Monday, August 10, 2015

“Science? What Science?” GE's Achilles Heel Revealed!



Yes, we know.  We’ve heard it a million times.  Guys who believe in genetic engineering (GE) are the science guys.  Anti-GE guys are the anti-science scare-mongering wingnuts.  To which all that us anti-GE guys can muster in the way of rebuttal is the wimpish whimper, “No, no, we’re not anti-science, it’s just that there’s science that says different things, look at X, Y and Z.”  After which it’s just a he-said, she-said, which they win by sheer force of numbers. 

Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has ever gone to the root of things and asked “Science?  What science?”  So, for the first time, let’s ask it.

For starters, let’s get our definitions straight.  GE isn’t science.  It’s technology. And if you think that’s wrong, you’re suffering under an inability common among even educated Americans to distinguish between science and technology.  Even NPR can’t do it—their Science Friday should be renamed Technology with Some Science Thrown in Friday.  So here’s the quick Cliff’s-notes-type definition: science is finding out how things work and technology is finding ways to make things work differently (hopefully better).  True, technology often uses science to assist in that.  But two things have to be noted.  One, there’s an inevitable time-lag between the science and the capacity to make use of it, which often means that by the time the technology’s up and running, science has moved on in a different or even contrary direction.  Two, the technology is only as good as the science it uses.

And the science GE draws on is not good.  It’s an eclectic mix of old sciences all past their sell-by date, ranging from mid-twentieth-century genetics all the way back to sixteenth-century toxicology, when there was hardly anything you could call “science” at all.

Before GE advocates have an apoplectic fit, let me elaborate.

Anti-GEers often moan about how government agencies leave pesticide toxicity testing to industry--conflict of interest and all that.  That’s a nonstarter because both Monsanto and the EPA use the same “science” as the basis for their protocols: the dogma from a sixteenth-century astrologer and alchemist that “the dose makes the poison”, meaning that for literally every substance there is a NOEL (no-observable-effects level) above which harm may occur, but below which no harm can possibly occur.  

Astrology is still around in daily newspaper columns, so we skeptics know how much that’s worth, but alchemy is little heard of nowadays.  It was the sixteenth-century equivalent of Nigerian scams, and it had the same basic ingredients: a big pot of gold (in alchemy it really was gold) at the end of the rainbow, but a considerable expense on the part of the sucker to get there.  The only significant difference was that while no Nigerian scammer ever believed in a multi-millionaire Swedish businessman who died in a plane crash intestate and without issue, some alchemists (and I’m sure Paracelsus, an alias for Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, was one of them) genuinely believed that with the right chemical procedures you could turn base metals into gold.  Indeed the belief that this was possible, at least in principle, formed part of the sixteenth-century scientific consensus. 

Alchemy had been thoroughly debunked by the seventeenth century (most notably in Ben Jonson’s comedy The Alchemist (1610), which though seldom performed nowadays is one of the funniest plays ever), but toxicology’s dogma remained without serious challenge until the eve of this century.  By now, of course, it’s been shown to be invalid for many, perhaps most chemical substances (see my post “Unsafe At Any Dose”) but because of this same time-lag between scientific discovery and technological application, we’re stuck with sixteenth-century toxic-substance testing for probably another decade or so. 
But what about GE genetics?  We have to start by remembering the scientific orthodoxy that followed the mid-century unravelling of the DNA code, because this was what dominated the 1970s when GE took off.  This orthodoxy was the genes-conquer-all, one-gene-one trait science of Dawkins’ Selfish Gene, which resulted, among other things, in the commonsense belief that the more complex an organism, the more genes it would have to have.  Now we know how wrong that is.  And evo-devo has taught us that genes “are not the leaders, but the followers” in the development of any organism (West-Eberhard, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution)—in other words, that epigenetic factors, both organism-internal and environmental, play vital roles in determining what genes get expressed when and how, and that in any case very few traits are controlled by a single gene.

What this all boils down to is that GE technology has been blindsided by scientific change.  Nothing in Dawkins-type genetics led you to expect the emergence of superweeds and the consequent “pesticide treadmill” in which more herbicide-resistant weeds would mean spraying more (and/or more toxic) herbicides which in turn would select for more pesticide-resistant weeds.  Nothing in Dawkins-type genetics led you to predict that most attempts at inserting genes would be doomed to failure; for instance, the University of Hawaii hasn’t brought out a single successful transgenic crop since the ringspot-resistant papaya of the 1990s.  Forget for a moment about the overblown issue of possible harms— the sheer complexity of the process turned out to be orders of magnitude harder than anyone could have imagined in the 1970s.  But anyone who had kept up to speed with science would have known to prepare for these things at least a couple of decades ago.

Bottom line: GE advocates' claim to represent science is simply a version of Goebbels’ Big Lie—the one people end up believing if you just repeat it often enough.  It’s sheer stupidity to suppose that “a consensus of scientists” has proven genetic engineering to be harmless, or anything else for that matter.  New science trumps outdated science every time.   Who was right, Wegener who said continents had moved or the consensus of geologists who said they hadn’t?  Hayflick who said there was a strict limit on cell longevity or the consensus of microbiologists who said there wasn’t?  Margolis who said that eukaryotes resulted from symbiosis or the consensus of evolutionary biologists who said that was nonsense?  Never forget Haldane’s Four Stages of Acceptance:
            1. This is worthless nonsense.
            2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
            3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
            4. I always said so.

And never forget either, that we were told DDT was safe, stilboestrol was safe,  smoking was safe, thalidomide was safe, Agent Orange was safe.  You’d think we’d have learned some sense by now, wouldn’t you?  But those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.   

So, next time you hear someone saying they’re scientific and you’re not, you know where to tell them to stick it, right?

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Time To Stop Talking And Start Acting!




It’s time to face some unpleasant facts.  No matter how much we try to kid ourselves with rah-rah, cheer-up messages, we’re not winning the war against GMOs—we’re losing it.  With the passage of the DARK Act and the imminent passage of the TPP, we are left more powerless than ever.  The belief that GMO advocates are “pro-science” and anti-GMO people are “anti-science” is being ever more strongly reinforced by the mass media.  The truth is obvious.  Traditional channels of protest and trying to spread information just aren’t working any more.

That is why we have launched the first of a series of targeted actions.  A target can be anything—a pesticide, a person or organization that supports GMOs, a demographic at risk from GMOs (pregnant women, nursing mothers, over-65s…), an industry involved with GMOs in any way…There is literally no limit on the form a target can take, consequently there is no limit on the form a targeted action can take.  But all such actions must have specific goals that are realistically achievable within a period of weeks or months, rather than years, decades, or never.

Our first targets are the agriculture departments of American universities. Our goals are to prevent them from discriminating in any way against faculty members who take anti-GMO positions, obtain restitution for those already discriminated against, and wherever possible force changes in the policies of such departments to reduce or preferably remove policies that favor GMOs at the expense of other farming methods.
We have already begun action at the University of Hawaii (see the blogsite smokinggmogun.blogspot.com for information and continuing updates).  We will initiate new actions at universities nationwide and even internationally.  Many agriculture departments have been taken over by GMO advocates. That’s one of the factors, and a big one, that has supported their Big Lie—that they have science on their side—so if we can reduce or eliminate their influence in academia, we will have shifted the whole balance of power.

Through a series of targeted actions we simultaneously do several things.  One, our opponents have crafted very sophisticated means to nullify traditional forms of activism; targeted actions, by using innovative techniques to attack a variety of unexpected targets in unexpected ways, can overcome the elaborate defenses they have built against traditional forms of activism.  Two, we make news, and thus force a reluctant media to take notice of us, opening the way for further education of the public.  Three, such actions provide plentiful opportunities for sympathizers to convert themselves into activists by doing; doing, rather than merely reading and reacting, provides the individual with a sense of accomplishment and reinforces commitment, even if the task done might seem easy and trivial—supplying the organizers of an action with some scrap of needed information, for instance, or joining hundreds or thousands of others in a concerted action on social media.  Four, through a synergy of all these factors, we can gradually build a critical mass of dedicated activists that will be too strong for even governments to resist…

IF, and ONLY if, you are ready to help us.

HOW YOU CAN HELP IN TARGETED ACTIONS
It’s impossible to foresee all the ways that might arise, but here are some:

1) Let us know the form(s) taken and extent of the influence exercised by Monsanto and other seed-&-pesticide corporations (Syngenta, Dow, BASF, Dupont-Pioneer etc.—henceforth SAPCs) in your university (or any other with which you are familiar).

2) Let us know of any cases of discrimination or victimization (including but not limited to firing, suspension, demotion, denial of tenure or promotion, verbal or physical harassment, hostile work environment, suppression of scientific evidence, curtailment of free speech rights…) affecting faculty in your university (or others) as a consequence of their opposing or criticizing the activities of SAPCs or any practices associated with SAPCs.

3) Volunteer to organize and lead an action against SAPC influence in your university similar (but not necessarily identical to) the action currently in progress at the University of Hawaii, or provide us with the names and email addresses of any persons who you believe might be willing and able to organize and lead such an action.

4) Should such an action begin in your university, support it in any way you can.

We will gladly offer help and advice to anyone who contemplates such an action.  You can contact us at the email address given top right of the screen at
smokinggmogun.blogspot.com or as a comment on the latest post in that blog.  All comments must be moderated before publication, so your letter will never be published but will be removed immediately from the site and stored in absolute privacy. All communications will be answered as quickly as possible.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Press Release From The Hawaii Action



 We are moving.  Below is our first Press Release.  We are currently recruiting substantial support from the Native Hawaiian community and small Hawaii farmers.  But that's just the beginning.  We are also laying the groundwork for similar actions in universities across America, and still further afield.  If you want to join our action or start one of your own, contact us.  If you don't have any university connections, but have ideas for different types of action, let us know about them.  We are open to any suggestion.  We will give help and advice wherever we can.
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 PRESS RELEASE from CONCERNED FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I.
Yet another matter of critical concern for the University of Hawai‘i is just emerging.  Two weeks ago, an Open Letter of Protest signed by more than sixty faculty members from the University of Hawai‘i was sent to Robert Bley-Vroman (Chancellor, Mānoa), Reed Dasenbrock (Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs) and Maria Gallo (Dean, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR)).  The Letter concerns two interrelated issues. 
The first issue concerns restrictions placed on the academic freedom of Professor Hector Valenzuela, an Extension Specialist in CTAHR.  These included his freedom to raise legitimate questions concerning certain aspects of biotechnology, to hold meetings at which such aspects would be discussed, to provide notice to students and faculty of similar meetings organized by others, and to perform other actions that would normally form part of his professional obligations as an extension specialist. 
The second issue, which we believe to be the underlying cause of the first issue, concerns practices followed by CTAHR for the last two decades, which have led to specific violations of CTAHR’s own mission statement (detailed in the Letter appended here).  CTAHR has prioritized the interests of large out-of-state corporations over those of small local farmers despite its obligation under the Land Grant College Act to support the food producers of the area it serves.  While small local farmers mostly produce food for consumption in Hawai‘i, the corporations that CTAHR vigorously supports merely exploit Hawai‘i’s tropical climate for the experimental testing of pesticides and pesticide-resistant crops, thereby creating health hazards for those living in areas where the pesticides are sprayed. 
The first and second issues are so closely interlinked that they cannot be separated.  Attempts to silence those like Professor Valenzuela who question such practices are a consequence of corporate influence on university policies, a systemic problem affecting universities nationwide.
We requested a preliminary response to our Letter within ten working days, but have received nothing from either the Chancellor or the VCAA.  We did receive a response from the Dean, but found it unacceptable, since it avoided any specific engagement with the issues we had outlined, treating those issues as of a kind that could be dealt with only internally by CTAHR, without any involvement of the rest of the University or the general public. 
We strongly disagree; both issues should concern every resident of Hawai‘i.  The purpose of academic freedom is to ensure that the community has access to a wide variety of views and opinions, rather than only those of a particular interest group.  A university standing on “ceded lands” owes to the Hawaiian people from whom those lands were stolen the vital duty of protecting their future livelihood.  A university founded under the Land Grant College Act owes to the community that supports it the vital duty of ensuring a reliable flow of pesticide-free food.   Yet since the overthrow of the Monarchy the percentage of food produced in Hawai‘i that is eaten in Hawai‘i has declined by nearly 90%--a situation that in times of growing world-wide political instability and climate change puts the entire population of these islands at risk from any event that might interrupt imports of food.
The failure of leading UH administrators to admit the significance of the issues raised in our Open Letter, or even acknowledge their existence, leaves us with no option but to place them directly before the general public.  We are therefore initiating a public campaign to discuss these issues.  We hope this will contribute to transformations within the University that will help those of us who work in it to better work alongside and serve all who live in Hawai‘i.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

First In A Series Of Targeted Actions

UHM faculty condemn academic freedom violations

The university's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources has restricted and violated one of it's own professor's academic freedom, and a group of his professional colleagues are speaking out against his mistreatment.
in UH System Woes in Pesticide concerns
Sixty faculty members at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have signed a letter sent to Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman, the vice-chancellor for academic affairs, and Maria Gallo, Dean of the university’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) asking that the university acknowledge the restrictions and violations of academic freedom imposed on CTAHR Professor Hector Valenzuela.
For years now, the college has been accepting money from agrochemical companies such as Monsanto while simultaneously advocating for a style of agriculture that is dependent on the products created by these companies, namely Genetically Modified Organisms that can withstand the use of the companies’ lucrative pesticides. Dr. Valenzuela’s field of expertise involves discovering ways in which crops can thrive in our climate without the use of the GMO-pesticide model of agriculture. The 20+ year CTAHR veteran spent six years in the early ‘90s developing the first long-term organic farming research project in Hawaii and the Pacific region. But around 1998, when Monsanto money began entering the equation, his research plot was shut down by the college. Over the next 15 years, Valenzuela tolerated what he calls a climate of “bigotry, retaliation and hostility” in retaliation for his failure to tow the dominant CTAHR line (documented in Paul Koberstein’s article “The Silencing of Hector Valenzuela,” published here). The university denies his accusations.
Maria Gallo was the only one of the three addressees who has responded to the faculty letter so far (originally sent July 6). However, her response did not satisfy the undersigned professors that their two primary concerns (the violations of academic freedom and of freedom of speech, and deviations from CTAHR’s publicly stated mission, both of which came to light as a result of the Koberstein article) would be addressed. They elected to publicize their letter as a result and The Independent has obtained a copy for publishing:
To: Robert W. Bley-Vroman, Chancellor, UH Manoa
Reed W. Dasenbrock, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Maria Gallo, Dean of CTAHR
       
From:  Concerned Faculty Members of the University of Hawai‘i.
 
We, the undersigned faculty members of the University of Hawai‘i, request that the University publicly recognize the restrictions of academic rights and freedoms that have been imposed over the last two decades on Professor Hector Valenzuela of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR), see that all those restrictions are fully rescinded, and ensure that future policies of CTAHR do not deviate from CTAHR’s stated mission in ways of which the aforesaid restrictions are merely symptomatic.

Professor Valenzuela came to CTAHR in 1991, and is currently a Vegetable Crops Extension Specialist, S5.  The first restriction on his activities was the 1999 closure, for no valid reason, of a series of research projects in organic farming that Professor Valenzuela was carrying out at the University’s Waimānalo Experiment Station.  Subsequently there followed a series of harassments that included bans on workshops and other events he had planned on neighbor islands, an activity involving outreach to the community that formed part of his duties as an extension specialist, as well as discrimination against him with regard to the use of university transport and phone services.  In addition he received abusive e-mails and was verbally abused by both colleagues and administrators.

The ostensible justification for such measures was that Professor Valenzuela was “criticizing CTAHR faculty and programs with intellectually dishonest arguments and actively supporting the poisonous activities of groups basically opposed to CTAHR, science and progress,” in the words of one CTAHR administrator.  In fact, all that Professor Valenzuela was doing was providing farmers and other interested parties with information about organic farming methods and expressing his doubts about some of the methods employed in biotechnology.  Far from his position being “opposed to science”, we can cite hundreds of scientific articles that are equally critical of various aspects of biotechnology.  In other words, controversies involving biotechnology are not the single, simple conflict between pro-science/pro-biotechnology and anti-science/anti-biotechnology that CTAHR administrators have claimed, but a series of legitimate scientific arguments.  Yet he was explicitly informed by his Head of Department that he could not discuss such issues in the course of his professional duties.  To limit his right to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry in this way is a violation of the principles on which all universities are based, as well of the right to free discussion on which all non-totalitarian societies are based.

We are aware that some of the restrictions on Professor Valenzuela have since been rescinded, but the harassment and the denial of academic freedom continue.  He has been told repeatedly by his Dean not to notify students at Mānoa and other UH campuses about meetings where biotechnology and/or pesticide use will be subjected to critical scrutiny.  Insulting and abusive e-mails addressed to him have been distributed to other colleagues in breach of State privacy laws, a misdemeanor in Hawai‘i. We therefore call on the University to (a) condemn such activities on the part of CTAHR officials or any other University employees, (b) ensure that Professor Valenzuela’s right to free expression of his opinions in the performance of his duties as an extension specialist remains unabridged, so long as the content of his speech bears directly on topics involved in his subject area (the normal criterion in issues of academic freedom), and (c) that the plots on which he was carrying out his research projects be allotted him for the duration of his tenure in CTAHR.

That said, it must be pointed out that the treatment accorded to Professor Valenzuela, serious though it is in itself, is merely a symptom of broader and deeper problems with the current policies and procedures of CTAHR.  What these problems are may be best illustrated by comparing three sentences from CTAHR’s own statement of its “Philosophy on Agricultural Technologies” with the pattern of CTAHR development over the last two decades.

1)  “Hawai‘i has a centuries-old tradition of food production, and CTAHR is continuing this agricultural tradition into the 21st century.”

That agricultural tradition is indeed centuries old.  But it was a tradition not of producing foods primarily for export to other areas, still less one of producing substances for non-food purposes, but a tradition of providing sufficient and nutritious food for the people of Hawai‘i.  When Captain Cook arrived in these islands, Hawai‘i was entirely self-sufficient, producing a plentiful supply of food for a population almost as large as today’s.  Today, the quantity of food grown in Hawai‘i and consumed here has fallen from 100% to little more than 10%.  A problem of which everyone is aware but which those in government, industry and academia rarely if ever refer to is that if some disaster, whether due to natural or human causes, were to interrupt the flow of imported food for as little as one week, the people of Hawai‘i would find themselves on the brink of starvation.  In an era of rapid climate change and growing political instability, to be so dependent on outside sources is potentially suicidal.  Yet instead of supporting local production to help raise the percentage of homegrown food, CTAHR has increasingly devoted its resources to serving the interests of biotechnology and non-food commodities.  At times, as many as 60 or 70 CTAHR faculty and staff have worked on biotechnology projects, despite the fact that, after the initial success of the Rainbow papaya, not one of CTAHR’s more than a dozen attempts to produce a commercially-viable genetically engineered plant species has proved successful.

2) “The role of CTAHR as a land-grant institution is to assist all members and sectors of Hawai‘i’s food and agricultural system to reach their full potential in an environmentally and socially compatible way.”

Increasingly, large areas of agricultural land, representing over 70% of the area devoted to the production of diversified and edible crops in Hawai’i, have been acquired through lease or purchase by five large seed-and-pesticide corporations (Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical, BASF and DuPont-Pioneer) that have come to Hawai‘i over the last five decades.  Their purpose was not to improve or increase Hawai‘i’s food production but rather to exploit Hawai‘i’s ideal soil and climate conditions in order to grow and test genetically-engineered and pesticide-resistant seeds for export to other areas worldwide.  It is surely questionable whether, in terms of a land-grant institution’s mission, such corporations should even be treated as members of “Hawai‘i’s food and agricultural system” at all.  Yet CTAHR does not merely regard them as an indispensable part of “diversified agriculture”, it gives the appearance of favoring them over other branches, and has provided its full support, in articles, workshops, and outreach programs, to the various activities of these corporations.  Time and energy used in such ways have inevitably detracted from time and energy that could have been spent in support of Hawai‘i’s food producers.

3) “We uphold the values of academic freedom and respect the rights of farmers and consumers to decide which technologies are most appropriate.”

Clearly, in the case of Professor Valenzuela, the values of academic freedom were not upheld.  The views he expressed involved, as stated above, issues on which scientific disagreement is perfectly legitimate.  While it would be foolish to condemn, as some do, every aspect of biotechnology, some of its practices have a clear potential for harm, in particular the growing of herbicide-resistant crops, thereby creating herbicide-resistant weeds that require more, and more frequent, spraying with stronger and stronger herbicides, some of which are known carcinogens and/or endocrine disruptors.  Practices such as these may be far from “environmentally and socially compatible”, and in deciding “which technologies are most appropriate”, both “farmers and consumers” have a right to be warned of potential risks they may run in applying pesticides, in consuming food from crops that have been sprayed with known toxic substances, and in damaging the health of the environment on which any sustainable agriculture depends.

In short, CTAHR has failed in at least these three respects to adhere to its own publicly stated policies.  Professor Valenzuela’s particular concerns result from these larger, and highly consequential failures, and, perhaps because the mistreatment he has experienced is symptomatic of these institutional problems, they have not yet been satisfactorily addressed through the available channels. We therefore request that the University, in addition to addressing those concerns, review the current implementation of CTAHR policies with a view to determining the extent to which such policies may deviate from CTAHR’s stated mission, and take whatever measures may be necessary to bring CTAHR into full compliance with the terms of that mission.  As these are matters of some urgency, once the three of you have had a chance to confer, we would appreciate receipt of an outline from one or all three of you of how you intend to respond to these concerns. We ask that you respond within ten working days of your receipt of this letter (July 20).

Sincerely,

Ibrahim Aoude, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Cristina Bacchilega, Graduate Chair and Professor of English
Derek Bickerton, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
Dharm Bhawuk, Professor, Shidler College of Business
Eileen Cain, Leeward CC Language Arts
Jim Caron, Professor of English
Kimo Alexander Cashman, Associate Specialist, College of Education
Arindam Chakrabarti, Professor of Philosophy
Gaye Chan, Professor and Chair of Art
Kahelelani Clark, Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies (KCC)
Haruko Cook, Professor of East Asian Languages and Linguistics
Vrinda Dalmiya, Professor of Philosophy
Marcus Daniel, Associate Professor of History
Monisha Das Gupta. Associate Professor of Ethnic and Women’s Studies and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies
Emmanuel Drechsel, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
Kahea Faria, Assistant Specialist, College of Education
Kathy Ferguson, Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies
Cynthia Franklin, Professor of English
Candace Fujikane, Associate Professor of English
Vernadette Gonzalez, Associate Professor of American Studies and Honors Director
Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Associate Professor of Political Science
Michael Hadfield, Professor Emeritus of Biology; Researcher, Pacific Biosciences Research Center
Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui, Associate Professor of English
Ruth Y. Hsu, Associate Professor of English
George Kent, Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Noel Kent, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Jesse Knutson, Assistant Professor of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literature
Eiko Kosasa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Leeward CC
Karen Kosasa, Associate Professor of American Studies
Sankaran Krishna, Professor and Graduate Chair of Political Science
Charles R. Lawrence III, Centennial University Professor of Law
Laura Lyons, Professor and Chair of English
Paul Lyons, Professor of English
Margaret Maaka, Professor, College of Education
Kieko Matteson, Associate Professor of History
Susan Curtin Miller, Project Director/PI UH-Manoa Aquaponics Workforce and Greenhouse Cooperative Initiative, College of Education
Kalawaia Moore, Assistant Professor and Coordinator Hawaiian Studies (WCC)
William O’Grady, Professor of Linguistics
Jonathan Osorio, Professor of Hawaiian Studies
Gary Pak, Professor of English
Craig Santos Perez, Associate Professor of English
Ann Peters, Professor of Linguistics
Joan Peters, Professor of English
Sarita Rai, Study Abroad Director
Rich Rath, Associate Professor of History
John Rieder, Professor of English
Joe Ritter, Laboratory Director, UH IfA Maui ATRC
Tara Rojas, Associate Professor of Spanish, Language Arts
S. Shankar, Professor of English
Nandita Sharma, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the International Cultural Studies Program
David Stannard, Professor and Chair of American Studies
William Steiner, retired Dean of UH Hilo College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management
Ruslan Suvorov, Language Technology Specialist, Center for Language & Technology
Ty Kawika Tengan, Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies
Les Watling, Professor of Biology
Valerie Wayne, Professor Emeritus of English
Laiana Wong, Associate Professor & Graduate Chair, Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language
Mari Yoshihara, Professor and Graduate Chair of American Studies
Ming-bao Yue, Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
John Zuern, Associate Professor of English

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Time For Action Is Here



You may have quite naturally concluded from the absence of posts over the last several weeks that the old Smoking Gun had fired its last round, that it smoked no more, that it was defunct, deceased, that it had passed on and joined the choir invisible of dead and abandoned blogs.  If so, how wrong you were.

The Gun has been silent because it has been undergoing a metamorphosis.  It’s no longer concerned with telling the truth about the Dirty Half-Dozen and the evils of herbicide-resistant crops.  It’s going into action mode.

One of the co-founders of Occupy Wall Street  was also one of the first to realize that “Protest is broken.”  Traditional methods of protest no longer work, and the ballot box is useless because a majority of politicians on both sides have sold out to the super-rich.  Revolution is impossible because although our population is more heavily armed than any other, and although our country owes its very existence to a revolution, the will for it simply does not exist anymore.  What’s left?  Shall we all go home, switch on the TV, and see what the Kardashians are up to today?

Never!  We simply have to use our intelligence and ingenuity to figure out new ways of action—a whole series of limited, targeted, specific actions that will continually switch targets to confuse and baffle the forces of the establishment.  The first of these is already under way and this blog will be reporting on this and other similar actions as they develop.  It will also serve as an arena for suggesting future actions and discussing their likely effectiveness, as well as for gathering information required for the implementation of such actions.

This change in focus requires a change in policy with regard to comments.  Hitherto I have allowed all comments pro or contra, in other words the traditional “debate” formula for a comments section.  Now I shall give precedence to comments that materially advance the action program.  Negative comments on the program will not be published.  Much as I support freedom of speech, pro-GMOers have plenty of outlets for their views already—they don’t need more.

The primary focus of the blog remains unchanged—the combatting of herbicide-resistant crops—for the present, at least.  But Pope Francis’s latest encyclical, Laudato Si has shown us that all the evils afflicting our world today form part of a complex interconnected web.  Wherever we see a weakness in that web, we should attack it.

Stay tuned.  Become part of the action.  It’s already happening.  The time for sitting on our butts yacking about the horrors of pesticides is over.  Daily updates from now on.  There will be tangible things you can do to help in the struggle.