Get 'em young, get 'em fresh

How old is old enough for military recruiters to approach students?

High school? Jr. High? Fourth grade?

How about ten weeks into kindergarten?

Tonight at the dinner table, my son Kailash, who turned five-years-old earlier this month, announced rather blithely, "soldiers came to school today."

What?

"Soldiers came to school," he repeated. "They only kill bad people. They don't kill good people," he said, with the same five-year-old levity he uses in recalling the plot line of Frog and Toad or a Nemo video.

My wife and I looked at each other incredulously.

"Soldiers came to school? What do you mean?" I asked.

He repeated himself and then I remembered -- today was "Career Day" at school. Kailash had mentioned a bus driver also came, but it was the soldier who stuck out in his mind, it seemed because, when my wife asked if the soldier was cool, he nodded in the affirmative, "yes."

Besides, the soldier had given my five-year-old a gift. From his yellow backpack, my son produced a six-inch white plastic ruler with big bold red letters reading ARMY NATIONAL GUARD next to a waving American flag and below that www.1-800-GO-GUARD.com.

So, now we know the answer to the above question.

Kindergarteners - children with Dora the Explorer and Spiderman backpacks and bedrooms full of stuffed animals who are still working to master their A-B-C's are now prime targets for early conditioning by the U.S. military.

Be all you can be

I could feel my blood pressure rising as I realized that recruitment now begins as soon as a child enters a public school. Nevermind that Hawaii public schools are in financial dire straits and have just approved an almost 10% cut in instructional days (17 fewer classroom days for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years), bringing Hawaii's classroom time to the bottom position among all 50 states. Even with the cuts, the school still seemed to have time to welcome the Army National Guard to come in and hand out gifts to the wide-eyed five-year-olds.

After all, Obama has already said it's full-steam ahead in Afghanistan and now it appears it is not if but how many more troops he will commit to that war.

Everyone agrees that Afghanistan is going to get harder, much harder, before it gets easier and despite what looks like the plan to "wind down" the war in Iraq so that those soldiers can be redeployed (some for their 5th tour of duty) further east in Afghanistan, the army is still strapped for bodies.

Fortunately (for the military), the economic collapse has been a boon for military recruiters as education and job-hungry young people flock to a place they know will offer what many other employers cannot - a job with benefits.

And with Department of Defense projections indicating that baseline military budget increases over the next decade could surpass $1,333,000,000 (billion), it seems likely that a dozen years from now, in 2022, when my son turns 18, there will still be plenty need for more soldiers.

So what that means, is appears, is that it is never too soon to plant the military seed in the rich, fertile minds of those little kindergarteners who will, before you know it, be old enough to drive a Humvee, carry a gun, and kill people.

But only the bad ones.

To be continued...

Just between you, me and...Visible Technologies

Surely you didn't think social media was just for reconnecting with your high school crush or updating people about what kind of syrup you put on your waffle this morning, did you?

There must be another use for Facebook other than playing Mafia Wars and telling the world which Michael Jackson song you are and doesn't blogspot have a greater function than as a space to celebrate your cat's new holiday outfit?

Of course it does!

Check out this segment from yesterday's Democracy Now! (again, yes, I know...) in which WIRED reporter Noah Shachtman describes how the CIA's investment arm In-Q-Tel is investing in technologies that can crawl across half a million websites a day, tracking blogs, online forums, and postings on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.

Shachtman lays it out very clearly in this column for WIRED magazine's national security section Danger Room and what he says is pretty compelling and, I suppose, a bit terrifying.

Again, for all you busy executives who need to get back to the serious business of hiding your bailout bonuses-- the Executive Summary: In short, the CIA's In-Q-Tel uses a company called Visible Technologies to read, rank and record what you post online.

"The way Visible works is it kind of grabs all the blogs and all the tweets out there, then it sorts for certain key words, it sorts for a sentiment about whether things are positive or negative."

"Well, duhh!" you say-- tell me something I didn't know. Maybe you are one of those conspiracy theory nuts who thinks that the Agency has a mic in your Fruit Loops and cameras in your sock drawer. But why would they? Who gives a rat's nut about your drunken frat boy days or if you're ticked off because your neighbor's boyfriend is sleeping with your sister's teacher?

Bo-ring!

But (there's always a but) what if you are up to something subversive or salacious or downright nefarious? Suppose you just took a really bitchin' class on how to convert fertilizer into, err... something else, and you uploaded it to YouTube? Or what if you just posted a book review for the newly published 2nd edition of "How To Dwell in a Cave in Southern Waziristan and Not Be Found" (only two stars-- lacked forward thrust, photos blurry)?

Would that be enough to catch the unblinking eye of the ever-helpful people at Visible Technologies?

If so, that might make you think twice about posting a tweet that read "just saw that new Osama bin laden vid on CNN- it was da bomb!" or uploading a picture of you and your friends getting jiggy during your Spring Break in Peshawar.

In fact, there are a whole host of buzz words you might feel a slight inclination to avoid using, especially if it means you are going to attract unwanted attention.

In his WIRED article, Shachtman writes that currently Facebook remains untouched by Visible Technology monitoring. At the end of the article, however, he quotes a former senior technology officer from the Defense Intelligence Agency as saying that if the intelligence community ignored the "tsunami of real-time information" coming from FB or non-English Twitter clone sites, it would be called incompetent.

So next time you tweet someone's blog, remember, there is no such thing as invisibility.

Our Costly Priorities

Earlier this month, on October 7, the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, as President Obama ruled out a significant reduction of troops in Afghanistan, and the White House was denying a BBC report that the U.S. could be sending up to 45,000 more, the Senate passed an additional $626,000,000,000 (billion) for military and war funding by a vote of 93-to-7.

And even though the head of U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus said in May that al-Qaeda is effecitively out of Afghanistan, Obama said, "We will target al-Qaeda wherever they take root, we will not yield in our pursuit..."

The president's ever-obedient lap dog, the U.S. Senate, naturally rolled over and said (through the house-broken Sen. Harry Reid), "One thing I think was interesting is that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, said, 'Whatever decision you make, we'll support it."

Now all this is well and good and I am delighted to see that Obama has memorized his script, but one cannot help but notice that these wars in Afganistan and... oh, where was that other place? - are costing us a lot of money.

And as we watch more and more home foreclosures, layoffs, furlough days, public school closures and cut backs across this great-but-kind-of-struggling-and-sort-of-crumbling nation of ours, one has to wonder just what are our national priorities?

We need someone who can examine the taxing questions of which it is that Americans value more - a solid education system, top notch affordable health care, better, cleaner, more environmentally-friendly energy production (and consumption), a well-maintained infrastucture, and an informed, civic-minded, refined culture and society OR war, war and more war.

It's not an easy choice, of course, and so fortunately there's The National Priorities Project.

If you have never heard of this group, well, you should. And rather than read my explanation of who they are and what they do, you could just cut to the chase and click on the above link. Or, if you are too busy scrambling to keep your head above water to sift through the site, you could just sit down and watch/listen/read yesterday's appearance of National Priorities Project's executive director Jo Comerford on Democracy Now! The segment is only about 13 minutes long (that's only 10% the time it takes to watch an empty balloon float across Colorado) and in the segment, Ms. Comerford offers some pretty interesting food for thought, some of which I have further consolidated for those of you who need to get back to watching the Larry King analysis of the arrest of balloon boy's family.

But before you sink back into RealityTV, please consider this (courtesy of the National Priorities Project research):

Fact: 2010 Pentagon budget: $704,000,000,000 (billion)

Fact: Combined total budget of 48 U.S. states projected to be in deficit for 2010 is $689,000,000,000 (billion)

Fact: Nearly 20% of the 2010 U.S. federal budget is for the Pentagon.

Fact: Less than 3 cents of every federal tax dollar goes to energy, environment and science. Over 37 cents goes to the military.

Fact: Number of active military bases the U.S. maintained in foreign countries in 2008: 761

Fact: Number of foreign (non-U.S.) active military bases maintained in the United States: 0

Fact: New York City residents have spent $30,600,000,000 (billion) in taxpayer dollars to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

Fact: As of 9-30-09 the U.S. has spent $915,000,000,000 (billion) on war in Iraq and Afghanistan (and counting)

Fact: Baseline U.S. military budget projected to increase 2.5% each year for next 10 years (a growth of at least $133,000,000,000 [billion]) *does not include funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If all that sounds just a little unbalanced, well maybe it should. How is it that our country makes up for 45% of the total global military expenditures, outspending the next 14 largest spending countries combined? And how is it that the so-called "Rogue Nations" -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, comprise just 1% of the world military budget?

Well, aside from the fact that the U.S. military is paying $400 a gallon for gasoline in Afghanistan (kind of a rip-off, dont'cha think?), and the Marines alone suck down 800,000 gallons a day, the U.S. War Machine also has to pay for the upkeep of over 700 U.S. military bases in foreign countries every day. That means shipping a lot of Mountain Dew, Marlboros and Burger King to weird places like Okinawa, Kuwait and Diego Garcia.


Oh, and don't forget about the Predator Drone War being waged by joystick from the suburbs of north Vegas -- that costs a few bucks too.

No wonder we are planning to increase our military spending by at least $133,100,000,000 (billion) in the next decade.

Besides, nobody said it was cheap fighting evil and defending freedom, so come on America- buck up! Quit whining about health care, school, libraries, roads, jobs, houses, cities, old people, kids, and the working class - shut up and prioritize.

America is a war to fight, yes, we are a war. Today, tomorrow and until we have nothing left.

These, my dear, are our priorities.


P.S. And if you wish to learn how others are paying for our war making, read this article in the Times of London.

Cocos nucifera: the Giving Tree

By Jon Letman

Let’s face it, some trees just give a little more.

Surely, if there is one tree that embodies the best in a plant—strength, resilience, beauty, nutrition, flavor and utility—it is Cocos nucifera, the coconut palm.

“To Polynesians, coconuts are life,” says naturalist Angela K. Kepler. “For people who want to maintain spiritual ties with the ancient ones, using the varied products of coconut palms goes a long way toward tapping into old-time survival skills.”

From frond, husk and fiber to meat, water and shell, this aptly named “tree of life” provides a veritable shopping list of important staples far exceeding the usual food, shelter, tools and medicine.

Coconuts are used to appease the gods, launch ships, reduce stress, aid in digestion, make music and even halt hiccups.

As huge, buoyant seeds, coconuts spread on their own (though never as far as Hawai`i) and colonized much of the tropics in prehistory, obscuring their true origins, though most agree coconuts first grew somewhere between the Indian Ocean and Melanesia.

Polynesian legends speak of a male eel-god named Tuna who longs to be with a beautiful woman named Sina. The story varies, but always ends the same: Tuna is killed and as he lies dying he asks Sina to plant his head in the ground, promising that from it will grow a tree that provides for all. Thus, the first coconut palm sprouted.


On south India’s Malabar Coast, the state of Kerala reveals its most prolific tree in its name—Kera (meaning coconut palm) and alam (land). Coconuts are considered auspicious across India and regularly used in Ayurvedic medicine, at temples, wedding ceremonies, the launching of a ship or the first take in a film shoot.

What Hawaiians call niu would have been easy to transport by canoe, but relatively small numbers (and only two varieties) suggest that the coconut palm may not have been introduced until later migrations.

Although coconuts did not play as central a role in Hawaiian culture as on other Pacific islands, it is nonetheless easy to imagine that, upon arrival, one of the first terrestrial acts of settlers may have been to place coconuts on the ground, where they would germinate and produce a sprout that would develop into fronds and eventually a tree.

Coconut palms mature within their first decade and some varieties, at their peak, can bear thousands of nuts. Coconut palms can grow for 100 years or longer, like those towering palms at the historical Kapu-āiwa royal grove west of Kaunakakai on Moloka`i.

One of the best places in Hawai`i to enjoy a landscape of coconut palms is Kaua`i’s east side—the Coconut Coast from the Wailua River and neglected ruins of the Coco Palms Resort to Waipouli, site of the Coconut Market Place, up through Kapa`a Beach Park where the 13th Annual Kaua`i Coconut Festival will be held Oct. 3 and 4.

Another is Maui’s Kahanu Garden just before Hāna. On the sprawling grounds of Kahanu, in the shadow of the behemoth Pi`ilanihale heiau, is the Mary Wishard Memorial Coconut Grove.

Writing in 1978, Leslie Wishard explained that the collection he started in 1930 on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island had over 300 imported coconuts palms from around the tropics. From the Wishard collection, 27 varieties grouped into dwarf, medium and tall were planted at Kahanu. These included the Fijian Niumagimagi, the flat-bottomed Calabash, the diminutive Pugai, the Papua, the Trinidad and a variety called Cow’s Udder for its resemblance to
a bovine teat.

Kahanu Garden Director Kamaui Aiona points to the diversity in nut size, shape and color as one of the interesting aspects of the collection.

“The Fiji Love Nut is very small, about the size of a fist, and used in love sorcery or as a container for love concoctions,” Aiona says.

Kahanu Garden, Maui

Kahanu’s Wishard collection took on greater significance after the import of whole coconuts to Hawai`i was banned in a failed attempt to keep out disease and damaging plant pests.

Perhaps no one in Hawai`i knows more about the threat coconut palms face than Maui resident Philippe Visintainer, founder of Hawai`i Coconut Protectors. For more than a decade Visintainer has been battling Phytophthora katsurae, better known as coconut heart rot disease, which was first documented on Kaua`i in 1971.

Coconut heart rot is a fungal disease that causes new fronds to dry and wilt until eventually all leaves die and only the trunk remains. Visintainer says the disease runs in cycles and is currently in an actively destructive period with the north shores of Kaua`i and Maui and Puna on the Big Island especially hard hit.

Since 1998, Visintainer has been treating palms with a system that injects a phosphorus solution into the trunk. This fertilizes the palm and, as a systemic treatment, works its way into the palm heart, creating an inhospitable environment for the fungus. He says his success rate is close to 100 percent, but adds that funding is a major challenge.

Visintainer collaborates with the Asian and Pacific Coconut Community headquartered in Jakarta and remains optimistic that his program may eventually reduce the disease to a manageable level and that he may one day start a coconut palm plantation using remaining sugar cane irrigation infrastructure.

Pointing to a three-decade gap when very few coconut palms were planted following what he describes as a misleading campaign against coconut oil by other edible oil–producing industries, Visintainer believes people are rediscovering the environmental and health benefits of virgin coconut oil.

On Kaua`i, others also see the untapped potential of coconuts for food and fuel.

Paramcharya Palaniswami of Kaua`i’s Hindu monastery in Wailua says the monks have planted some 800 coconut palms on monastery grounds with plans to add several hundred more next year. They use the coconuts as a daily food and are exploring how best to use the oil for lighting.

Palaniswami says the meat itself can be burned as fuel for indoor sacred fire ceremonies and that it burns clean, producing virtually no soot or ash.

Adam Asquith, managing partner of Kaua`i Farm Fuel, a biodiesel company in Hanapēpē, also recognizes coconut oil as an underused local resource with great energy-producing potential. Asquith’s company already makes biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil and he says coconut oil holds real potential as renewable fuel source when global petroleum prices make it economically feasible or a practical necessity.

Asquith envisions growing coconuts for oil on small plots and unused tracts of land, noting that there are already plenty of unused coconuts in Hawai`i which, rather than going to green waste, could be cold pressed (as opposed to steam extracted) for oil. Coconut oil will ignite under pressure just as petroleum diesel fuel. New coconut-based fuels are already being tested or used in places like Pohnpei, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa, either as virgin coconut oil (VCO) or mixed with diesel fuel as a substitute for cooking and lighting fuel.

“When I think of a transition from petroleum to renewable natural oil sources in Hawai`i, I think of coconut and kukui,” Asquith says. “It already exists as feral oil, just waiting to be harvested when the economic climate is right.”

“As a biologist, I see almost no distinction between food and fuel—it’s basically the same thing. Whether it’s burned in the body, a fireplace or a diesel engine, you are creating combustion by burning hydrocarbons.”

“You could throw a cabbage in an oven and generate heat, but it’s not efficient,” Asquith says. “A coconut is much better.”

from Edible Hawaiian Islands magazine, Fall 2009 issue