced. It now is seemingly near impossible to control, and we are opening a new door to a worse element.
It is irresponsible too and disrespectful of the people for the Senate to ignore this opportunity to force accountability of the new GMO experiments with animals. Hopefully, a vote to require labeling of GMO salmon will be easy for Hawai‘i’s Senate. Keeping this simple bill off the senate agenda sends a loud message to the industry that here is one more area that the government is willing to give quiet acquiescence to industry over the will and health of the people. The sound of that silence is profound. We will have to scream loudly back at the government’s indifference to their responsibility to the citizen.
Felicia Cowden
Kilauea
Stop poisoning our island
I have read and re-read the wording of Senate Bill 590 and find the language in this bill to be extremely disturbing and ill-conceived.
We are a certified organic family farm, and, yes, we want the right to farm. But what is farming? Is it performing field trials for a plethora of pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals in order to see how much a crop can tolerate after the seed DNA has been altered to tolerate these materials?
Is farming using up the fertility and life in the soil to the extent that when the experiments cease, the soil is poisoned, plundered, diminished and destroyed? Is farming allowing these chemicals to seep into our aquifers and run off into the ocean? Is this abuse to be protected by legislation to the extent that any protest by the populace is to be classified a “nuisance”?
This year our family purchased an additional 6.25 acres of farmland on the North Shore of Kaua‘i. This land was previously planted in pineapple and papaya.
The “generally acceptable” practice of cultivating these crops was to spread polyethylene plastic sheeting and irrigation tubing to grow these crops. At the end of harvest, this plastic waste was left in the ground. I told my son the other day, as we were clearing plastic from the tines of our tiller, that my grandchildren and his would be tormented by this plastic until the day they died. It was also “generally accepted” by the plantations, to burn the crop residue. This left the soil bare and infertile. “Generally acceptable”?
If the seed/chemical companies cared about Hawai‘i, they would be growing food on the land that they occupy here.
It will take courage from our elected leaders to regulate this awful industry — don’t protect it!
Stop calling this farming! IT IS NOT FARMING! It is chemical experimentation in one of the most fragile ecosystems on earth.
On Kaua‘i, we have seen our school children poisoned. Toxic chemicals have been found in our wells and the perpetrators are buying us off with meager settlements. We are giving in and giving up our rights to clean water. Our coral reefs are dying and the ocean currents that flow around our entire island are bringing run-off from these CHEMICAL KILLING FIELDS to every shore. Is this really an industry that you want to protect?
Louisa Wooton
Kilauea
