Letters To The Editor

FORT BRAGG, A MEMORY

Editor,

Arson as political tool in Fort Bragg.

I was doing some research on John Arthur Annibel when I got side-tracked by all the articles on arson/cocaine/developers/crooked government in the late 80s in Fort Bragg. The use of arson (and other illegal tactics) in Fort Bragg by developers against their opponents may be a longer tradition. (See the obituary announcement for Ron Guenther's death for some of the dirty tactics used against him in the 70s and 80s). Alan Carlson and Bill Patton planned a Todd Point development, the annexation of which to the city of Fort Bragg was defeated in a public referendum overturning a city council decision. Surf Motel owners then developed a shopping center proposal for the Hahn property across Highway 1 from Todd Point (just east of the motel). This, too, was approved by the city council. There were lawsuits. There was a death threat made to Surf Motel owner. (I think his name was Darryberrry.) He dropped the project just as the second suit reached court; the court rejected the lawsuit saying there was no project. Patton and Carlson picked up the now approved and legally safe project and built the shopping center on the corner of Highways 20 and 1. Several businesses owned by vocal anti-development folks had fires at their businesses during the controversy. Dorothy Green owned The Store, a card and gift shop, on Laurel Street. I was her son. I sued the city twice over developments (once with Ron Guenther), including the shopping center. I was a vocal leader against the annexation (did radio debates vs mayor and Patton, etc). Our store was destroyed by fire. The country-western clothes store that used to be where the Coast-to-Coast store is now was burned; the owner of that store was another vocal opponent. Seems like a pattern — that was continued by new developers in the late 80s.

Thanks for your good work.

Benjamin Green

Fort Bragg

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PIZZA FOR THANKSGIVING?

Dear Editor,

Happy Thanksgiving! As the rest of the country enjoyed a turkey holiday, good old punkass Jerry Brown stiffed us out of our traditional holiday meal and gave us pizza for Thanksgiving! He bankrupted the state the last time he was governor and the state is still bankrupt. What I have seen Jerry Brown do is cut from all the county services and put more money into prisons! So yes, I was a little disappointed yesterday. But I will live.

The reason I am writing you today is to ask you for a complimentary subscription to the AVA. I really enjoy reading your newspaper and so do the rest of the men here. I am currently serving time in DMH. Salinas Valley State prison where I seriously do not belong! In two months I go up for a review so I hope to be released back to Lancaster. I am so starving around here.

That's all I have for now. I hope to receive your paper again. Lots of good reading and thanks for the courtesy you may extend to me.

Thank you. Happy holidays,

Marc Hunter

Soledad

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A TALE OF TWO LOGOS

Dear Editor,

Regarding Ukiah's new logo and new motto.

I have been perceiving this as a tale of two counties!

To some, “Far Out” brings up shame and outrage all over again.

To others it makes plenty of sense since we are proudly and unstoppably “far out” even in our second childhood. (Did the first ever end?)

Yes, many visitors come for wine and sea and song (our great festivals bring them by the thousands) and world-renowned cannabis! Others come for the hunting, for the biking, the motorcycling, the auto touring, the off roading, and to have a joyful safe time with their children and families in our great parks, to shop at galleries, to marvel at the sea, to ride horses, to float our rivers, walk our trails and stare upwards in awe at the redwood's majesty.

Personally, I like the logo presented in the Tuesday Ukiah Daily Journal better than the one the consultants propose. There are several aspects where are our two counties agree. We love our families and friends -- and we love living closer to nature. Otherwise, we would be living in a city somewhere. What the consultant's logo leaves out is nature. They are from the city -- maybe that's part of it. Anyway, I'm sure they will build us a fine website and marketing presence. But I like the other logo and its appreciation for our county that I feel when I look at it much better.

Alan Sunbeam

Ukiah

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CATCHING UP WITH THE CAPTAIN

Editor,

The whole scoop --

My mother was an attractive woman. She had three husbands, one Jewish, one Irish, one Italian. My favorite was the last one, a New York police sergeant. Not afraid of the cops, we considered ourselves a friend of the tallest and best Sheriff Mendocino County ever had: Tony Craver. We got to know and enjoy the Albion Nation where the lunatic fringe is larger than the cloth.

After 40 arrest-free years I was outraged by the Fort Bragg police. We were hit riding a bike and flattened. Then we got a ticket for riding a bike drunk. I wasn't drunk. Over the hill we were verbally abused by a correctional officer and put into solitary confinement and released soon after having recently been treated for colo-rectal cancer. We began to pass blood again and we feared -- went to see T-C and he advised suing the county. While considering that, the bleeding stopped and never returned. While in Low Gap my fellow inmates complained of beatings and harsh treatment. Being a sworn deputy (or voter-clerk registrar) and retired from nautical and agricultural pursuits, we decided to make a long and full investigation of the law enforcement community. After many many arrests by a wide variety of police and months of incarceration we wrote a full and detailed report. We concluded that there were indeed problems but there was no flagrant abuse.

Everyone got abused equally. This I witnessed over my frequent arrests and confinements. After my last arrest we resigned my deputy commission and returned to my peaceful and passive life.

Put that in your pipe.

Captain Fathom/Alan Graham

Albion

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DEFENDING CROW

Dear Readers and Mendocino County Community,

I have been a regular reader of the AVA for many years and this is the first time I've ever felt compelled to respond to comments expressed in your letters to the editor section.

After reading James Kester's comments on Alan Crow in the November 21 issue, please allow me the following words. I have had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Crow for 25 years. Therefore I am completely disgusted by Mr. Kester's slanderous remarks about Mr. Crow. Mr. Kester alleges that Mr. Crow is a pedophile which is not true and one only has to go as far as Megan's List to confirm that. Nor does Mr. Crow have hepatitis C. Mr. Crow, who is a certified second degree black belt, works out regularly, harder than most Marines I saw work out. Mr. Kester goes on to say that Mr. Crow spends his SSI checks on methamphetamine. I have known Mr. Crow for 25 years and never have I seen him touch methamphetamine. And no, Mr. Crow does not drag old women into bushes like Mr. Kester claims.

Obviously Mr. Crowe hit a nerve in Mr. Kester when he wrote his harsh but true comments on Mr. Kester's panhandling in the AVA. Mr. Kester, who is uneducated and inarticulate, was unable to respond other than to call Mr. Crow names and slander him which is sad!

Alan Crow is a respected person by not only us inmates but by staff at the jail as well.

Mr. Kester is the most despised inmate in the history of the Mendocino County Jail. He has been housed in protective custody his entire 14 months in jail. Mr. Kester befriended Dan Shealor several months ago who is fighting a life sentence. Dan Shealor provided Mr. Kester with canteen and phone time. Mr. Kester returned the kindness by contacting the District Attorney and arranging a video deposition in which he snitched on Shealor for information he gave Kester regarding his case. Hoping to make a deal to avoid a harsh sentence for murdering Mr. Blackshear, Mr. Kester never got the chance due to Shealor's charges being dropped. Paperwork on the deposition has been circulated among the jail and in state prisons as a warning to all inmates to be cautious about who they discuss their cases with due to snitches such as Kester seeking relief from their own cases.

As for Mr. Crow, he is now long gone! Off to Santa Rosa to deal with the death of his wife. Myself and many others wish him well.

As for Mr. Kester, he is on his way to state prison, now only a minor footnote in our disgusting history of murderers in Mendocino County.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to defend my friend Mr. Crow.

Respectfully,

Greg Cuadron

Ukiah

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ANOTHER SATISFIED CUSTOMER

Dear AVA,

Please sign me up for another year of the best/last/only newspaper. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed and learned from and through your hard work in publishing the AVA. The San Francisco Chronicle has been an embarrassment for years. The Contra Costa Times was bought out and ruined.

Best wishes, good health and continued success in the new year.

With much respect,

Tom Johnson

Richmond

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WHERE IS THE LOVE?

AVA,

Having read James Kester's rant in the November 21 issue of the AVA I am once again left shaking my head. Not with disgust like previously, but with sadness this time. For once again he utilizes this fine forum for the purpose of self gratification. Previously it was for the purpose of panhandling from our community. This time it was for the purpose of revenge towards me for my commentary I wrote about him wasting space in the AVA for self-serving sociopathic parasitic behavior rather than for apologizing to the many people affected by his crimes! I am accused of being everything from a pedophile to dragging little old ladies into the bushes to having hepatitis C. I refuse to engage Mr. Kester in a battle of wits and I have no impulse to take revenge on him for the absurd comments made about me in this forum. I am extremely well-versed in recognizing people who suffer from mental illness and it is obvious he suffers from borderline personality disorder, among others. So I understand his defects and my heart goes out to him. I can only hope that one day he is able to come to peace with the victims of his many crimes. But most importantly that he comes to peace with himself. Living with all that hate must be a miserable existence.

Come on bro, it's the holidays. Where is the love?

Seriously, I wish you the very best. I hope you continue taking your medication and get better soon.

As for me, I am finally leaving this fine mental institute called the Mendocino County Jail. I want to thank my family for their continued love and support, especially in dealing with my wife's death. I thank my daughter for sticking by her dad and last but not least I thank the the AVA for the letters of love and support and for wishing me back with open arms. Words will never be able to express my gratitude. Have a blessed and awesome holiday. I know I will!

Respectfully,

Alan Crow

Santa Rosa

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STRANGE RITUALS

Editor,

Tidings of comfort and joy -- be of good cheer, immortality awaits you.

One night when honest folk lay sleeping, a village priest took a walk and chanced upon a dark stranger who engaged him in talk. The priest saw that the stranger was new to the area so he asked him where he was from. The stranger smiled and said he was from the area but had been away a long time. He then asked the priest what line of work he was in. The priest said he served the church and was the local spiritual advisor to the faithful. The stranger asked how he did that and the priest gave out that he administered the sacrament during worship. “In what matter?” inquired the stranger. And when he heard that the priest handed out small pieces of the body of Christ he stepped back in astonishment. “But that is cannibalism or the behavior of zombies. Surely you cannot mean that, can you?” After a hasty mention of trans-substantiation and a short lecture on martyrdom and the rising from the grave, the priest assumed the stranger got the point and went into this next story.

"During the devotional acts of worship the congregation drinks a cup of wine which has been changed to Christ's blood by the same devout belief that was used before,” he said. The stranger winced. Here was the same primitive magic transferred to the drinking of human blood. Surely these priests are mad he thought -- human blood is not wine, nor is wine the same as human blood. Something is wrong with this priest. Either he is lying to me or he is delusional and not to be trusted. I will ask him some more questions.

"Is the protection of eternal life granted these wine drinkers, then?” asked the stranger. “Well, not exactly,” mused the priest. “There are all sorts of conditions attached to the process, lifelong prohibitions and denials and rules upon rules concerning behavior and decorum. It's not as easy as just having a glass of wine. By the way, what is it that you said that you believe in?"

"Since I am a vampire, I believe in the blood alone,” said the stranger. And with that he leapt upon the priest and sank his fangs in the unfortunate cleric's neck. Subsequent details of the result of this encounter vary, but suffice to say the continuing discussion of the fine points of trans-substantiation were absent.

The current craze for zombies and vampires owes much to these phantoms' identity with the religious figures of one of the world's most revered and most primitive systems of worship. Since the zombie receives eternal (well, sort of) life from the bite of a fellow eternal there is no big system of mumbo-jumbo connected to the process of obtaining eternal life: get bitten, get eternal. No church attendance, no Saint Paul, no child molesting priests. No wonder the zombies are folk icons -- they are the comic book version of the religious certitude they mock.

Vampires have it even better. They have super powers, look less rotted, have better sleeping quarters and are in better clothing than the zombie (usually). So they provide an even better mockery of the religion they are so obviously derived from. Since the advent of the second millennium there have been dozens of very stylish film and pictorial renditions of the vampire presence in our imagination and folk culture. Drinking real blood works.

The next time you are trapped in a church during a ritual in which the drinking of blood and the cannibalization of the deity/hero is going on, simply ask yourself this: what level of culture development matches these acts? Are people who can take this seriously to be considered civilized?

Ignatzio Hephalumpe

Bellingham, Washington

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FAIR IS FAIR

Dear Editor,

They My name is David M. Johnson and I was arrested on November 5, 2012 on the charge of robbery and parole violation for robbery and other parole related charges. Basically a call was made to the Mendocino County Sheriff's office by a person with an extensive criminal history. It was reported that I took a bike by force. It was also reported that there was a witness to the alleged incident. I was arraigned on the charge of robbery and given an $85,000 bail. Ias looking at seven years and a strike. I was scheduled for a parole violation hearing the day before my pre-preliminary hearing where I was given five months with half time for the robbery and other unrelated charges. The next day I went to court where the district attorney told the judge that they had received a supplemental report from the victim's alleged witness. The district attorney suddenly dropped all charges against me. I then asked my court-appointed attorney if the district attorney was going to file charges against the victim for filing a false police report. The answer was no. I expressed my desire for charges to be pressed. My court appointed attorney then told me not to press my luck and not to pursue this matter further and that it would be in my best interest to let it go.

They have no problem filing charges against me and putting me in a position where I'm facing seven years in state prison and a strike. But when it's determined to be a lie, I'm told to let it go. I shouldn't have to press charges. The district attorney's office should do it on their own. Furthermore, what kind of a message is the district attorney and law enforcement sending when a person files false police reports and does not have to worry about the consequences of their actions? Furthermore, I was told that I would have done time anyway for the parole violation.

Basically that implies that I had no grounds to seek restitution for the accuser's actions based solely on the fact that I was going to be in jail anyway because I had violated my parole on other parole related charges.

Well, the fact of the matter is, regardless of my other parole related charges, the time I was given by parole was enhanced due to the false robbery charge. I feel that my time and freedom is very important to me. Once taken away, time cannot be replaced. I feel it is not unreasonable to expect that someone who knowingly filed false charges against another person where the accused is incarcerated for any length of time should be held accountable for their actions. The California Penal Code section 148.5 clearly states that this is a crime as a misdemeanor and is punishable by up to a year in jail.

In light of all this, I find myself asking the same question that many prisoners find themselves asking: where is the justice in that?

Sincerely,

David M. Johnson

Mendocino County Jail

Ukiah

Ed note: We checked with the DA's office, Mr. J, and here's your situation: A follow-up look at the matter concluded that the original complaining witness was not being completely truthful. Those charges against you have been dismissed. However, and as you know, as a convicted felon on state parole supervision, you were in great demand for other probs related to parole. As I understand it, you are now doing some time for the parole violations. I was informed that if you feel strongly that you were wronged, you can bring a civil suit (small claims or otherwise) against the man who lied about you and has understandably caused you so much anxiety.

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INACTUAL-OLD-FASHIONED

Editor,

Inactual—

El periódico que el ciudadano compra en el quiosco es un gesto ideológico que lo delata. No sucede así con la tableta digital — by Manuel Vicent

Cualquiera que lleve hoy un periódico bajo el brazo no es que esté mal informado, pero da la sensación de estar viviendo la realidad del día anterior. Simplemente se trata de un ciudadano que parece andar fuera tiempo, como si usara un reloj de marca, un poco anticuado, que se retrasa varias horas cada noche. Aparte de eso, el periódico que uno lleva bajo el brazo define ideológicamente al lector. Uno se delata en el quiosco cada mañana. Así sucedía también cuando en la República cada diario era el estandarte de una bandería política, de la lucha de clases, incluso de un pensamiento religioso o anticlerical. Durante la larga ceniza de la postguerra el periódico llegaba al pueblo en el renqueante autobús de línea o en el correo ordinario, solo unos pocos ejemplares, que leía gente muy significada, el farmacéutico, el médico, algún señor propietario, el clásico liberal autodidacta represaliado, un empleado de banco, el secretario del ayuntamiento. Sobre un velador del café y en la barbería quedaba el diario deportivo un poco grasiento después de haber pasado de mano en mano. Durante el franquismo no se leía el periódico para enterarse de algo. Con el acto reflejo de pasar las hojas mojando con saliva la yema del índice, se echaba la vista encima de una consigna patriótica, de la inauguración de un pantano, del discurso de cualquier jerarca del Movimiento, de los baches del municipio, todo molido por la censura, uniforme, tedioso y empastado de tinta. Al llegar la democracia la prensa escrita se adaptó a la libertad y cada diario de acomodó de nuevo a la manera de ser y de pensar de sus lectores. Pero con la revolución digital hoy la prensa de papel siempre es la de ayer y encima el periódico progresista, conservador, reaccionario o amarillo que el ciudadano compra en el quiosco es un gesto ideológico que lo delata. No sucede así con la tableta digital. Picoteando en el teclado del portátil con los dedos en el metro, en el tren, en una terraza al sol, nadie a tu lado puede saber si eres de derechas o de izquierdas. Leer el periódico de papel se va a convertir en el futuro en una exquisitez para estetas. Mientras todas las noticias en el digital son ya las de mañana, tampoco está tan mal ser un ciudadano elegantemente inactual.

* * *

(Translation by Louis S. Bedrock)

Old Fashioned—

The paper that the citizen buys at the newsstand is an ideological gesture that reveals who he is. This does not happen with an iPad.

Anyone who carries a newspaper under his arm is not necessarily misinformed, but gives the impression of living the reality of the previous day. It simply has to do with a citizen traveling outside of time—as if he used a brand name watch, slightly antiquated, that loses several hours each night. Apart from that, the newspaper one carries under his arm defines the reader ideologically. One reveals himself at the newsstand every morning. It was like this during the (Spanish) Republic when each newspaper was a banner for a political faction, of class struggle, and even of religious or anticlerical convictions. During the long, gray postwar period the newspaper arrived in the villages in the spluttering intercity buses or by regular mail, the few copies available being read by respectable people like the pharmacist, the doctor, an important landlord, the classical self taught liberal and victim of reprisals, a bank employee, the secretary from city hall. On the table in the café, in the barbershop one could still find the slightly grimy copy of the sports daily after it had been passed from hand to hand. During the Franco era, no one read the paper to inform oneself of anything. With the reflex action of leafing through the pages with the saliva-moistened tip of the index finger, one glimpsed through political slogans, the official opening of a reservoir, the speech of some high ranking official of (the Fascist) Movement, the potholes of a municipality, everything filtered through the censor, uniform, tedious, inlaid in ink. With the arrival of democracy, the print media adapted to freedom and every daily to accommodating the manner of thought of its readers. But with the digital revolution today the paper editions of newspapers are yesterday’s news and beyond that the progressive, conservative, reactionary, or yellow newspaper that the citizen buys at the newsstand is an ideological gesture that reveals who he is. This does not happen with an iPad.

Pecking the keys of a tablet computer in the subway, the train, or a sunny patio, no one beside you can tell if you’re a partisan of the left or the right. Reading the paper edition of a newspaper is going to end up as a delicacy for aesthetes. While all the news in the digital realm is tomorrow’s news, it’s still not the worst thing in the world to be a citizen who’s elegantly old fashioned.

Louis Bedrock

Roselle, New Jersey

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STINK & SLAP

Editor,

Count me in as one who does not like the smell of marijuana, the smoke or the raw buds. Of course I'm not the sort to take legal or police action on such things and I have serious questions about those who would. But as a tobacco smoker, I have been subject to many a negative moral judgment, often, naturally enough, from pot smokers, who used to be criminals or “bad people” in the overall public view. In those days everyone smoked cigarettes, cigars or pipes freely in public places. Now the hypocrisy has been reversed, and many's the self-righteous, holier-than-thou pothead who complains indignantly about tobacco smoke polluting his or her precious air. As a certain woman friend of mine would say, “It makes me want to slap them."

Jeff Costello

Portland

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KEMGAS PROBLEMS

Editor:

One of our friendly local businesses is conducting business in an unfriendly, unlocal sort of way. Kemgas of Fort Bragg has decided that we haven't bought sufficient propane over the last dozen years, and has informed us that they're coming in a week to take our tank. We got virtually zero warning. Here's what I wrote to Kemgas' David Thompson:

Dear David:

Your letter about the propane tank at 10441 Wheeler St., Mendocino, just arrived.

Indeed, you have the terms of the contract on your side. Looking at the contract, though, I see that you do have a range of options, and that you are taking the most drastic of those options in an abrupt and aggressive way.

Craig left a message on our answering machine on the morning of the 28th. He asked us to call him back. He did not say why he was calling. Before we had a chance to respond, he appeared here, unannounced, walking through the closed gate and onto the property, before noon, just a few hours after his phone call, taking me completely by surprise and unprepared, interrupting my work. This was the moment when he stated his business and said that we would have to relinquish the tank, the first I learned that there was a problem. He spoke only of the tank removal. He said nothing at all about a ten-day deadline.

I expressed my displeasure, politely but firmly. He said he would send a letter, and left.

Your letter arrived two days later, on Friday the 30th, and, as I said, you have gone directly to the most drastic option without offering an alternative. You have, for instance, the option of offering us a smaller tank. I'm sure you also have the option of offering more reasonable notice than ten days--eight days, actually, since the letter arrived on the 30th, with the ten days starting on the 28th.

Mitchell is recovering from throat cancer. It's winter. We have never failed to pay our tank rental fee, amounting to at least $1000 since we moved here in 1999. In the more than twelve years we've had your tank, there was never, not once, the slightest peep out of Kemgas that there was a problem--no hint, nothing, until last Wednesday, when violation, verdict and sentence were delivered all at once. And now the deadline is a scant week from now. For you, this is a contractual technicality. For us, it's a major, major upheaval, expense and inconvenience, a mad scramble thrust upon us without warning and in an unfriendly way, like a game of Gotcha.

Ten days' notice is what's given to outlaw tenants, say, after repeat offenses and exhaustion of other avenues. Ten days' notice is what you give a chronic truant who's been warned a couple of times to shape up. Ten days' notice is not what you give unsuspecting tank-holders who had no clue at all that there was any sort of problem. After a dozen years, what, may I ask, is the big rush? I have already lost sleep over this.

We live in an age of corporations behaving in a heavy-handed way, because they can, and because there's profit to be made.

You have the fine print of the contract on your side. But you also have the ability to behave in a more flexible, human, neighborly way. We will be relieved and grateful if you just let that battered old tank stay where it is. You never supplied a working gauge on it, as was promised thirteen years ago, but there's considerable fuel in it. We had the furnace on last week. We do use it, and it's a comfort to know that it's there when we need it.

The following quote from Kemgas “Employee,” posted on 3/10/2011 on ripoffreport.com, in a rebuttal to a customer complaint, gives me confidence that your company is more than merely a relentless, grinding machine:

"We realize that there can be misunderstandings when it comes to dealing business, and when this happens, we are more than willing to work with the customer to rectify whatever problems there may be."

E. Cooney

Mendocino

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THE END IS NEAR

Editor,

Awaiting Kalki

I dropped by the Krishna temple in Berkeley before flying back to Washington DC to Rejoin Occupy DC radical environmentalists for more intervention in history as the climate clock ticks toward the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse tipping point of no return and climatologists tell me that this is for real no amount of political wrangling or carbon trading schemes or swimming in the River of Denial will hold any importance at all. The pujari attending the altar at Krishna's temple informed me that he was patiently awaiting the next Incarnation of the blue skinned god, who will come to the earth plane as Kalki, for the end-all battle with demonic forces and this will return the world to righteousness, just in the nick of time before global systemic implosion and ensuing chaos make pursuing spiritual goals and following Dharma almost impossible here, a problem that the Devic realm must take action to avert immediately.

A temple devotee of Radha (Krishna's celestial consort) attends temple tulsi plants, and she says that the actual time of Kalki's appearance is being debated By Vedic astrologers, given the gravity of ecological and social conditions and then a visiting monk from India looked up from his Sanskrit edition of the Mahabharata to add that only Krishna knows when his next avataric appearance will happen and that his Vrindavan temple priests recommend preparing now. The pujari returned to lighting sandalwood incense and offering food to the deity for prasadam at the Sunday love feast expecting hundreds of bhakti yogis who all await Kalki's arrival while they are making arrangements to go back to godhead, to Krishna Loka.

Chesapeake Earth First! is organizing protest marches and demonstrations in Washington D.C. right now in Opposition to the XL Keystone pipeline, a scheme fraught with complications and intense conflict between tribal groups and mining companies and ecologists and construction companies and refineries and Texas farmers and archconservatives and anarchists. Krishna devotees chant and play mrdanga drums and the Kirtan teams go out and perform and in India they are getting ready to host 70 million Kumbha Mela pilgrims at the triveni sangam confluence of three rivers at Allahabad in January engaged in continuous sadhana for a month, the festival managed by India's army. And even the tantrik mystics wonder what's next. If you were expecting me to give you a comfortable answer or some reassuring soothing message, you have come to the wrong place, but it's okay, because we remain friends awaiting divine intervention tonight.

Craig Louis Stehr

Berkeley

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CANNABICORRECTION

Dear Editor

Thank you for running Cannabis Cards larger than life.

Lacking color, with info they're rife.

Everyone now knows

Fred Gardner's bios

His life in service to what's just and true

But we must admit we missed a cue.

Fred's date of birth is 1941

The world was at war and on the run

Not 1939 when the economy was spun

We regret the error, please put aside the gun.

Thank you, here comes the sun.

 

Pebbles Trippet, cannabiscards@pacific.net

Elk

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SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

Editor,

Steve Heilig’s article in the AVA of 21 November 2012, “Genetically Modified Democracy” is an important, solid piece of journalism. However, I take issue with one of Mr. Heilig’s statements.

In the fifth paragraph, Mr. Heilig writes, “…the truth is likely in the middle. GMOs will neither ‘save’ nor destroy humanity. I doubt that most GMOs are themselves bad for one’s personal health, and more hungry humans might get fed as a result of some GMOs, and that’s a good thing.”

No, it is not. GMOs increase neither yield nor nutrition. They increase profits for Monsanto and other GMO-mongers. Dr. Vandana Shiva has written extensively on the subject and points out that GMOs actually reduce the nutrition and yield of crops, and destroy farmers. Among the many excellent books about the dangers of GMOs are Against The Grain by Marc Lappe, PhD. and Britt Bailey; Seeds of Destruction by F. William Engdahl; and Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette by Jeffrey M. Smith.

The late Barry Commoner wrote an article called “Unravelling The DNA Myth” which may be found online. It’s not an easy read, but I read it and understood it, and I don’t have an advanced degree in chemistry or biology. The important premise of Commoner’s article undermines the whole “spurious foundation of genetic engineering”. A very simplified synopsis of the article is that shooting a gene from a cold water fish into a tomato may make the tomato resistant to very cold temperatures, but will also have many other potentially detrimental effects that may not be seen for generations. Shooting a gene from another species into a plant is qualitatively different from cross-breeding or selective breeding.

The same forces that mugged Proposition 37 have been responsible for muting and restricting research on GMOs. Monsanto, of course, is the principal player. I urge people to watch the documentary, The World According To Monsanto. It’s available for viewing online.

Monsanto was responsible for the squelching of a story on Bovine Growth Hormone. Reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre had prepared a series on the dangers of BGH milk for Fox News. However Monsanto threatened Roger Ailes, head of Fox at the time, with a lawsuit and Ailes cancelled the series. Many will recall the ruckus over this incident and Ailes’ notorious comment afterwards: "We paid $3 billion for these stations. We'll decide what the news is."

Monsanto has been responsible for discouraging and repressing testing of GMOs and for keeping results of such testing that has been done secret. Dr. Mae Won Ho was pressured into retirement after warning, “Contrary to what you are told by the pro-GMO scientists, the process is not at all precise. It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with entirely unpredictable consequences.”

Dr. Arpad Pusztai was muzzled, his lab shut down, his data confiscated, after his research on GM potatoes show detrimental effects on his laboratory rats.

The truth is not in the middle. GMOs will not save anyone. They are a grave danger to agriculture, the environment, and human health.

Louis Bedrock

Roselle, New Jersey