Organic Farming, Meat, and Mendocino County

Jan and I are thinking of moving to Seattle, at the request of Jan's son, my stepson Evan. On the other hand, he can't guarantee that he will stay in Seattle himself. I say this because it brings into question projects like Mendoday.com and California Democracy. I seem to be accumulating a large number of questions, although they still swirl about some pretty bedrock answers.

Last night I attended a forum at the Garcia Grange in Manchester, California, a tiny coastal hamlet a few miles north of Point Arena. The forum was sponsored by some Mendocino County organic farming groups, but the panel consisted of the four candidates for fifth district Supervisor. I am not neutral. I am volunteering on Dan Hamburg's campaign committee. The question before the forum was how could more small scale, organic farming be economically successful in Mendocino County. Also, how could we keep the money generated by economic activity in our county. Money tends to get drained out of our economy by the bigger players, who send it back to corporate headquarters, where ever that may be.

We talked about the need to get a slaugherhouse started in the county, preferably in the 5th district. There used to be one. Now, if a farmer (organic or not) wants to slaughter an animal, they have to transport it long distances, or do the slaughter under the regulatory radar. All four candidates, and the entire audience as far as I could tell, agreed that a local slaughterhouse would be a good thing.

This contrasts with the recent argument I had within the Green Party (specifically, within the California delegation to the Green Party of the United States). California's Green Party platform recommends that people "consider a vegan lifestyle." Vegans, for those of you who have not run into these annoying creatures, reject the idea that life is part of a cycle with death. They refuse to eat any animal products, including products that did not kill the animals like eggs, cheese, and even honey. They also won't use animal products; no leather shoes or clothing, etc. Some members of my delegation wanted to take the phrase from the California platform and insert it in the U.S. national Green Party platform. They also want to ban all scientific study of animals.

I put up a fuss, other members of the delegation joined me, and the "vegan" motion was defeated (if passed by us, it would then be considered by the entire national committee). But then the platform committee people started submitting a whole huge stack of revisions (our platform is way out of date). Less and less discussion happened with each proposal; the general attitude was to pass the new planks on to the full national committee, where they can be amended or rejected. Amidst this deluge the vegan plank appeared again, and the exact same people who had rejected it before, now passed it. They were tired of arguing.

Which reminds me of quaint historical phenomena. The Democratic Party, for instance, started having a racial civil rights plank way back when, during the New Deal if not earlier. But it was a sham. The Democratic Party was very dependendent on the South (former Confederate states), where African Americans were not allowed to vote, and all white people voted Democrat, thus assuring that between 1932 and 1969 all the presidents of the United States were Democrats except Dwight Eisenhower. The racist Democrats did not mind the civil rights plank to much because they controlled Congress; there was no possibility that it would be put into effect. President Lyndon Johnson finally forced enough Democrats in Congress to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to change things. It is often said that he did not run in 1968 because of internal Democrat opposition to the Vietnam War. But that was only a secondary reason. The main reason was the alienation of the white racist vote in the South. That is why George Wallace did so well in 1968 (he was a Democrat who sometimes ran as an independent).

The Green Party platforms, both California and National, contain many portions I don't agree with, but mainly it is a question of gray areas. People who write platform planks tend to specialize in those issues, and push for what the rest of us may consider extremes. Just for instance, we have an anti-fluoride plank, which is like having an anti-vitamin plank as far as I am concerned. But Greens tend to love vitamin supplements and hate toxins, and see fluoride as a toxin, not a mineral supplement.

How do I tell the local organic farmers, who are in tune with nature, that a bunch of urban vegans want to shut down their milk, poultry, and meat operations? So far I have not. I'll just keep fighting over the party plank when I get a chance. What is really funny is watching the California Greens chow down at a state convention. They eat meat, and the vegans usually stage a guilt-trip protest. Your are right, we should be vegans, pass the ham, please.

So why am I still in the Green Party? I've thought a lot about changing my registration status to Decline-to-State (Californian for independent) lately. In general the Green Party is right about social justice and the environement. But the real thread holding me to the party is its opposition to war (on the other side, pushing me out, is its nonviolence plank, which I would like to amend to support people's right to self-defense). The Democratic Party wants peace, supposedly, but always delivers war. Voting Green sends a message that I want to dismantle the entire U.S. military apparatus. I really do.

I remind myself that the real, basic problem is human overpopulation. It is a global problem, it is certainly a California problem, and it is getting to be a Mendocino County problem.

We don't have enough water in Mendocino County for our current level of population and agricultural production. We take too much out of our streams, which has hurt the salmon. We really need to only grow foods that can survive mostly from the winter rains. We grow a lot of fine grapes here, but the vines are planted too close together. We need to tear out about 1/2 the grapes so that the vines will need very little supplemental watering beyond the winter rains.

And what we don't need is nuclear power. We don't need iPads. We don't need the Congressmen from Mississippi, Texas and New York telling us what to do. We don't even need the fools in Sacramento telling us what to do. Maybe San Francisco needs all that, maybe Lost Angeles needs all that, but we don't.

Apple Apps Black Turtleneck Policy

Steve Jobs has leaked that he is preparing to announce that all developers for the Apple App Store must wear approved black turtlenecks when "engaged in the process of development."

In a nod to the Open Source community, "for the time being," wearing jeans is not required.

Most App Store developers responded to the announced rumor positively. "I am kind of surprised that there are developers who don't wear black turtlenecks," said senior programmer Ilphred Linukson of iPhony, which makes Apps that allow iPhone users to know the exact geographic location of Steve Jobs at all times.

However, reactions were less positive when programmers learned that Apple is planning a line of RFID tagged black turtlenecks. "I'm just guessing" said well-known Applelogist Sirius Wormhole, "but to enforce the rule requires either video surveillance or some kind of key device like the RFID tag."

There are also rumors circulating in Cupertino that Apple is negotiating to buy "a small DNA sequencing and electroporation startup." This might be intended to improve both programming skills and sense of style by genetically modifying Apple employees.

Apple employees contacted were giddy at the rumor. "I'd love to be more like Steve," was a typical comment.

Adolf Hitler, Peace Maker?

I like bizarre bits of true history, bits that don't fit into how we normally look at historical figures and institutions.

You have to be careful about saying anything nice about Adolf Hitler, mostly because he did not do very much that was nice, and partly because you get attacked as being a simpathiser even if you are just trying to clarify the historical record so people can be objective about history. While I have made it clear in many other essays that I hate Fascism, some one reading this one essay in isolation might miss that point.

I found this historical detail in John Toland's The Rising Sun, volume 1, page 65. In December, 1937, after Japanese troops captured Nanking (see Battle of Nanking), the Japanese government really, really wanted peace with China, which is to say with its leading war-lord, Chiang Kai-shek. They had already made peace with a number of war lords in northern China, and had no intention of making peace with the other claimant to Chinese governance, the Communist Party of China, which back then was actually holding elections in the areas it controlled.

In 1937 Adolf Hitler was busy in Europe trying to unite all German-speaking people into a consolidated German state; he had threatened war but not conducted it. But, for all his racism, Adolf Hitler had friendly relationships with both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese government headed by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye (or Konoe, according to Wikipedia). In Chiang Kai-shek's case, the German military had been training and advising Chinese troops for decades, and a little war with Japan was a good chance to test weapons and tactics. In Japan's case, both nations were very anti-communist and afraid of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.), and had joined together in the Anti-Comintern Pact.

Had Hitler succeeded, he might have won a Nobel Prize. And having won a Nobel Prize, maybe he would have thought twice before using military force to take back the areas of Poland that had been taken from Germany at the end of World War I.

But probably not. Giving the Peace Prize to Obama did not stop him from escalating the U.S. wars of aggression in Afghanistan or Somalia. Barack Obama, I am pretty sure, likes to think about himself as a peace-loving guy. It is just that like the Japanese leaders of the 1930's, he just wants peace his way. Who doesn't?

Why did Hitler not bring peace to East Asia in 1937? Franklin D. Roosevelt decided it was not in the interest of the United States, and encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to keep fighting. During the relatively pacifist Republican administrations of the 1920's (Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) the United States had partially disarmed, and during the Depression the military was further weakened by the need to shift the federal budget to New Deal welfare programs. Roosevelt was keen to make Japan and China both part of the U.S. commercial empire; the more they fought, the easier it would be for the U.S. to knock them both over when it became convenient. The more trouble Chiang was in, the more dependent he would be on the U.S.

Hitler did not seek peace because he was a good guy. He wanted the Japanese and Chinese to stop bickering so they could both fight his own arch enemy, the Soviet Union (and Chinese communists). Whether Roosevelt's intentions were good or bad can be debated, but his decision to push China to continue the war meant that China would be torn by war until the victory of the Chinese Communist regime in 1950. Given how demolished China was by 1950, it is remarkable that this year its economy will become the second largest in the world.

In effect in December 1937 Chiang was weak, and had to decide whether he would be a U.S. puppet or a Japanese puppet (a third realistic choice was becoming a Soviet puppet). Being the U.S. puppet, all he got in the end was Taiwan.

Theodore Roosevelt got a Nobel Peace Prize for helping the Japanese and Russians negotiate and end to their war in 1904. Given Roosevelt's belicosity and role in the Spanish American War and the Philippines genocide, apparently there is no barier to highly aggressive past and future war criminals receiving the prize.