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+--- Thread: Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in bir (/showthread.php?tid=16323)
RE: Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in bir - HiloPuna - 08-30-2015
My compliments to PaulW for doing a little research into what is central to this issue, namely misinterpretation of data by those with a philosophical (or psychological?) axe's to grind.
First, The Guardian is viewed in Britain as the most "leftish" of the major newspapers, preferred by those on the left of center who want their bias's supported or created. Thats okay, you want to sweep the entire horizon, but when the Guardian fails it descends to The Mail, and it did here.
Second, the byline is a self-described "journalist" who has been grinding on this axe for a while, not an Eton/Cambridge trained Brit who stumbled upon an environmental disaster in the making, or whatever this article was trying to "tart up".
Third, the use of a picture taken of the "Aloha Aina March" the vast majority of that march was oriented towards sovereignty, and while the anti-TMT and GMO were there OHA paid big bucks to get out the "shirts", and they weren't printed with anti-gmo slogans.
But there's good old Gary Hooser photo bombing his issues into the parade and Pala misrepresenting how the "10,000" feel on his issues.
Fourth, Pala's "source" for his statistics is....wait for it....the Center for Food Safety ! Now there's an unbiased, science based, fact checking, double blind studying source of information, or not.
Fifth, Pala repeats the anti-GMO/Hooser canards regarding total pesticide usage (17x....18 tons) , types of pesticides used on seed corn (paraquat is NOT, it's used by the coffee company), commercial pesticide drift into schools (DOH stated household use led to the two reports), relative use of pesticides now versus sugar days (it's LESS, not more), etc, etc.
Sixth, Pala misrepresents the Joint Fact Finding Group's progress, resulting in the following from the assigned Mediator;
"... JFFG facilitator Peter Adler...:
His (Pala) piece will surely circulate widely on Kauai and elsewhere in the state where people are keenly interested in GM agricultural issues. Whatever the respective merits of the rest of his piece may be, however, the article had several unfortunate mistakes and some important omissions that need a response. This is being sent to The Guardian, The Garden Isle, and to other writers and journalists who are following the work of the JFF.
The Joint Fact Finding Study Group is not a “commission”. It is a special fact-finding group composed of Kauai citizens who have different sets of technical, medical and scientific expertise and who volunteered to do the very hard work of thoroughly examining as much available factual evidence as is possible during a year long project. Both the State of Hawai#699;i Department of Agriculture and the Office of the Mayor, County of Kauai, jointly fund the project.
More important, the article misconstrues and conflates statements made at a meeting with some Waimea residents on August 6th by Dr. Lee Evslin, one of the nine members of the Study Group, and myself.
Pala's purposeful misuse of the JFFG's work in his article that The Guardian foolishly published is in keeping with his lack of journalistic integrity. Downstream, where all crap flows, the simple minded acceptance of this type of polemic by some participants of this forum and their disinclination to do the hard thinking necessary to have an informed opinion leads one to ask the thread starter and others;
"So, with this article it looks like more problems for those continuing to oppose GMO's ?"
RE: Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in bir - HiloPuna - 08-30-2015
Follow up;
Here's how Pala got paid;
http://fij.org/grants-awarded-2/
Here's a critique of the article;
http://lauhala.com/hinano/20150826-093222-MARKED-UP-VERSION-OF-GUARDIAN-PIECE-HEADLINED-PESTICIDES-IN-PARADISE.pdf
And for all things Kauai, like coming here for all things East Hawaii;
kauaieclectic.blogspot.com