A typical Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) pilots the Goodyear Blimp, packed with high explosives and razor-sharp shrapnel, into the Orange Bowl stadium during the Super Bowl, where President Jimmy Carter is watching the game. To make the stereotype complete and believable, the Vietnam vet has been persuaded to do it by Muslim terrorists!!!* * *
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Hawaii USA)
Friday 18 May 2007
Big Island rejects
federal funds
for war on pot
The Green Harvest 'no' vote by the Hawaii County Council is not final
by Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com
HILO » With Hawaii County Councilman Bob Jacobson calling for an end to the "marijuana war," the Council rejected three federal grants totaling $582,000 for marijuana eradication.
That could mark the end of 30 years of "Green Harvest" eradication efforts by Hawaii County police.
But there was no certainty. A second vote must be taken before the money can be removed from the county's 2007-2008 budget.
And the Council has rejected federal eradication money before, voting against it in 2000 but resuming acceptance in 2001.
HILO » The Hawaii County Council voted this week to remove $582,000 of federal anti-marijuana money from the county's 2007-2008 budget.
The move could be the end of 30 years of so-called Green Harvest eradication missions, or it could be a signal that the program will survive, but with a major face lift.
"I'm stoked," said marijuana legalization advocate Roger Christie. "It's the beginning of the end of cannabis eradication."
But Councilman Stacy Higa, who cast a lukewarm vote to keep the money out of the budget, said the action was a technicality that will lead to more discussion.
With the Council split 4-4, Higa twice voted "kanalua," a Hawaiian word meaning "undecided." By law, two such votes are counted as a "yes" vote.
But the kanalua votes also signaled that Higa might change his vote later.
Another vote is needed June 1 before the budget is approved for the mayor's signature.
The county accepts grants from a variety of agencies, Higa said. The eradication grants are the only ones placed directly in the budget at the beginning of the fiscal year, he said.
With their removal from the budget, the Police Department would have to come to the Council later and give a detailed justification of the eradication program, he said.
Higa said he has heard countless stories of police helicopters hovering over people's homes and officers rappelling down ropes into people's yards.
"I believe in due process," he said. After marijuana is spotted from the air, "I want to see a search warrant. Send in a ground crew," he said.
Councilman Dominic Yagong voted against placing the federal money in the budget, saying he would like to see a one-year moratorium on helicopter-based eradication.
That was an about-face for Yagong, who voted for anti-marijuana money in 1997, saying his constituents were for it.
"Back then, there was zero talk of 'ice' (crystal methamphetamine)," he said. "Things have certainly changed with hard drugs."
One of his own family members had his life ruined by methamphetamine, he said.
Federal eradication money cannot be switched to fight hard drugs, but police staffing can be freed up from not fighting marijuana, he said.
Council Chairman Pete Hoffmann voted for the money. "Police have a hard enough time trying to enforce the laws," he said. "I don't want to strip the capability from them."
The police were surprised by the move. Assistant Chief James Day said the chief and deputy chief were off island, and he was called to testify Wednesday after dozens of marijuana advocates were well into several hours of testimony against the money, he said.
The first eradication, and the only one officially called Green Harvest, was in 1978. It was a time when marijuana growers, some of them Vietnam War veterans, were carrying weapons, setting up combat-style booby traps, even shooting at telephone workers putting up wires.
By the 1990s, councilmembers were having doubts about the helicopter missions. In 2000 they voted against accepting $265,000 in federal eradication funds, two-thirds of the program's money that year. But the following year, they accepted the full amount offered.
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Letters to the Editor
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
To the Editor:
I want to thank Rod Thompson and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for reviving the nearly extinct cliche stereotype slur against Vietnam veterans in your story about the Hawaii County Council's consideration of ending the "Green Harvest" marijuana eradication program.
In "Big Island rejects federal funds for war on pot" (18 May), Thompson wrote: "1978 ... was a time when marijuana growers, some of them Vietnam War veterans, were carrying weapons, setting up combat-style booby traps, even shooting at telephone workers putting up wires."
You're right, of course. Vietnam vets are drug-crazed, armed, deranged ticking time bombs and menaces to society.
Only Americans with the good sense to dodge the draft and evade military service matured into fine, law-abiding, non-violent solid citizens.
I've missed this unsupported generalization; I haven't read it for at least a year. Thanks for continuing the 35-year-old media tradition of public slander, libel, defamation and fear-mongering. Perhaps if you print it three hundred thousand more times, it will finally be officially certified as true.
But you have much work ahead. Hundreds of thousands of young American men and women now in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan will need to be pidgeonholed, stereotyped and misrepresented when they return to try to re-integrate into civilian life.
I hope Rod Thompson and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin will be there to similarly assist their transition as veterans. Another scoundrels' war created and bungled entirely by civilians, and the inevitable thanks of a grateful nation to the soldiers and Marines caught in it.
Robert Merkin
SP5 US Army 1969-1971
Northampton, Massachusetts
===========
e-mail received:
get 'em! From a vet, Thanks.
============
Hiya Allan!
Alas, I just phoned, and Greyhound doesn't seem to have direct service from Massachusetts to Honolulu. I so much would like to dialogue with the staff of this newsroom.
Gee, and there I've been for the last 35 years thinking it was just me. Guess not.
My war was air-conditioned and thousands of miles from the sound of guns. I could get over the two grotesque years -- honorable, with medals and a lovely thank-you letter from Richard Nixon -- but 35 years of morons amd weasels who never served won't let me.
Worse, I volunteer at a primitive winter homeless shelter, and though we serve anybody who staggers in, most nights it might as well be a Veterans Reunion.
Originally, of course, it was the 1st Battalion of Vietnam Stereotypes, and I was prepared for that. But within three years of the first Iraq War, young guys from that Great Victory started wandering in with equally destroyed lives.
I spent this winter terrified that I'd bump into our first Iraq 2 and Afghanistan vets. We have a little VA Boutique in my town, so I know they're here. Our Agent Orange will probably morph into their Depleted Uranium cancers. Large-scale DU use in armaments began with the NATO war in the Balkans. I can't wait to hear DoD and the VA/DVA go into Denial Mode about DU's effects on the troops. "Safe as milk," as Captain Beefheart might sing.
If we're going to keep war in our national repertoire, this country needs to get its head out of its ass and accept its responsibilities toward the kids we send into harm's way. I used to think it was just a Vietnam thing. But as I slide into 60, I realize now it's a continuing, never-ending process. We start a war, we send our neighbors' kids to the war, if they live through it, we throw them a little parade, and then we destroy the rest of what's left of their lives.
Glad my AAAARGGGGHHH LTE resonated with you. I hope I said it right for other vets.
I showed up for the draft so I could keep my Big Nasty American Political Loud Mouth. In retrospect, it was worth it. Also, I enjoy decades of never wondering what happened to the anonymous kid who had to get drafted in my place because I didn't show up.
The very, very best to you.
Bob
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