Nearly 80% of the papayas grown in Hawaii are of the transgenic variety. Yes, that means it is GMO. And to people like Vandana Shiva, those three letters are really bad. Just take a look at what she says about it on Twitter.
#MarkLynas saying farmers shd be free to grow #GMOs which can contaminate #organic farms is like saying #rapists shd have freedom to rape
If you were to take what she says, then I guess you’d have to say that the above papaya with no seeds must have been “raped” by a GMO contamination. Then all of the anti-GMO club members are going to join in and spread that same “fact.” They never bother to research any of their facts about the source of their information and it goes all over the social media like a wildfire.
When someone does a bit of research to counter their claims, they find out that papayas do sometimes lack any seeds at times and that if it has a funny shape, it is probably a female fruit, not some mutant terminator papaya. Note that this papaya was grown in Asia where there was no such thing as transgenic papayas to begin with. But of course, the “facts” will spread that this is a GMO mutant and so on.
So before you send those emails about your horrid discovery containing misinformation that you are completely unaware of, do some research or be called a fool by someone who catches it. Then again, maybe some people like to be called a fool.
I just received this comment a few days ago from the blog post on GMO Free Kauai: Silencing a Dissident post from another blog. The blog basically outlines how if you speak up against these activists, they will do anything within their social media power to silence you. It’s personal and they’ll do it.
The original post has nothing to do with pesticides or spraying and completely ignores the fact that they feel that it is okay to personally attack people who speak out. Yup, that’s how they do it. If you don’t like what is being said, bully them online. Destroy their own personal reputation online for that is the Kauai way. Not. We don’t do that here in Hawaii unless you’re an anti-GMO club member.
So apparently, when you see the things that they post as having any evidence of no aloha, they now call you an “antagonist.” Wait? Who is an antagonist now? The last I saw was that these anti-GMO club members seem to think that it is all right pass out fliers with their propaganda around farmers’ markets, support coercive intimidation tactics, accuse others of genocide, baby killers, and so on. From the sound of this comment from an anonymous person “lotsofaloha,” it seems that anything is justified. Whether it be being rude towards others because of his or her perception of what is being done, despite the fact that the data does not support this person’s claim.
I find it totally amazing also that I’m accused of “fanning the fires.” So when someone speaks out against this kind of tactics of coercive intimidation, it is considered fanning the fire and finger pointing? Well, if your supporters say nasty stuff and do rude things on the social media, it’s your own commentary that is fanning the fire caught for all to see. You know that saying, think before you talk? It might be a good thing to do before you post something if you don’t want it called out. I am pointing that out square and center because hey, I can’t believe you said that! Local people don’t talk like that to each other!
So ironic how these commenters ask for positivity and aloha and hate the name calling when they were the first one to give me a new name. Joni Tokyo Rose. Um, lotsofaloha, can you tell your friends there in the GMO Free Kauai club to stop making up names and wishing that I had babies with birth defects or wish me to drink RoundUp? That’s getting old. If you think that is the aloha way, you obviously don’t know what aloha really is.
The other night, I was checking my newsfeed on Facebook when I came across a friend’s post about TEDx no longer going to post pseudoscience. Apparently, an anti-GMO fanatic decided to chime in on it and add some 100 or so replies with the pro-science folks there. The kind of things she was saying were way out there and just spammy. I decided to send her some feedback on her commentary to him.
My first message to her was, “Just saw how you spammed up Richard Ha’s thread. Geez.”
Surprisingly I got a reply from her! Of course she mentioned that she did not want her comments reposted even though she was reposting the whole conversation on her own public page. (You can read the entire conversation on her page since she didn’t want me reposting but she did the favor of posting it herself.) She was afraid that “with my mentality it would get a distorted interpretation.” Interesting.
I won’t repost her comments but I’ll list the common statements made by these anti-GMO armchair farmers.
1. You can’t trust any study at all because they are all paid for by the industry.
2. I can’t figure out real studies from papers. This is a study to her. Looks legitimate so it must be.
3. You can grow things without chemicals and just kill bugs by hand.
4. GMOs like spam and McDonalds are direct causes of diabetes.
5. There are chemicals being sprayed all around that are killing us.
6. Because I know and read a lot about farming, I can tell farmers how to rotate their crops and how to plant it.
7. We should go back to how we ate in 1778 because life was better back then.
8. There are no long term human studies on the safety of GMOs. I don’t know how it would be tested but we do need them.
9. GMO papaya leaf extract can’t cure malaria. Only organic papaya leaves can cure it.
10. Bans of GMO foods are the reason why they are bad. Forget the fact that the country imports it in for feed, it still is bad.
11. In order to have studies that will satisfy an anti-GMO activists requirements, the biotech industry must pay for it and the organic industry chooses the scientist. No one can be trusted unless it is chosen by their side.
12. Bugs are all the same, they aren’t different and we should love them all. Bugs are not pests. Hmmm….
13. Organic farmers should not be governed by any corporate law. Um, did you know that organics are owned by large corporations?
14. The land is being poisoned but I have no evidence to that claim but I’ll still say it.
15. I am pro science but I can’t tell you how to conduct a study or even know how to discern out legitimate ones.
16. I love watching videos, scary ones too like this one. I’m fixated on DDT. Videos relay all the information I need to know about GMOs.
16. Join in on the marches because they are fun!
Does any of this make sense to you? It sounds like a lot of mumble jumble just like the posts she puts all over the place. And these are the kinds of people that are telling our farmers and lawmakers how and what kind of laws we need in our communities. That is not the responsible thing to do and just shows that a politician or farmer should not have to listen to these kinds of constituents. Just because they are loud and proud of their ignorance does not translate into making laws. That is purely irresponsible!
**Her tirade continues on tonight once again and sure enough, out comes the Natural News links! Proof that these people don’t know quackery from science.**
Quote of the day from Paul Watson, former Greenpeace activist and board member of Sierra Club, the parent of Earthjustice.
Gary Hooser is at it once again, January 29, 2014, spreading his toxic gospel over and over again. When he should have been at a Kauai County Council Meeting, he was among his favorite bikini clad calendar chics at the State Capitol.
Not only is he repeating himself once again, but his son, Dylan Hooser, is also starting to repeat it the same mantra in Civil Beat. Dylan has significantly cleaned up his image with a good shave and covering up his tattoo laden extremities to fit back into the political scene with his father, as long as he stays out of trouble with the law. Here’s son and father together at the capitol from their new page, Defend Kauai #shameonyou.
Hooser also extended his presence at the most recent Filipino Chamber of Commerce Dinner. That takes a lot of gall to be there, right after he and his mob said the most ugliest and heinous remarks about these workers and companies, whom he is attempting to rid the island of. He must think that people have forgotten what he has done.
So what is happening now, is likely going to be a repeat of what happened last year in October. Just take a stroll that down memory lane to recall the events that unfolded just a few months ago…
October 3, 2013
Last month, PBS Insights had to cancel the GMO panel that would include the Gary Hooser, Kokua Market GM Lynette Larson, Senator Nishihara, and of course my dad, Ken Kamiya. PBS never got a reason for the cancellation but if you just see what Hooser does, you’ll see why pro-biotech folks would cancel on this guy to begin with. (Note that this is my sole opinion of the whole issue.)
Here’s a nice video, by Kauai Rock Chick aka Bus Driver Chick of Hooser, being the hero for supposedly pinning down the seed company managers about disclosure. (Note that these people are not in positions to speak for these lines of questioning, but it makes for a great Hollywood courtroom drama scene as the hero lawyer finds ultimate guilt!)
First of all, why would Hooser want to discuss GMOs, pesticides, and “right to know” issues with someone who lives on a completely different island in a industry that isn’t really strong on Kauai? Could it be that he just wants more TV time to win over more voters for his next calling to office? Well, let’s just do some investigating of this further to see what the evidence shows.
Hear it from both sides on this clip. Hooser, Mark Phillipson of Syngenta, MMA fighter Barca, and Tim Pastoor, toxicologist for Syngenta:
Hooser was already on Olelo’s GMO panel several months back too stating the same things and getting friendly with Bill Freese of the Center for Food Safety, Hector Valenzuela, William Steiner, and Walter Ritte too.
How many hours have been spent going around stating the same thing, where he makes a statement that he consulted with attorneys from Earthjustice and Center for Food Safety, well known, well funded anti-biotech organizations?
And again for Big Island Anti-GMO Bill 113 at 2:20 speaking at his own behalf in the Brenda Ford circus.
Then he’s on yet another video also saying the same thing over and over again.
And again:
Then take a listen to his fellow followers and how they say the same thing over and over too nearly word for word.
Fellow County Council Member Tim Bynum repeating the same misinformation over too
Recall that Tim Bynum did once stated the he’d consider the evidence but apparently that’s out of the question now. “I trust that it is science’s job to get to the truth.”
Then come more of the same anti-GMO club members saying the same thing over:
Here’s another one repeating practically word for word what Hooser states:
Then there’s the MMA fighter giving his expert advice about GMOs. (Note that he goes through all the Monsanto myths and they aren’t even on Kauai):
Then there is Andrea Brower, who is a PhD candidate in sociology suddenly has expertise in feeding the world issues repeating the corporations and regulations. She’s also has an article in the HuffPo about pesticides too, repeating the same things Hooser states. (Interesting how she puts her PhD candidate credentials on her Huffpo post but fails to state what it’s in.)
And here’s another one stating over and over Hooser’s doctrine:
Well, we know that he has probably coached many of these folks on what to say because he’s well known in the GMO Free groups across our islands.
Note that he must not have much evidence to base his bill and and openly admitted that testing would be done after! He did ignore prior studies that were done that showed no high levels of the pesticides he claims as being dangerous. So do we make laws first and then figure out if there really is an issue while ignoring all other evidence collected? Yes, if you’re Gary Hooser that is.
But then again, Hooser is definitely on the bandwagon to political opportunities when people say this about him.
Some people are getting pretty sick of his ways and he knows it when he has to post stuff like this too. (Some others are starting to feel like he’s family when he get’s the name “uncle.” Also note that he even refers to people who don’t agree with him as “trolls,” which is a typical term anti-GMO mob folk love.)
When you start hearing from your constituents that they are not happy with you, guess you’d better get back on TV again and win more people for your mob!
The anti-GMO mob does need more supporters now especially after the recent papaya vandalism! It doesn’t bode well for these folks after they have been caught making threats of crop destruction for the past year or more publicly.
I remember back last year when the hot topic issue was the labeling of GMOs in the legislature. I really didn’t care too much about it until I got meme after meme about the dangers of GMOs from a Facebook friend of mine. I thought, wow, this must be bigger than I expected.
Having worked on the research myself, I knew the safety and testing and had no qualms about it. I even ate the transgenic stuff myself and the PRSV infected papaya as green papaya salad with no problem. DNA was nothing I considered terrifying because I knew what is was and what it does. So when I heard that papayas were now being touted and “poison” and “dangerous,” I thought I’d better learn about this issue more.
One of my first searches on the internet about these so called claims of dangers was on the claims of these movies being watched. The searches come up chock full of Natural News, Collective Evolution, Green Med Info, Institute for Responsible Technology and so on. After sorting through all of that stuff, I found this blog talking about the anti-GMO movement. The more I learned about the issues from Bt genetic engineering, organic farming, and regulation, the more I realized that the information was so easily distorted by the social media.
Ready to start speaking up in the forums, one of the first places I started was with Civil Beat. Little did I know that it was a haven for anti-GMO commenters. It was amazing the sheer numbers of commenters I found on there every single article on GMOs. Everyone was fixated on this evil called Monsanto, corporations, and poisons. The more these repetitive comments repeated itself over and over, I started to realize how these folks just read things right off of a Google search and never even bothered to check the source. It becomes really evident when the majority of the commenters use the same phrases over and over.
As I read the stuff from Natural News and so on I realized how easily someone with very little scientific knowledge could be beleaguered by the information presented. I thought if I didn’t get some science background, it would be so easily believe the fearful and terrifying things being posted on these sites over and over again. I’m too much of a skeptic to believe it and searched and read more about the so called claims and sure enough, debunked by noted scientists with ease.
Then of course, the big gem of the anti-GMO movement came the Seralini rat study. The media was a ruckus over their final proof of the dangers. Instead of reading the news interpretations of the study, I went straight to the study itself. I also did searches on it by putting in “debunk Seralini study.” And I found out a totally different side all together. One of the first outlets to debunk his study was the media itself. Shortly after I stumbled upon a wonderfully insightful site called Biofortified. It had great articles by highly educated scientists and scholars. I found it way more trustworthy than any of the other sites popping up.
After doing a lot of research and comparing articles across the internet, I’ve come to realize that the regular folks would not be able to understand half of the stuff being presented. The Latins recognized this behavior eons ago when they coined the phrase, “Damnant quod non intelligunt.” They condemn what they do not know. The scare mongering is so great on the anti-GMO side that it can really make you start to believe it. Just like the phenomena when you leave a movie theater after watching a horror flick, you get a little spooked out for sometime. Emotions are powerful strategies that work.
The only thing with the anti-GMO messages is that if you’re on FB or Twitter a lot, you get bombarded with hundreds of images every single day from multiple sites that it becomes all you can see. It is almost like a brain poison that these marketers know how to prey upon. Then when you walk into the grocery store and see that clean, neat little label that proudly states, “GMO-Free,” you feel relieved. Some things marked GMO-Free are indeed that to begin with like coconut milk and almond milk. There’s no such thing as GM coconuts or almonds! It’s a scam to me and I despise the fact that it makes people feel bad about their food for no reason. And especially here in Hawaii where food is even more expensive, making the people most prone to this kind of messages only takes advantage of their lack of knowledge.
The more I talk to people who repeat the myths, the more I’m able to see where their hang ups are about this “new science.” It really isn’t new, it is just more precise and better controlled despite the anti-GMO club claim. We have to do more on our part to educate people about this issue. We don’t eat like we did 100 years ago and why would we want to go back to those ways. Research, education and scientific evidence moves us forward. That’s the direction our society should be moving towards a better future.
I am so glad for the nice feature on here with the comments that can be moderated. It never fails that you will get some winners lurking out in the social media to post some winning comments on a blog.
Meet someone named John D Blair who posted these two lovely comments. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about with the anti-GMO club’s tactics with commenting.
Here’s some simple research about the active ingredient in Agent Orange that John is referring to just by doing a simple Google search:
What people like John Blair do don’t like so many other anti-GMO club members is more research. Think! If the active ingredient in Agent Orange is still around, why is it being sold in stores? Well, you can’t even get to that step if you don’t research in the first place. Well, I like to educate so here’s what I found while searching the issues with Agent Orange.
Look up it up in Google, “Why was Agent Orange so toxic?” Well, if you read the whole entry you’ll find this as your reason for the toxicity. The answers are all there, if you take the time to read and know your stuff. (I am purposefully having you click on the links listed to read for yourself what it says. This is how one can learn to research.)
The thing with these kind of folks is that they can never believe that someone who speaks out for biotech is not paid. It’s an easy dismissal in one’s mind to say that. How could anyone even consider such a thing? The truth is that more folks are speaking out about this issue and doing it for free is unfathomable. I can honestly tell you that I receive no monies whatsoever from the biotech industry for writing this blog. It did however set me back about $150 or so out of my own pocket and it is not a going to be a tax deduction either. I haven’t formed my own non-profit activist group status either. I’m just a farmer’s daughter who is willing to speak out and clear up the muck.
So Mr. John D Blair, if you could kindly take off those Monsanto glasses, you may actually think a bit more clearer. And you might want to take a lesson in how do to a simple Google search to find an answer before making a comment.
There are a certain bunch of anti-GMO club members that have taken to bombarding the social media. If there is anything with those 3 letters on them, you can bet you’ll find them there. There was a post yesterday in Pacific Business News having an editorial board meeting about the issues at hand in our state regarding biotechnology. Of course, when you put a comment after all the anti-GMO activists, you will get these kind of comments. Note that I simply asked a question in response to the post.
What I got was not a surprise considering that these activists have taken to bombarding the social media.
This person has even accused me of antagonizing her too! I can’t quite figure out how but once again paranoia sets in.
Another thread starts up too on this same link.
I do remember how she and yet another so called farmer posted some very “nice” comments on a farm fair picture on another ag FB page.
Here’s the no aloha comments posted by these same people in response to mine.
Unreal what these people are capable of saying publicly. Of course I was forwarded this clip too of how I acquired my nickname.
There is no getting through to these activists. When they have to start attacking people personally, it really shows that there is nothing in the form of evidence to support their argument. They can only resort to name calling or accusations of being a shill. This clearly demonstrates that these people are unreasonable and will only be agreeable to one single demand, their way. Working with the unreasonable will get you no where.
From the Bad Skeptic link:
“The only thing the crier o’ shill proves is that they don’t give a flying f*@k about having an actual discussion, about hearing any viewpoint but their own, or about any reality outside of the one they’re already convinced exists. Saying, “I’m right, and that’s that! Neener!” is good enough for them.”
That’s fine with me but more reason why we can’t make laws and policy according to these activists demands.
HawaiiFarmersDaughter 