Opinion
On Saturday I attended the funeral service, with military honors, for Sgt. Richard Essex of the United States Army. He was killed in action in Afghanistan on August 16, 2012. Richard was a Kelseyville local, graduating from local schools and enjoying many days with his family and friends here in Lake County.
I didn’t know him, and can’t recall ever meeting him, but perhaps I did. But together with his family and close friends, I and about 1,000 other people attended his funeral. You may ask why so many people, who probably never met him, were there. I have a question in response: Why weren’t there even more?
During World War II, our nation came together because we had initially not wanted to be involved in the “European” conflict, and tried, at least publicly, to maintain a distance from the fighting. That changed with Pearl Harbor, when we were directly attacked.
That event, coming some 12 years after the Wall Street crash that ushered in the Great Depression, may have pulled us out of even greater economic disaster. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons signed up in droves to go and fight, in Europe, the Pacific, even North Africa and Asia.
Here at home, we honored them and helped the effort by rationing gasoline, rubber, nylon and more to help the “war effort.” We had meatless Mondays, and other special days when our going without for a day meant our fighting men (and women) would have a bit more.
If we couldn’t get gas on the day we wanted it, we waited until our ration letter came up and bought just enough to get us through until we could buy again. We went without, so they would have fuel for trucks, tanks, planes and supplies to fight the war and come home safe.
We repeated those actions during the Korean conflict (not a war, as it was never declared; it was a United Nations intervention). But still men and women were in harm’s way overseas, and they deserved our support and sacrifice.
But starting with the Vietnam conflict, and continuing through Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom and countless other combined operations and battles in the Middle East and elsewhere, we now fight our wars by proxy.
Just as we complain about American jobs going to other countries, we have outsourced our wars.
Young men and women from our communities still fight and die, but we are detached, unless it is one we personally know. Otherwise, we have made no sacrifice to support him or her, and every night the overwhelming majority of Americans go to bed without a thought about any soldier, representing our country, in battle somewhere on foreign soil.
We are, as a nation, generally complacent. We complain about the high cost of gasoline when we pull our fuel-guzzling SUVs into the service station.
We worry about the cost of education for our sons and daughters, but still send them to the best schools we can afford, and possibly the best colleges on earth.
We want the taxes and fees we must pay reduced, but always want the cop there when we need him or her, the Post Office to be open when it’s convenient for us, and the DMV to make the lines shorter.
We want cheaper prescriptions, and less expensive medical care, but run to the emergency room when have a cough or upset stomach in the middle of the night.
We want to be rugged individuals who don’t need the government telling us what to do, while depending on zoning laws to keep our neighbors from building their fences too high, or relying on the public utility commission to make the power company provide light in the dark.
I didn’t know Richard Essex. Had I met him, I may have liked him, or not. But he, and countless others are fighting, and sometimes dying because our country said they should. We, collectively, made that decision.
You may say, “I didn’t send him off to war, and I didn’t want him to get hurt.” Did you tell your senator or congressional representative that? Of course not. You didn’t even pick up the phone or send an e-mail. You let someone else make that decision for you. You outsourced that decision.
And just like that decision, you’ll let someone else make the other decisions that directly affect your life, and complain that it wasn’t your fault later.
This of course doesn’t apply to everyone. There are many in our community who are involved with their families and friends and those in the military and those in politic and those who represent us both locally and nationally. Those folks are interested, informed and aware of issues and decisions and consequences. Thank you if you are one of them.
If you are not, why not? Is life just too busy to read a paper, watch an unbiased news report or attend a town-hall meeting about an issue that affects you?
That’s OK, we’ll go for you. Afterwards, we’ll make the decisions for you too. You stay at home and watch “America’s Got Talent” while the real talent is out there fighting our wars, protecting our peace and serving our nation.
They may sacrifice everything they ever had to serve our country, and you can sacrifice being an active and informed citizen. After they render their service, you can say it wasn’t your idea they should do so.
So why weren’t there 3,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 people at Sgt. Essex funeral Saturday? Some were too busy enjoying the freedom and choices that his sacrifice, and the thousands of others who have fallen before him, provided.
Someone said we owe a debt to Sgt. Essex, and his comrades in arms, that can never be repaid. Many know that; many do not.
Be one that knows, and whether you were there Saturday or not, when you go to bed tonight, take a moment to say “Thank you.” It may be the only sacrifice you’re ever called upon to make.
Doug Rhoades lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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- Written by: Doug Rhoades
Recently biotech and chemical industry proponents have redoubled their efforts to bad-mouth organic farmers and consumers.
We are getting a concentrated dose of the standard “organic can’t possibly feed the world” line, along with scolding about organic farms encroaching upon the rain forests.
We are supposed to feel guilty for feeding our children peaches and strawberries free of hormone-disrupting pesticide residues.
The timing is too obvious – a successful campaign to labeling of genetically engineered food on the ballot brought about increased awareness.
I’m looking forward to seeing the Organic Trade Association’s figures for both 2011 and 2012 – I believe that shoppers are already voting with their wallets, resulting in a noticeable loss of market share for non-organic processed foods laden with unlabeled GMOs.
The industrial disinformation campaign will intensify, given the expected $100 million that biotech firms like Monsanto and Cargill are devoting to stopping Proposition 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.
It’s time to start setting the record straight.
Forty case studies of programs in 20 countries, sponsored by the UK Government Office of Science Foresight, were published in the International Journal of Agriculture Sustainability (IJAS) (Pretty et al. “Sustainable intensification in African agriculture” 2011).
These are not tiny test plot studies – they involve programs that benefit 10.39 million farmers and their families.
The results are impressive: Yields more than doubled over a three to 10 year period. Practicing “sustainable intensification” provided farmers with alternatives to the crushing debts incurred to purchase patented seeds and the soil-killing and water-polluting chemicals needed to grow them.
Additional studies recently published by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), compiling the work of over 400 independent scientists, also raised disturbing questions on genetic engineering. Jack A. Heinemann, a professor of genetics and molecular biology at University of Canterbury, New Zealand has written a book, Hope Not Hype, about the findings.
Several chapters are available free at https://sites.google.com/site/therightbiotechnology/Home .
Scientists found no evidence of sustained yield increases from GM crops since their commercial release.
For instance, food production in Brazil decreased slightly while the proportion of GM crops has grown to 65 percent.
Studies at Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska suggest that Roundup Ready soy yields 6 percent to 11 percent less than conventional varieties. The research showed the GE varieties were more, not less vulnerable to drought, an increasing problem throughout the world.
Although the biotech industry boasts of drought and salt tolerance, it’s now being found that conventionally-bred hybrids are more likely to excel in these traits. This includes both selection by farmers and use of marker-assisted selection by plant breeders.
This newer and safer technology is not the same as transferring genes from one species to another – it allows very precise selection of naturally-occurring beneficial mutations.
Genetically engineered crops don’t increase profits or decrease expenses for farmers. The higher upfront costs for GM seeds and the fertilizer and pesticides required actually increase the financial risk from crop failure.
Bankruptcies are still commonplace in the US and in several countries, such as India, suicides by debt-ridden farmers have risen rapidly, a horrifying trend.
Furthermore, according to the Institute for Food and Development Policy, there is already a surplus of food, enough to provide 3,500 calories for each person on the planet.
Even countries with the largest numbers of malnourished people have adequate food – it’s just that many people are too poor to buy it.
Since genetically modified food is not needed to feed the world, it’s important to consider the many reasons we should question the use of this obsolete and ineffective technology.
Industry claims that pesticide use has been reduced are false. Around 85 percent of GM crops are herbicide-tolerant. According to IAASTD, glyphosate use in the United States has increased by 15 times since 1994.
It’s also standard practice for GE seeds to be treated with systemic pesticides. This actually results in an increase in pesticide residue on food.
Monsanto has requested increases in allowable residue, including a request to the EU early this year to increase the allowable glyphosate residue on lentils by 100 times – that is not 100 percent, it’s a 10,000 percent increase!
Predictably the heavy use of herbicides is resulting in herbicide-resistant weeds, which will reduce the production and profits of farmers who do not even grow genetically engineered crops.
In his book, Heinemann points out that a farmer whose crop is contaminated by GMOs is exposed to legal actions, market rejection, and product recalls.
If conventionally-grown or organic crops become contaminated, according to patent law, Monsanto owns those crops and seeds, and can sue the farmers for “patent infringement.”
Their full-time staff of 75 employees has filed lawsuits against hundreds of American farmers, including those who never suspected that their fields had been contaminated.
Farmers typically settle out of court. The average payment to Monsanto is more than $400,000. Those farmers also no longer have the right to either save or plant their own seed or to select for desirable traits.
According to law, the entire genetically engineered plant, including the seeds, are the property of the patent-holder, not the farmer, even if the trait the farmer is selecting for is completely different from, and on a different chromosome from the GE mutation, and even if the gene got into the seed, not through any action of the farmer, but through wind or insect pollination. This violates both fair treatment under the law and common sense.
Domination of the world’s farmers by companies who own patented seeds is damaging to both biodiversity and food security.
The IAASTD provides important new evidence that even without the millions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies and research funding lavished upon biotech, agroecological methods of farming are outpacing industrial practices in feeding the hungry in the places that most desperately need both nutritional variety and the local economic benefits of small family-owned farms.
Roberta Actor-Thomas is a software consultant in Lakeport, Calif., and a member of the Committee for a GE Free Lake County.
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- Written by: Roberta Actor-Thomas
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