Pencil Sketch Portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien

‘They’re always a-hammering and a-letting out a smoke and a stench, and there isn’t no peace even at night in Hobbiton. And they pour out filth a-purpose; they’ve fouled all the lower Water and it’s getting down into Brandywine. If they want to make the Shire into a desert, they’re going the right way about it.’ – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Finding myself living in a time and a place where it is possible for a government body like the California Department of Food and Agriculture to perform an experiment of untested chemicals on the 7,000,000 people of the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay, I am struggling desperately to find teachings and parallels in history that may help me keep my head in the midst of the madness I am experiencing here in California.

I have brought to my mind the words and wisdom of humanitarian leaders like Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus Christ. I believe that each of these lights in the history of the world would have plenty to say about how to think correctly about corrupt governments and systems, and each would likely be recommending a similar mode of fighting evil injustices.

However, it was when I turned to the words of one of my other great heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, that I found a literary parallel for the agony of peoples and lands in the hands of ruthless marauders. I have been reading Tolkien’s works since the 1970′s, and am now attempting to take some small comfort in the applicability of his writings to the people and actions happening around us right now.

CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura was put in charge of the welfare of our state’s lands, growing plants, and agricultural communities. Rather than caring for the priceless treasures in his charge, he wishes to pour filth, plastic, and poison down from our skies onto us and our food, water, and land.

‘He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment…he and his foul folk are making havoc now.’

Tolkien’s description of the corrupt and powerful character of Saruman is very apt when I think about Secretary Kawamura and his deceptive position as a steward of agriculture.

There will be scores of men and women in his employ, flying airplanes over human habitation, fouling and poisoning our corner of the world with their synthetic toxins and particulate plastic. Rather than turning in horror from such vile deeds, the spokespeople for the special interests who are carrying out these actions against humanity seem to take professional pride in the path of destruction they are hewing across California.

There they picked up the trail of the Orcs. It needed little skill to find.
‘No other folk make such a trampling,’ said Legolas. ‘It seems their delight to slash and beat down growing things that are not even in their way.’

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is responsible for letting these misguided and dangerous people poison the inhabitants of California and all of our natural resources. Following the aerial spraying of the Monterey Bay area of Central California, the besieged residents came out of their houses to discover their rivers covered in toxic foam and their beaches drowning in an unprecedented red tide. Dead and dying seabirds littered their beautiful shore. Mankind’s willful use of poison in his own environment is destroying nature’s balance and turning a paradise into a wasteland.

Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows…
They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor: the lasting monument to the dark labor of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing…
‘I feel sick,’ said Sam.

More than 600 people who live along the Monterey Bay reported being sickened by the aerial spraying. This does not take into account the damage done to the health of people without medical insurance, the homeless, and the countless domestic and wild animals that call the Monterey Bay home. The CDFA intends to return to the area with their carcinogens and endocrine disrupters to spray the people of the Monterey Bay region against their consent and the wishes of their local government again in June of 2008.

Their planes, spewing secret chemicals, will begin flying over the entire San Francisco Bay Area in August 2008. Nearly 7,000,000 people live in this densely populated metropolitan area of the United States. The local government bodies of Marin, Berkeley, Oakland, and Albany are attempting to protect the innocent people of the Bay Area from this atrocious offense against basic human rights. The mayor of Albany is calling for the resignation of Secretary Kawamura unless he immediately halts his insane plans to spray untested chemicals and known carcinogens into the air and water and onto the people of the Bay Area.

The summer nights over San Francisco Bay will be filled with the drone of airplanes passing back and forth, spewing toxins on the panicked citizens. The airplanes will come every 30 days for an unnumbered count of years.

Iron wheels revolved there endlessly, and hammers thudded. At night plumes of vapour steamed from the vents, lit from beneath with red light, or blue, or venomous green.

Because the synthetic substances and toxic chemicals are contained within time-released plastic microcapsules, there will never be a day with clean air to breathe, there will never be a glass of clean water to drink, there will never be a safe patch of sand to sit on if Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Kawamura are not told that their plans will not be tolerated by the American public. This is not a case of being able to leave your home in Berkeley the night of the spraying and returning the next day when all’s clear. Because the spraying will happen every 30 days and the substances stay in the air for at least 90 days, there will be no safe day to be breathing, drinking, or eating in the SF Bay Area unless this unconscionable plan is halted.

Having been told of the hundreds of immediate illnesses following the spraying of the people of Monterey Bay, the so-called Environmental Protection Agency’s response has been that they have no evidence of the chemical product causing harm. Rather than dignifying the suffering they and their partners have caused with the notice it deserves, they have instead given $500,000 to a marketing firm to distribute deceitful propaganda in hopes of quelling righteous public outrage. The employees of this marketing firm are tasked with infiltrating community meetings, news and advertising, and the Internet with their skilled, convincing, and honeyed words. As any good Tolkien reader will tell you, we are hearing the Voice of Saruman:

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke, they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell…
None were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will…

If you find yourself speaking in a forum, online or off, and are suddenly in the position of being accused of being alarmist, irrational, stupid, or wrong for expressing correct condemnation of the intolerable human experimentation that is being conducted by the CDFA, you will be wise to question whether you are speaking to one of our government’s paid public relations professionals.

Sauron and Saruman found it easy to gather evil men and orcs around them to carry out their bidding in The Lord of the Rings. Evil is nothing new, but discernment between good and evil is something that many modern people are in danger of losing. We need to call evil like it is when we see it, and if we are truly now living in a country and a time where a government can place the love of money and the special interests of corporate entities over the health of the people and their environment, our last valiant act of freedom needs to be to discern that we are living in evil times.

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’

Is there still hope that this abhorrent injustice can be overcome? Yes, and we need to hold onto that hope with both hands as all of us try to stay sane in the midst of a mad situation.

At this very moment, the report of UCSC Arboretum Executive Director Daniel Harder, Ph.D. and Horticultural Consultant Jeff Rosendale is in the hands of assemblymen and senators. Read this report, which thoroughly proves that the Light Brown Apple Moth causes a negligible amount of agricultural damage in New Zealand and that it is kept in control by natural predators.

By simply correctly reclassifying the Light Brown Apple Moth as a more or less harmless insect, the CDFA and USDA will have lost their last feeble excuse for subjecting millions of Americans to unforgivable health hazards. The moth was incorrectly classified in the first place. All they need to do is change the classification and no more harm will be done to the people and their environment.

The great thinkers in the history of mankind have always encouraged man to believe that courage is rewarded in the face of evil, and that good eventually triumphs. As we write our letters, publish our blog posts, call government officials, talk to our neighbors, and persist in our unwavering statement that poisoning of humans and ecosystems is unacceptable, we can know that we have won the approval of history’s most humane figures. We know we are right.

……………………..

For complete up-to-date news on the aerial spraying of California against the will of the people by the California Department of Agriculture, please visit LBAMSpray.com.