• LaBedz for mayor • Clean and clear
LaBedz for mayor
At least four of the five people who signed a letter to the Forum (“Setting the seed record straight,” July 1) are officials of the GMO seed companies I wrote about in my letter to the Forum (“Is Kaua‘i toxic?” June 2).
I was hoping that any response to my letter would come from concerned citizens, and not company officials just regurgitating corporate hype and PR releases. Or, at least, that those letter signers would have the integrity to identify themselves as the company employees and special interests they are. Their companies should pay The Garden Island for the advertising space.
They accuse me of polluting the media and spreading misinformation about the companies they work for. Of course, they are going to paint a rosy picture about their meal tickets and try to discredit any critics or whistleblowers. That’s how the corporate giants control all of us. How many of you trust BP to tell the truth about their latest adventure in the Gulf of Mexico, or their Texas City disaster, etc? Or AIG, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, Monsanto, or our government?
Laurie Goodwin’s employer, Syngenta, has quite a history of chemical spills, class action lawsuits and huge fines and settlements it has paid for its crimes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a $284,050 settlement with Syngenta Seeds, Inc., for violations of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Some of the violations took place in Kekaha.
Currently, communities in six Midwestern states filed a class action federal lawsuit seeking to force Syngenta, the manufacturer of atrazine, a widely-used herbicide, to pay for its removal from their drinking water. Atrazine is a weed-killer sprayed primarily on cornfields. The EPA failed to notify the public that atrazine had been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. The lawsuit alleges that Syngenta reaped billions of dollars from the sale of atrazine while local taxpayers were left with the financial burden of filtering the chemical from drinking water. Atrazine was banned by the European Union in 2004. The EPA recently announced that it would be re-evaluating the herbicide’s ability to cause cancer and birth defects, as well as its potential to disrupt the hormone and reproductive systems of humans and amphibians. How do we know that Syngenta is or isn’t using atrazine, or some other horrible poisons on the cornfields of the Westside? Should we trust Syngenta to tell us the truth?
Steve Lupkes and Judith Rivera are officials with Pioneer Hi-Bred, which is another name for Du Pont, a company with an endless history of chemical poisonings, spills, destroyed lives and environments, huge fines and settlements, etc. There isn’t enough space in this newspaper to tell even a few of the horror stories for which Du Pont is responsible.
Tom Scagnoli works for Dow AgroSciences, which is leasing former sugar plantation land from Gay and Robinson, where they are growing seed corn. Dow was the sole supplier of napalm in Vietnam and, along with Monsanto, they supplied all the Agent Orange. That legacy alone is enough to ban this company from ever setting foot on Hawaiian soil, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Dow is associated with radioactive plutonium leaks, ruptured breast implants, terminator seeds, pesticide poisoning of Pacific Northwest salmon, and on and on…
It’s truly mind blowing to learn the extent of what these and the other petrochemical and GMO seed companies have wrought in the world, and to what extent they control our farmlands, our water, our lives, the politicians, our very existence.
The corporate officials and employees defend their companies’ existence by claiming the moral high ground of providing jobs and pretending to feed the world with nutritious food and, laughably, that biotech crops are sustainable and good for the environment. We all should know by now that we can’t trust large ruthless multinational corporations to tell us the truth about anything. By definition, all that truly matters to them is revenue and the corporate bottom line. All the rest of us are their collateral damage.
As a citizen, my opinion is my own. As I said previously, I believe that all these companies should leave these Islands ASAP, so we can get on with the work and enjoyment of making Kaua‘i truly sustainable once again. We can start by electing Diana LaBedz for mayor.
Now that we have heard from the PR departments of a few of the biggest companies, I would love to read and hear what other non-connected everyday people on Kaua‘i have to say. For those who wish to hear the native wisdom, one of the most knowledgeable Hawaiian activists, Walter Ritte, will be speaking on the subject of GMO’s on Aug. 13 in the red barn at All Saints Church in Kapa‘a.
Fred Dente, Kapa‘a
Clean and clear
Mahalo, mahalo, mahalo to whomever it was that took the time and effort to clean the graffiti off of the playground equipment at Cliffside Park in Hanapepe.
As a mom who regularly took my kids there, I stopped taking them because of the profane language and vulgar pictures that had defaced the property in the last year.
I can once again take them and enjoy a park a little closer to home. Thank you so much!
Erica Preus, Hanapepe
