Luna - Spirit of the Whale

SOURCE: Sandy Herndon (sandy@thechildrenoftheland.com)
SUBHEAD: A movie about aboriginal belief that a whale has the spirit of their late chief and the threat to it.  

By Juan Wilson on 27 July 2011 In Island Breath - 
 (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/07/luna-spirit-of-whale.html)

Image above:Still frame from "Luna: Spirit of the Whale". From (http://www.movie-roulette.com/movie/luna-spirit-of-the-whale). WHAT: "Luna: Spirit of the Whale" movie to be shown for free. WHEN: Thursday, 28 July 2011, at 7:00pm WHERE: Na Keiki O Ka `Aina - Children of the Land Center Waipoholi Shopping Village Next to Papaya's in Kapaa 

 PRESENTED BY:
Kohala Leo -
Voice of the Whale (http://www.koholaleo.com/page/page/8063166.htm)
email: koholaleo@gmail.com
phone: 808-639-3289

Aloha! There is a very special film being shown at the Children of the Land Center on Thursday PM at 7:00 PM! Please see the attached poster! You won't want to miss this one! Adam Beach, Graham Greene, and Jason Priestly star in director Don McBrearty's account of the events that took place in the harbor of a Vancouver Island village and shocked animal lovers around the world.


When a government representative (Priestly) announces that he intends to reunite an orphaned orca with his pod by transporting him hundreds of miles over dry land, the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nations Band, which believes that the spirit of their late chief resides in the majestic ocean mammal, does everything within their power to thwart the controversial plan.

As the community grows increasingly divided over how to handle the situation, a young aboriginal boy wrestles with his own identity and new Band chief Mike Maquinna (Beach) prepares for the trial by fire that could shape his entire future.

  
Video above: Trailer for Luna: Spirit of the Whale. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cAcSr1y8Ik).

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Prison for Tim DeChristopher

SUBHEAD: For him and others civil disobedience the key to fixing climate change?  

By Tom Zeller Jr. on 26 July 2011 for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/26/tim-dechristopher-civil-disobedience_n_910406.html)


Image above: An undaunted and defiant Tim DeChristopher rallies his supporters after being found guilty of crashing a federal oil and gas lease auction outside the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City 3/3/11. From (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/51658269-90/among-arrested-capitol-climate.html.csp).
  


On Dec. 19, 2008, a 27-year-old man named Tim DeChristopher, troubled by American energy policy and its contribution to global warming, broke the law.

He did so by attending a federal auction in Utah, where energy developers were bidding on parcels of Utah wildland that the Bush administration had made available for oil and gas development. DeChristopher bid aggressively, driving up the price of some parcels and winning 14 of his own -- some 22,000 acres in all -- to the tune of $1.8 million. He had no means to pay.

"I understand that prison is a very horrible place," DeChristopher told me last fall, when I had a chance to sit down with him for a lengthy interview. "But I've been scared for my future for a long time. And I think the scariest thing that I see is staying on the path that we're on right now. Obedience, to me, is much scarier than going to prison."

He faced 10 years and some $750,000 in fines.

On Tuesday, the now 29-year-old DeChristopher, who was convicted in March of two felonies associated with his exploits, was sentenced to two years in prison and was promptly taken into custody. He also faces $10,000 in fines.

The judge had barred DeChristopher's defense team from explaining to the jury why he disrupted the auction -- because he saw the auction as both illegal and contributing to the "exacerbation of global warming and climate change," according to court documents.

"We're not here about why he did it," U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said at one point during the trial. "We're here about whether he did it."


He did.

DeChristopher's actions have prompted comparisons to Herny David Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes in protest of slavery, and even to Rosa Parks' refusal to be relegated to the back of the bus because she was black. And indeed, it has been a feature of many social movements, when legal avenues have been tried and exhausted -- and when it becomes clear that the system is set up to efficiently deflect and patiently defer demands for change -- that individuals and groups, dedicated to a cause, decide it's time to start peaceably breaking some rules.

For a growing number of Americans concerned about climate change -- and frustrated by the lack of action in Washington -- that time has come.

"People who understand the depth of the climate crisis have long since changed their light bulbs and their lifestyles," said Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and climate activist, "and they know that moral witness is the next step towards shifting our society on a sustainable path."

Part of bearing moral witness involves ignoring certain rules about congregating in front of the White House, and McKibben is among those leading an event next month that aims to do just that.

In this case, the group's target is the Keystone XL pipeline project -- a contentious proposal to build a pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. Environmentalists abhor the tar sands, a gooey mix of sand and oil that requires copious amounts of water, energy -- and greenhouse gas emissions -- to produce.

James Hansen, the NASA scientist and the godfather of the modern climate movement, laid out the stakes in an essay published at Climate Story Tellers in June: "If emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels -- including tar sands -- are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate," Hansen wrote. "Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over."

The Keystone project hinges on State Department approval, and while opponents have managed to slow down that agency's deliberations, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has said in the past that she is inclined to approve it. Pressures have also come from business lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has called for swift approval of the pipeline, and congressional Republicans, who pushed a bill through the House on Tuesday that would require the State Department to make a decision by Nov. 1.

In a clarion call dubbed Tar Sands Action, Hansen, McKibben and other environmental leaders are soliciting volunteers to descend on Washington at any point between Aug. 20 and Sept. 3. They plan to make their opposition to the pipeline known by occupying the pavement directly in front of the White House -- an area with specific rules regarding demonstrations, including an edict that protesters keep moving.

From the invitation:

[I]t’s time to stop letting corporate power make the most important decisions our planet faces. We don’t have the money to compete with those corporations, but we do have our bodies, and beginning in mid August many of us will use them. We will, each day, march on the White House, risking arrest with our trespass. We will do it in dignified fashion, demonstrating that in this case we are the conservatives, and that our foes — who would change the composition of the atmosphere -- are dangerous radicals. Come dressed as if for a business meeting — this is, in fact, serious business.

And another sartorial tip — if you wore an Obama button during the 2008 campaign, why not wear it again? We very much still want to believe in the promise of that young Senator who told us that with his election the ‘rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet start to heal.’ We don’t understand what combination of bureaucratic obstinacy and insider dealing has derailed those efforts, but we remember his request that his supporters continue on after the election to pressure his government for change. We’ll do what we can.

Not everyone thinks nonviolent disobedience is the answer.

Former Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, a climate change activist himself, told The Deseret News on Monday that he thought DeChristopher's actions were useless. "I doubt his actions convinced one person who did not already agree urgent action needs to be taken to protect our climate," Anderson was quoted as saying.

And Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and climate gadfly, perhaps best known as the author of the books “The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It," said in an email message that he also doubted the effectiveness of such forms of protest.

"Climate change has dropped down the political agenda, so I can perfectly understand why activists would turn to measures to attract more attention to it," Lomborg said. "But unfortunately, more attention is not what is actually needed to solve this problem — there has already been plenty of global attention focused on promises of carbon cuts that just haven’t happened. What is needed is a focus on smarter, more effective solutions than carbon cuts."

The solution, Lomborg added, involves increases in investment of green energy research and development, so that it eventually becomes cheaper than fossil fuels. But that is "not an easy policy to convert into activism," he said. "It’s hard, I guess, to chain yourself to an increased R&D budget."

But then, such policies are precisely what Americans of all stripes, who are fed up with political inertia in Washington, say they are hoping to nudge by risking arrest -- or even prison, in DeChristopher's case.

"I think that one of the things that critics need to remember is that civil disobedience has always played a role in social movements," said Lindsy Floyd, a program coordinator with the Environmental Humanities Education Center and an organizer with Peaceful Uprising, a group co-founded by DeChristopher after his action at the lease auction. The group's first core principle: "We refuse to be obedient to injustice."

Floyd said she was "sick of signing petitions and 'liking' things on Facebook," adding that her contributions to nonprofit groups working to preserve Utah wilderness have proved ineffectual.

"The system in place is designed to limit our effectiveness as citizens and agents of change," she said. "To critics, I ask: if not civil disobedience, then what?"

See also: 
 Ea O Ka Aina: Climate Change Civil Disobedience 4/27/11 
Ea O Ka Aina: Environmentalist going to prison 3/4/11
Ea O Ka Aina: One Man's Bid 12/27/08 .

Demon Papaya Seed

SUBHEAD: It is at worst a form of civil disobedience, at best self-defense, to eradicate the scourge of GMO crops.  

By Andy Parx on 22 July 2011 for parx News Daily - 
(http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2011/07/demon-seed.html)

 
Image above:Greenpeace volunteers remove genetically modified contaminated fruit from a Puna farm on Big Island. From (http://islandbreath.org/2006Year/16-farming/0616-07GMOPapaya.html).

When the first word in the headline- "Decapitation"- caught our eye Wednesday we almost kept scanning the Honolulu paper for less bloody fare- until, that is, we read "of papaya trees unnerves Hawaii isle farmers." According to the article, someone took a machete to 10 acres on the Big Island. The same thing occurred at this time last summer to 17 acres there and another farm three months before that.

But the article ended without any speculation by anyone as to a motive for the "crime," saying (Police) said while farmers talk and speculate, they have no clues about who is committing the vandalism or why it is happening. "There's no rhyme or reason for these thoughtless acts." The TV news stories weren't much help either but the next day the Honolulu newspaper made clear what their theory was in an editorial that squarely pointed a finger, saying:

In all incidents, the papaya trees were genetically modified. William Julian, brother of the Kapoho farmer, speculated that the destruction was the work of people who oppose genetically modified crops or the use of chemicals to control weeds and pests... Julian's speculation is not far-fetched. His brother, Laureto Julian, who has grown papayas since 1967, said he had harvested his first patch of genetically engineered, or GE, "Rainbow" and "Sun Up" papayas just three days before what he called "a gang of up to five people" whacked away at his trees. The editorial predictably went on to condemn the "organized vandalism" saying: Police need to step up their investigation of this criminality and, along with the public, recognize that this goes beyond mere property damage and is becoming a form of agricultural terrorism. 

But even though it's hard to root for seeing anyone's rice bowl get broken it's apparent that the paper's editorial board has it's economic blinders pointed in the wrong direction because from our vantage point the "agricultural terrorists" are not the decapitators but the "decapitees". Though the creators of "genetically modified organisms" (GMO)- or Frankenfoods as many depict them- claim the scientific high ground, real scientists, especially those without any economic interest, recognize the violation of the first rule of science- the precautionary principle. It says that anything being released into the wild- especially for human consumption- should be considered unsafe until proven safe rather than the other way around.

It's certainly the way the Food and Drug Administration treats new drugs. But for some reason- most likely the massive amounts of cash poured into lobbying efforts and politicians' campaign coffers- testing of GMO foods have been done subject to the use of this kind of Carrollian logic.

 But safety issues aside- and make no mistake many are emerging such as colony collapse in bees which has increasingly been thought to be associated with the widespread use of GMO cereal seeds- the violation of the right of people to choose what they put in their pieholes has many hopping mad... mad enough to take matters into their own hands. The not just lack of but actual suppression of information makes any attempt to simply refuse to buy or eat GMO products impossible. Not only are GMO foods not required to have labels informing consumers but it is actually illegal to say a product contains no GMOs.

Not only that but federal law actually forbids states and local jurisdictions from enacting such informational legislation on their own. Those who try to grow organic or even just non-GMO papayas- the latter of which, by the way, are the only ones accepted in the biggest foreign papaya market, Japan- are fed up having their crops infected by the pollen that drifts on the wind from near-by GMO fields making their harvests useless for them and their customers. In some cases GMO seed distributors on the mainland such as Monsanto have gone so far as to actually sue those whose crops were infected by their seeds.

And to add insult to injury they forbid anyone to grow their GMO brands from the seeds of their own harvests, including those whose "legacy crops" have been infected. So far the courts- in the US at least- have bizarrely upheld Monsanto's and other GMO seed creators' and distributors' own "agricultural terrorism," although some small victories have led to ambiguity as to what will happen next in the appellate courts. Is it really terrorism to engage in protecting your non-GMO papayas by taking matters into your own hands and physically preventing the flowering and pollen drift of the GMO brands?

Who are the real criminals- the ones who are protecting their own health, safety and livelihood where the courts have failed to protect them or those who could care less about health and safety of others as long as they get paid? It may be "illegal" to destroy someone else's property but it certainly is at worst a form of civil disobedience, at best self-defense, to eradicate the source of the scourge of GMO crops.

 See also:
Island Breath: Global Alarm Over GE Papaya Grows 5/30/06 .

Roots to Rise

SUBHEAD: Some people call it dropping out. I call it leaving one world and appearing in another.  

By Alfie Turnshek-Goins on 24 July 2011 for Nature Bats Last -  
(http://guymcpherson.com/2011/07/root-to-rise)


 Image above: CGI modelling "Hippie Ant Series" by John Strieder. From (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=225&t=514099&page=1&pp=15).
 
The space between. Not wild, not domesticated. Something else. Something new and old. Whether we are reclaiming lost knowledge or using our integrated be-ing to create new ways of floating along with the material needs of life, it makes no difference. Nothing new under the Sun. Indigenous or civilized, the only way forward is through the playful creation of sustainable ways of living. This means, as Derrick Jensen says, not being a culture of occupation. We have much to learn from the indigenous people of this continent.

Some of these cultures stretch back 10,000 years or more. The way of living practiced by many of these cultures is green of a very deep shade, before green was a political ideology or anything other than the color of life; green like the quiet of the forest under the canopy, duff and twigs crunching beneath your feet. And a softness to the air, a rich stillness where the processes of life around you march on, perceptibly. Ant footsteps can be heard if you listen. And breathe.

These spaces between open us up to the fact that in our cities and society we inhabit a psycho-physical world where the most taboo things we can feel, the things we are told by our governments and self-proclaimed elites we are not allowed to feel, yet those things which deep down we all know to be utterly, simply true; are that we are powerful and beautiful and free beyond our imagining. That our imagining is the only thing that limits us. That we may be imagining the wrong things. That we are not prisoners. That our needs are greater than those of The System. That the Earth freely provides everything we are currently being tricked into paying for. That we are capable of living together in peace, in concert with the natural limits of our biosphere.

Two times, two times for emphasis: we are capable of living together in peace, in concert with the natural limits of our biosphere. Maybe not everyone is, but many are. I don’t know if there’s some sort of pendulum effect (where pendulums near to each other and swinging at different rates will eventually synchronize) in societies. Maybe in smaller, local communities. Whatever the case may be, I’m looking for the ones who are capable of living in concert with their total environment. I call them The Happy-Monkey-People.

When I am in urban space I see ruins. Living, breathing ruins. The structural violence of industrial civilization. A scavenger’s paradise. I see the frustration of the superego; its futility. I see the enclosure, the limits, the boundary of the city. An outpost. In Phoenix, where I currently live, those ruins are sometimes not so living and breathing. They’re just broken down, forgotten buildings with old stories on the façade and older chairs inside, the decay of decades of industry and metastatic economic growth.

It’s strange to feel nostalgic about things that are currently happening. There is no such thing as history. There’s only what happened in the past. In The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes: “It struck me, a belief that has never left me since that we [humanity] are just a great machine for looking backwards, and that humans are great at self-delusion. Every year that goes by increases my belief in this distortion.”

When I think of people in cities, I wonder how on Earth we are going to make this transition to living in a way that is predicated on health and wellness for everything. I was led to believe that was the whole point of the Universe (by whom or what, I’m not sure, but that’s what I think, anyway.) All the fixtures of the contemporary American city: the cabs, the restaurants (diabetes and heart disease are on the menu), the trucks, the girls, the guys, the homeless, the criminal, the waste, a great martini, the waste, traffic and horns, urban growth, urban decay, gutter punks, bad water, good art, the afterhours, narcissism, the farmers markets, god damn near everything … (breath) depends on oil, and is thus linked to all the tangible effects the use of that substance entails.

And what it entails is ecocide. While that is not news to many of those reading this blog, I am still thinking of American city-dwellers, of whom I am currently one. How is it to be done? What force could motivate the conversion of those who depend on supermarkets for their food and Amerika for their infotainment into those who produce much of their own material sustenance, right down to the rocket mass heaters and Hugelkultur beds? The compost pile hot water heater? The creation of a personality with the spiritual knowledge of a being who can live peaceably and joyfully among a diverse group of biological entities? Is Snooki gonna help with that?

The force we usually think will initiate this conversion is the murky specter of collapse. Peak oil and the Economy! are complex beyond prediction, and it is no surprise that so many of us feel like something is shifting, something so massive it does not immediately register on our scale as powerful movement. The combination of these two forces will most definitely be converting some things in our world, although it’s likely to be the living into the dead. I really hope not. Doom and gloom take the place of rational predictions (although they are still possible) precisely because the nature of the problem does not appear to be rational.

The word “non-linear” has been ringing in my ears of late. One side of the function of the exponential curve is about to turn for the heavens, and the other side, in a poetic nod to Lao-tse, is about to dive for the center of the Earth. Peak everything. Except peak mayhem, peak denial, and peak possibility. What peak oil is really about for me, is not how much oil we have left, but how much more of this shit I can take before I spontaneously and compulsively start building cob houses in the middle of the street and planting perennial polycultures in my immediate surroundings, fending off herbicide-spraying landscapers and cops with a combination of wit, bearing, charm, and Spanish. And fruits and nuts and vegetables, of course. You can get a long way with fresh figs.

Carless, mega-village, agroforest. Die-off is a touchy subject that is beyond the likes of a knave like me. I don’t want to think about it. This is not out of a desire for ignorance; as Jan Steinman said recently,

“Although I appreciate those who fight against the wrongs in the world, we prefer to work for the rights in the world.”

I understand the gravity of what we face. It’s so catastrophically profound of an idea, that I won’t waste another second thinking about it. I’m getting going, most ricky-tick. I want to have kids. I want those little wise monkeys to grow up without having toxins put into their bodies. Without toxins being put into their minds and their spirits.

I think I speak for the majority of Earth’s living beings when I say I’m over it. I want to walk outside my earthen berm house that I built with my hands and pick fruit for my family’s breakfast. Trade vegetables and comedy gatherings and beer. Artwork and hand tools. Salvaged battery systems that enable diverse art forms and certain life-affirming technologies to continue. Street corner forums on the continental philosophers. Cheese and herbs. Scrap metal and books. Medicine and massage

I want to feed everyone who needs food. I want to figure out how to grow avocadoes at temperate latitudes, because damn it, I want the guacamolé, but I care where it comes from and how it gets here. I want to live, love, and laugh. Vandana Shiva, in the wonderful documentary, Dirt!, says we must feed the Earth first. What it gives back is our food. Feed the Earth. Feed yourself. Simple, not easy.

That is where I’m headed. The inner spiral, the rooting down, and the outward expansion. I’ve transferred my loyalty. What’s left in the intervening space between this place and a place where I produce my own food, my own hot water, and my own happiness, is the time and effort required to prepare an escape trajectory from the orbit of a death-culture with immense mass and spin.

Calculate when and for how long to burn my rocket stove to achieve the appropriate velocity for the interculture voyage between civilization and something else. Figure the correct angle and orientation of my solar dehydrator for a safe re-entry into the atmosphere of a healthy planet. Some people call it dropping out. I call it leaving one world and appearing in another, which is the same world you just left. Not the country, not the city. The space between. Let’s build it.


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No! - To debt ceiling negotiations

SUBHEAD: The very idea that something substantive is being discussed is an insult to anyone with a functioning brain.

 By Jason Linkin on 26 July 2011 for Huffington Post - 
 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/26/death-to-the-debt-ceiling_n_909738.html)

 
Image above: Recent scene in White House of debt ceiling negotiations. From (http://www.lightsoutpoker.net/2011/07/how-the-debt-ceiling-negotiations-are-like-poker).
 


Hello, America. About two weeks ago, I left the United States on a vacation abroad, and when I did so, it was generally assumed that some sort of "deal" or "grand bargain" or "bipartisan dry-hump" might be realized through the ongoing debt-ceiling negotiations. I strove to make my time off as leisurely and internet-free as possible, but like many people, I was pretty invested in this ongoing news story, and checked in each day to learn that there had been no new progress, no agreement and no deal. And now that I'm back, we've seen in the past 24 hours that the impasse on a debt ceiling deal is as insurmountable as ever.

And to that, I say: fantastic! Fie on a "debt ceiling deal!" A pox on "debt ceiling negotiations." Every day without a debt ceiling deal is like a day with sunshine -- or, rather, for heat-submerged East Coasters, it's like a day without sunshine. The failure of President Barack Obama, Speaker John Boehner, Senate leader Harry Reid, and all of the affiliated hangers-on and secondary characters to arrive at some sort agreement to make cuts/add revenue is a great net result for America and for all American citizens. I hope there is never a "debt ceiling deal," and so should you.

Right about now, you may be forming some objections to this. "But, Jason," you may be thinking, "that's just irresponsible to say. Without a debt ceiling deal, we will default on our obligations, and this will touch off a daisy chain of global economic destruction. The only way to prevent that is to hope that all of these people start acting like adults and make a deal." Believe me, I understand your concerns. But they're based on many months of the media, wearing away your capacity for logic with day after day of misallocated journalistic resources.

So, it's time for a little bit of cult deprogramming. The failure to reach a debt ceiling deal will not result in a default. It's the failure to raise the debt ceiling that will do that. And the debt ceiling deal is not the way to ensuring that the debt ceiling gets raised. The ongoing negotiations are the primary impediment to the debt ceiling being raised. The best and most effective way of ending the uncertainty and the worry that economic turmoil is poised to unleash itself at any moment is to immediately call an end to the debt ceiling negotiations.

Let me repeat that: The best and most effective way of ending the uncertainty and the worry that economic turmoil is poised to unleash itself at any moment is to immediately call an end to the debt ceiling negotiations.

(Then, Congress can raise the debt ceiling as it's done hundreds of times in the past already. If you're still confused about how Congress will do this, please click here.)

There is, of course, a side benefit to ending the negotiations: we can stop pretending that they are anything other than a farcical political dumbshow. The very idea that something substantive is being discussed is an insult to anyone with a functioning brain or the means to transform sunlight into energy through photosynthesis. Let's recall that the basic GOP position is that they want massive spending cuts. The basic Democratic position is that those cuts cannot come at the expense of entitlements.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Bring it on! 7/17/11 .

Militarization of public shoreline

SUBHEAD: HR Bill 1505 allows for Homeland Security to takeover seashores and coastal areas.  

By Irene on 20 July 2011 for Loss of Privacy - 
(http://www.lossofprivacy.com/index.php/2011/07/hr-bill-1505-allows-for-dhs-takeover-of-seashores-and-coastal-areas/)


 
Image above: Photo by Carl Wright of US Coast Guard (as part of Homeland Security) going after Kauai surfer blocking illegal entry into Nawiliwili Harbor of Navy subsidized SuperFerry. From (http://islandbreath.org/2007Year/15-justice/0715-08CoastGuardZone.html).
 
A new house bill wants to allow the Department of Homeland Security to have jurisdiction over all federal lands on national seashores and coastal areas.

HR Bill 1505, the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act,” would force the Secretary of the Interior to cede authority of coastal public lands, as well as lands located along the borders of Canada and Mexico, to the Secretary of Homeland Security when the latter sees fit. It would give the Dept. of Homeland Security the ability to construct roads and fences, deploy patrol vehicles and set up “monitoring equipment” in the National Seashore with impunity. And it would waive the need for the Dept. of Homeland Security to comply with environmental laws in areas within 100 miles of a coastline or international border.

The laws from which the Dept. of Homeland Security would be exempt include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and virtually every other piece of environmental legislation passed by Congress.

The bill is not without opposition. Congressman William Keating , who also sits on the House committee for Homeland Security, is concerned about the language in the bill as it appears to allow for outright destruction of parts of the United States as long as the DHS claims that there is some sort of security risk. There are also massive environmental and legislative problems to be taken into consideration as well.

…the proposed legislation would give unprecedented authority to a single federal agency to destroy wildlife habitat and wetlands, impair downstream water quality and restrict activities such as hunting, fishing and grazing. It would leave Congress and the public without a voice, even though at stake are hundreds of popular destinations,” including Glacier National Park, the Great Lakes, the California coastline and Cape Cod, said Jane Danowitz, director of U.S. public lands for the Pew Environment Group.

Areas in which environmental laws would be waived under the proposed law include the entire border of Alaska, most of Puerto Rico, all of Hawaii and all of Florida. Other national parks that be would affected include Olympic National Park and Mt. Rainer National Park in Washington, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Big Bend National Park in Texas, Acadia National Park in Maine and Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina.

 
Image above: US Navy exercise on Oahu during RIMPAC 2010. From (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/08/rimpac-to-expand-activities.html).
 
This is far too sweeping legislation. It essentially allows the DHS to do whatever it wants, including destroying habitats and coastlines, all in the name of security. There would be no oversight and no recourse for anyone or anything in the affected areas.

When is this overreaching of government going to be enough? Would you like to visit any of the places named above if they were swarming with armed military, checkpoints, and “random” stops, especially if you had no recourse to complain about them? What are the “other purposes” in this bill and just how far will it be stretched to fit the mission of the DHS as it changes day to day? We need to stop this bill while it’s still in committee.

 Once it becomes a law, these former parks and seashores will no longer be a place for a family to enjoy a weekend together. It will be a militarized border, questionable to no one.

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Fukushima poisons Japanese food

SUBHEAD: Japan’s food-chain threat multiplies as Fukushima radiation spreads.  

By Aya Takada on 24 July 2011 for Bloomberg News -  
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-24/threat-to-japanese-food-chain-multiplies-as-cesium-contamination-spreads.html)

 
Image above: Meat on display in Japanese supermarket. From original article.

Radiation fallout from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant poses a growing threat to Japan’s food chain as unsafe levels of cesium found in beef on supermarket shelves were also detected in more vegetables and the ocean.

 More than 2,600 cattle have been contaminated, Kyodo News reported July 23, after the Miyagi local government said 1,183 cattle at 58 farms were fed hay containing radioactive cesium before being shipped to meat markets. Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano has said officials didn’t foresee that farmers might ship contaminated hay to cattle ranchers. That highlights the government’s inability to think ahead and to act, said Mariko Sano, secretary general for Shufuren, a housewives organization in Tokyo. “The government is so slow to move,” Sano said. “They’ve done little to ensure food safety.”

On July 22, Aeon Co., Japan’s biggest supermarket chain, said 1,614 kilograms (3,558 pounds) of beef from cattle fed contaminated feed had been unknowingly sold at stores in Tokyo and nine other prefectures. Supermarkets started testing beef after the Tokyo Metropolitan Government found cesium in slaughtered cattle this month.

The government on July 19 banned cattle shipments from Fukushima prefecture, though not before some had been slaughtered and shipped to supermarkets. A ban on Shiitake mushrooms from another part of Fukushima was introduced on July 23 because of cesium levels, the health ministry said.

Seafood Concerns
As much as 2,300 becquerels of cesium a kilogram was detected in the contaminated beef, according to a July 18 statement from the health ministry. The government limit is 500 becquerels per kilogram. Seafood is another concern after cesium-134 in seawater near the Fukushima plant climbed to levels 30 times the allowed safety standards last week, according to tests performed by Tokyo Electric Power Co, national broadcaster NHK reported.

“We need to monitor the cesium 134 level detected in seawater around the plant,” Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in central Japan, said by phone today. “The increase could be from seawater churned by swells from the recent typhoon, but it’s possible that contaminated groundwater leaked from the plant.”  

Voluntary Testing
 Japan has no centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests. Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi. Hay contaminated with as much as 690,000 becquerels a kilogram, compared with a government safety standard of 300 becquerels, has been fed to cattle. Cattle with unsafe levels of the radioactive element were detected in four prefectures, the health ministry said July 23.

A becquerel represents one radioactive decay per second, which involves the release of atomic energy that can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association. Four months after the earthquake and tsunami damage to the Fukushima plant, local governments short of equipment, staff and funds are struggling to test all farm products.  

Tainted Meat
The government is considering if it’s feasible to test all cattle to prevent shipments of tainted meat to market, according to Yasuo Sasaki, senior press counselor for the agriculture ministry. On June 6, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive material into the air between March 11 and March 16, doubling an earlier estimate. That’s about 14 percent of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster in modern-day Ukraine. About 2 million people in Ukraine are under permanent medical monitoring, 25 years after the accident, according to the nation’s embassy in Tokyo.

While 203 people were hospitalized and 31 died after the explosion at Chernobyl, about 400,000 children are considered to have received significant doses of radiation to their thyroid that merit monitoring, the embassy said. Cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine, increased for at least 10 years after 1986 in children younger than 14 and for almost 20 years among 20-24 year olds, according to research by Shunichi Yamashita of Nagasaki University, who was appointed as an adviser to Fukushima prefecture on radiation exposure.

 .

Nobody Knows Anything

SUBHEAD: We don't know if that's spaghetti hitting a wall or the shit hitting the fan.  

By James Kunstler on 25 July 2011 for Kunstler.com -  
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/07/nobody-knows-anything.html)

 
Image above: From (http://tochew.blogspot.com/2011/07/dining-etiquette-children-part-3.html).

That sound you hear out there is spaghetti hitting the wall. Everybody wonders: will it stick? The European Union lobbed a wad of kartoffelkloesse at a Greek wall last week. The thud was impressive, but then the darn thing started sliding down the greasy wall to where a gang of CDS counterparty wolves waited, snapping and slavering for it. And then there was a crowd of curious Germans in the alley, wondering who stole their precious kartoffelkloesse and lobbed it at the Greek wall, anyway. Grumbles were heard but, as yet, no mob action against the flingers of the purloined kartoffelkloesse.

Here in the pitiful tweet-sphere that contains the atomized remnants of USA governance, there is no such clarity. We don't know if that's spaghetti hitting a wall or the shit hitting the fan. But due to the amazing obduracy of the parties involved, the next sound you hear may just be the wall itself tumbling down, perhaps even the famous wall with the famous street attached.

All I know is that I dumped a largish bundle of 13-week US treasuries on Friday, a tad shy of the August 4 rollover and moved the hypothetical cash into less freaky hypothetical foreign sovereign instruments. I found a great bid for the T-bills, too. The whole transaction cost me a buck. I wondered: what were these people thinking who bought this crap at just the moment in history when everything is flying into walls and fans?

Whatever other conclusions can be drawn from the great debt ceiling debate of 2011, the main one seems to be that this country can no longer govern itself. Our reverence for the constitution appears to be inflated along with everything else in the USA these days: gas prices, waistlines, cable TV bills. Even congresspersons themselves seem to hold it in low regard, since proposals for a "super-congress" were floated last week. A lot of sentient folk who follow national affairs actually wondered out loud, "what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

I took it to mean that our faith in the apparatus of governing has evaporated at the same rate as faith in our promises to pay back stuff-of-value denominated in certificates called dollars, our faith in which also melts into air. One thing for sure everybody knows: this is not a good time of year for financial shenanigans and chicanery. The rough beast called Reality comes back from its vacation in foul and turbulent spirits. Things shake loose when it roars.

There is widespread and growing agreement that the two major political parties have reached the end of their useful lives. No other serious faction is waiting in the wings to replace them, except the one led by a claque of overfed radio clowns and know-nothing Jesus Jokers with an axe to grind against the wicked hosts of birth control. Seek no further for the answer as to why our political leaders are not serious: there is nothing they can do at this point. In order to conceal the reality of epochal economic contraction, they have run our money affairs off a cliff - and so the next sound you will hear may not be of things hitting walls and fans, but of a sickening crash, as the overloaded carriage of government (drawn by a scrawny coyote) spirals down into the Canyon of Lost Causes.

We need a financial convulsion to sweep away the accumulated debris of poor choices, false hopes, squandered resources, frauds, swindles, and lies. Such an event can't help but set off a true political convulsion. Let the banks eat their own tails and strangle to death. I hope somebody catches a photo of Lloyd Blankfein paddling a surfboard due south off Georgica Beach, destination: Fortaleza. I hope he brings a few Red Bulls with him for the trip, and perhaps a whiffle bat to hold off the sharks - if there are any left in overfished deep blue sea.

I post a few seconds before the markets' openings this ominous Monday. Gold is already riding high. The rest is largely up to the robots in Lower Manhattan and the zombies in Washington.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Bring it on! 7/17/11

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$16 Trillion in Secret Loans

SUBHEAD: According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the U.S. provided $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out foreign banks and business recently.  

By Bernie Sanders on 21 July 2011 for SteveBeckow.com -  
(http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3)


Image above: Federal Reserve and some of its "clients". From original article.
 
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study.

“As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. “No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed’s board of directors or be employed by the Fed,” he said.

The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.

A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. “The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street.”

To read the GAO report, click here for PDF.
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Geithner Gets Gruesome

SUBHEAD: The plan needs to be in place today and the debt limit process must start tomorrow.  

By Ian Katz on 24 July 2011 for Bloomberg News -  
 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-24/geithner-says-house-must-start-debt-limit-process-tomorrow.html)

 
Image above: Illustration of Tim Geithner by Keith Taylor and modified by Juan Wilson.
 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said he hopes lawmakers can agree on the framework of a debt-limit agreement today because the House of Representatives must start deliberations tomorrow to meet the Aug. 2 deadline.

“They need to get this process moving in the House by Monday night,” Geithner said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “To achieve that deadline, they need to have a framework that they know with complete confidence will pass both houses of Congress that is acceptable to the president. That should happen today.” When asked if he thinks a deal will be reached today, Geithner said, “I hope so.”

Geithner said two types of plans are being discussed: One is a “comprehensive, balanced” plan including spending cuts and “tax reform that would generate revenues,” which President Barack Obama is still negotiating with House Speaker John Boehner. The other, proposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid, would put in place “some up-front savings, but then establish a special committee with exceptional powers that could legislate quickly.”

Republicans yesterday challenged a presidential veto threat by preparing for a short-term extension of the $14.3 trillion debt limit, hardening partisan differences in the face of warnings that a stalemate risks roiling financial markets as soon as tonight.
Reid’s Reaction

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, declared himself “deeply disappointed” with a Republican stance that’s “pushing us to the brink of a default.” Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman, said a short-term extension, which would mean another vote on the nation’s borrowing authority before the 2012 elections, is “inevitable.”

Geithner, during a separate appearance today on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said a deal that doesn’t go through the 2012 elections wouldn’t get to Obama to sign because “it will not make its way through the Senate. So that’s not a viable option. Now there’s nothing wrong with doing this in stages, but what we can’t do is leave the threat of default hanging over the American economy. That’s like a tax on all Americans. It’s deeply irresponsible.” Geithner also appeared today on “Fox News Sunday.”

Geithner told congressional leaders at a White House meeting yesterday with Obama that delaying a deal risked an adverse reaction from credit-rating companies and financial markets. He noted Asian markets open tonight, said an official familiar with the meeting.
Market Reaction

“You can’t tell,” if investors would react negatively tonight if a deal isn’t reached, Geithner said on CNN today. “You can never know.”

Geithner also said Obama “absolutely” remains involved in the talks and said it’s “not true” that Obama and Boehner are no longer negotiating.

Geithner said the Obama administration and Boehner had never agreed on a deal to raise $800 billion in revenue.

“The president and the speaker got very close,” Geithner told ABC. “But there was a whole range of things yet to be resolved at that point when the speaker pulled out on Friday.”

Geithner said using the 14th Amendment to avoid default is “not a workable option.” He said the administration has “looked at his very carefully.”
14th Amendment

Some Democrats in Congress have discussed the idea of claiming presidential authority to continue borrowing without congressional approval based on an interpretation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

“This is a critical test for the American political system,” Geithner said. “It’s a critical test for Congress and for the Republican leaders in Congress, because the eyes of the world are on us.”

The Treasury secretary reiterated his view that Republican leaders understand that the U.S. can’t allow a default.

“If you listen to them carefully, Speaker Boehner, Senator McConnell have said unequivocally that this country will not default, we will meet our obligations,” he said. “The problem is, they have a vocal, loud, frankly irresponsible minority.”

Geithner declined to discuss any possible contingency plans if the debt limit isn’t raised.

“We will do everything we can to mitigate the damage,” Geithner said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “We do not have the ability, only Congress has the ability, to make sure that people get their payments on time.”

“We write 80 million checks a month,” Geithner said. “There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time. Not just people that supply our military, but people who get Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid benefits. And we cannot put those payments at risk, and we do not have the ability to limit the damage on them, if Congress fails to act in time.”

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Bring it on! 7/17/11 .

Cantor Carefully Considers

SUBHEAD: Rep. Eric Cantor continues debate over whether or not nation should be economically ruined.  

By Staff on 20 July 2011 for Onion News Network -
(http://www.theonion.com/articles/congress-continues-debate-over-whether-or-not-nati,20977/)

 
Image above: Could someone please wipe that sh#t eating grin off this fool's face. From (http://gop12.thehill.com/2009/01/profile-eric-cantor-in-2012.html).

 Members of the U.S. Congress reported Saturday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions. Asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA),

"It is a question that, I think, is worthy of serious consideration: Should we take steps to avoid a crippling, decades-long depression that would lead to disastrous consequences on a worldwide scale? Or should we not do that?"

Cantor added that arguments could be made for both sides, and that the debate over ensuring America’s financial solvency versus allowing the nation to default on its debt—which would torpedo stock markets, cause mortgage and interests rates to skyrocket, and decimate the value of the U.S. dollar—is “certainly a conversation worth having.” He continued,

"Obviously, we don't want to rush to consensus on whether it is or isn't a good idea to save the American economy and all our respective livelihoods from certain peril until we've examined this thorny dilemma from every angle. And if we’re still discussing this matter on Aug. 2, well, then, so be it.”

At press time, President Obama said he personally believed the country should not be economically ruined.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Bring it on! 7/17/20

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Beginning of the end for bananas

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (taylork021@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: Most bananas eaten in the United States are now threatened by a new—but old—enemy.  
By Dan Koeppel on 22 July 2011 for The Scientist -  
(http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/22/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-bananas/)

 
 Image above: Bananas in Hanapepe Valley in 2005 that died from virus. Photo by Juan Wilson.

Our standard supermarket banana, a variety called Cavendish, may be at the brink of disaster. Chosen for its resistance to a fungal pathogen that wiped out its predecessor, the Gros Michel banana, the popular fruit has long battled a related fungus, which has all but devastated the banana industry in certain parts of the world. Now, it appears the Cavendish variety is facing a new threat—the very same fungal disease that drove Gros Michels off the market. Cavendish bananas account for about 45 percent of the fruit’s global crop, with an annual export value of US$8.5 billion, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

It was chosen to replace the original Gros Michel banana after a deadly fungal infection, known as Panama disease (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Cubense), wiped out much of the world’s banana crop in the first half of the 20th century. Farmers adopted the Cavendish variety because it appeared to resist the blight, as well as about a dozen other banana diseases that also threaten the worldwide crop. But it wasn’t long before it too started suffering from disease.

In the late 1980s, a mysterious malady began to wipe out Asian Cavendish plantations. Soil samples were sent to plant pathologist Randy Ploetz of the University of Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center, who made the shocking identification: Panama disease was back, in the form of a new strain, which he dubbed Tropical Race 4. Race 4 is just as virulent to Cavendish as Race 1 was to Gros Michel. The fungus enters the plant via its roots through infected soil or water and spreads via the plant’s vascular system.

Once exposed, the plant yellows, and begins to look obviously sick—dried-out, sunken, and sagging. As the disease progresses, brown and purple stripes appear on the trunk, and the plant eventually dies. The disease, however, lives on, spreading via infected soil from plant to plant, plantation to plantation. Today the disease has spread across Asia, into the Pacific, and to Australia, where it has devastated the island country’s banana industry.

Though Race 4 has yet to hit Latin America, where bananas imported to the United States are grown, there’s little doubt it will, said Ploetz. But it turns out that Race 4 is not the only threat to Cavendish bananas.

As banana growers have fled from Race 4, replanting their Cavendish trees in areas only known to harbor Race 1, they quickly learned that Gros Michel’s old foe was now tormenting Cavendish bananas as well. In 2010, scientists conducting a survey of plants infected in India, which grows and consumes more bananas than any other country in the world, were the first to conclusively identify the presence of Race 1 in the Cavendish banana.

They published their findings in Plant Disease that November, and this March, Bioversity International—the global umbrella group for banana research—released a report confirming the finding: Race 1 had begun killing Cavendish plants in plantations around the Theni District of Tamil Nadu, India. Banana scientists are still trying to determine why some Cavendish are no longer immune to Race 1.

Altus Viljoenm, a researcher with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, speculates that this new strain of Race 1 may have evolved over time so that it could attack Cavendish. Other researchers are skeptical of the finding.

Ploetz notes that there have been rare cases in which Race 1 has killed individual Cavendish plants when they were already stressed—due to drought conditions, for example, or flooding. “I suspect that this is the same thing,” he said. But the authors of the Plant Disease paper reported that they had confirmed the finding with laboratory tests on sterile, potted Cavendish. “To our knowledge,” the researchers wrote, “this is the first report of [such] a virulent strain.”

Today, there are no cures, treatments, or even reliable molecular diagnostic tests for either Race, partly due to lack of detailed information on the banana genome, according to Bioversity. Currently, the best available strategy is containment. Ploetz has developed a plan to fight Race 4 if it appears in Latin American plantations, involving the use of strict quarantines on affected plantations to prevent, at least temporarily, the spread of the disease.

But isolating infected plantations is more a stopgap than a solution, Ploetz knows. “It buys time,” he said, but barring any new discoveries, the spread of Panama disease remains inevitable. Ploetz said it’s important that similar agricultural practices be instituted in already affected countries to help prevent the spread to Latin America in the first place.

In the meantime, scientists are working to develop new approaches to quell disaster. Last year, for example, University of Queensland researcher James Dale began the first field tests of a genetically modified Cavendish, which he hopes will provide long-term resistance against Race 4. Banana companies such as Chiquita and Dole are also reportedly working to develop new varieties.

Though genetic modification has long been considered the only way to breed Cavendish, since the variety is completely sterile, recent research conducted in Honduras has revealed that a few Cavendish plants do produce viable seeds. Researchers at the Fundacíon Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA) say these non-sterile fruit form the basis of a series of promising hybrids, that can be bred for resistance to the fungi.

It will still be at least six years before the new breeds are ready to be brought to market, however, according to a source familiar with the project, or may never appear at all, now that the banana companies are no longer funding the research.

Most banana researchers agree that the real answer—as has been the case with crops like potatoes, apples, and grapes—is to abandon the monoculture that makes the emergence of a disease so devastating.

A more diverse banana harvest would allow farmers to isolate susceptible bananas, surrounding them with more resistant varieties. If the solution ends up being a Cavendish stand-in that is resistant to both strains, on the other hand, the predicament of the banana monoculture—with its vulnerability to old, new, and yet-to-be discovered pathogens—would continue.

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Too warm for tigers

SUBHEAD: Heat wave got ya? Zoo tigers beat deadly heat wave by snacking on bloodsicles and frequent pool dips.  

By Alex Davies on 23 July 2011 for TreeHugger -  
(http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/07/zoo-tigers-beat-deathly-heat-wave-by-snacking-on-bloodsicles.php)

 
Image above: Tiger in Busch Gardens with a bloodsicle. From (http://gothamist.com/2011/07/22/move_over_meatsicles_tigers_like_to.php).
 

With an unprecedented spike in temperatures breaking records all over the country, humans aren't the only ones feeling the heat. But just as humans have come up with lot of ways to keep cool, tigers at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and the Minnesota Zoo have found a strategy to beat with the heat, reported Today. They're slurping down popsicles made of blood.


In Minnesota, the heat index hit a staggering 119° last week, and temperatures in Tampa have been hanging in the 90s recently. In addition to regular swims, the "bloodsicles" help the zoos' tigers keep their own body temperatures down. Diana Weinhardt of the Minnesota Zoo told Today: "It's kind of gross, but they like it."

So what to do if you're not a tiger and don't particularly like the taste of frozen blood? Why not make your own popsicles - out of fruit and juice, of course..

Kingdom of Atooi Badgered

SUBHEAD: Kauai police officer Roy Asher had no right to confiscate federal marshal badge of Dayne “Aipoalani” Gonsalves.  

By Joan Conrow on 23 July 2011 for Honolulu Weekly -  
(http://honoluluweekly.com/diary/2011/07/badgering)


Image above: KPD Lt. Roy Asher (l.) and Kingdom of Atooi leader Dayne Aipoalani (r.) discuss Superferry entry into Nawiliwili Harbor on 8/26/07. Photo by Jonathan Jay for Island Breath.
 
A four-year-old case stemming from protests over the Hawaii Superferry took an unusual turn recently when a judge ordered the Kauai Police Department (KPD) to return a badge they took from the arrested leader of the Kingdom of Atooi.

Kauai attorney Dan Hempey successfully argued that his client is entitled, under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to possess a badge identifying himself as a federal marshal in the Kingdom of Atooi.

Dayne “Aipoalani” Gonsalves, the alii nui of the Kauai-based Kingdom of Atooi, is awaiting trial on misdemeanor charges stemming from an Aug. 26, 2007, protest against the Superferry, as well as two counts of impersonating a law enforcement officer.

Gonsalves allegedly produced the badge when police arrested him on Oct. 23, 2007, for the Superferry-related offenses, resulting in the first charge of impersonating an officer. The second count was added when police found the badge in a pouch in Gonsalves’s truck during an his arrest on April 30, 2008, for failing to appear in court on the initial impersonation charge.

Gonsalves has consistently maintained that he was not impersonating a police officer, but instead legitimately holds the badge as a marshal of the Kingdom of Atooi, a sovereign entity over which the cops have no authority. The badge bears the Gonsalves family’s coat of arms and reads “Hawaii Federal Marshall–Kingdom of Atooi.”

Gonsalves agreed to a settlement offer according to which he would pay a $250 fine for obstruction and in return the other charges would be dropped. The deal soured, however, when the Kauai County prosecutor’s office imposed an additional term requiring Gonsalves to surrender his badge, according to Hempey’s motion asking the judge to enforce the original plea offer and strike the “illegal condition.”

Hempeyʻs motion further included that the “Defendant contends that this United Nations declaration clearly obliges the United States and its political subdivisions to recognize, at a minimum:

1) Defendant’s right to a position in government in his Atooi nation;

2) Defendant’s right to possess an identification card identifying him as a citizen of his Atooi nation; and the right to possess a badge.

“Defendant contends that the Kauai Office of the Prosecuting Attorney violates his human rights by demanding, as a condition of a plea bargain in a criminal case involving misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors, that he surrender any of his human rights to self-determination as an indigenous person of these islands–including his right to be identified within his Kingdom by his title and badge,” according to the motion.

Kauai Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe agreed during a July 13 hearing that Gonsalves does have a right to his badge, and she told Hempey to prepare an order directing KPD to return the badge now.

The judge did not grant the part of the motion that asked for the original plea agreement to be enforced, saying that no agreement was in effect.

Deputy Prosecutor Melinda Mendes vigorously opposed Watanabe’s decision, saying the badge was needed as evidence to try Gonsalves on charges of impersonating an officer.

Kauai prosecutors have not determined whether they will appeal the ruling or offer Gonsalves another plea agreement. His trial is set for August 29.

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