HELLO THERE August 12, 2014

Hi, it’s me Bettejo, with my weekly column right here at Kimo’s blog and Ho’iki Community Television’s Art and Entertainment site. If  you know how to get here, please come in-let’s be friends-and tell your friends, family and neighbors, how to come in, too.

Let’s get lively. Let’s get acquainted. Let’s get known out there.

The company here-Jay, Julia and Kainoa-is delightful, The set is simple and perfect, great lighting-no close ups, Mr. DeMille. I will attempt to be entertaining. And Sassy. As long as I’m not profane or call names-which going’s on are not my style-I can say what I want. No more censorship, no more editors, no more mysterious black outs or displacements. I will try to have new current, controversial, conversations with you. Hope to include you in any of the issues or subjects I discuss. Be my guest.

Today I sit with two of my favorite writers, me-CHILDREN OF THE  EXTINCTION-and Chris Hedges-DEATH OF THE LIBERAL CLASS. Remember writers not only write, they  speak and  read. I’ll admit most of my friends are on bookshelves and I have a lot of them.

Chris-a respected journalist who tired of media suppression-said, and I quote:

“Governments are owned by corporations, run by psychopaths lying about an imaginary economy based on debt, fueled by illegal wars, destroying ecosystems, poisoning food and water, decreasing education, increasing prisons, manipulating the media, foreclosing homes, suppressing energy technology, making a struggle, starving, humiliating, and killing the world.

That’s a mouthful, but does it sound truthful? Do we not experience-daily-this madness, right here on Kauai? Are these statements-perchance-part of the ‘orthodoxy’ we do not dare-or cannot, or are forbidden to express?

Let’s think about property taxes. A hot topic. And let’s think about the future.

Do you think there are those who see the future as a place where only the top 10% can afford to own property and homes and pay the taxes? They who live in gated ghettos for the rich or on small, useless but beautiful, gentlemen farms?

Where enormous corporations own vast acres of dollar crops spraying  pesticide and herbal toxins in the air, which also foul the water in the oceans, the streams, rivers, and aquifers. Crops not to be eaten on Kauai by those of us who live here, but grown for profit. People  be bleeped.

Where a large military, police and political force is present to control those of us who protest this destructive abuse and misuse. They will be assured roofs over their heads, water in their tubs and swimming pools, and power in their dwellings.

What’s left of us, if lucky, will live in overcrowded-rigidly comtrolled-lower income ghettos and make beds, cook  food, clean, moo, clerk, dig ditches, mow lawns, and serve they who have the bucks to afford us. Classic third world structure envisioned for Kauai.

What think you? Care to talk about it?

Go to  www.hoike.org, scroll down and on the right of your screen click on Arts and Entertainment-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisement

FANTASY AND THE FUTURE July 26, 2014

Bob Woodruff said, “If you want to change the future, first you must imagine it.”

Not all writers of fiction write about the future, but all fiction writers imagine a world that isn’t true. It’s a story created in their minds.  Characters who do not really exist.  Situations that did not happen. Conversations never put to voice. Struggles that are fantasies.

All readers of classic literature will think of George Orwell’s 1984. Orwell was a prolific writer, and liberal  socialist,  who wrote about a future where the rulers controlled everything. Actions and thoughts  were monitored and manipulated.  Passion, truth, and individualism were a danger to the  members of this  state. His vision of the world has come to an almost eerie pass today.

The American journalist and prolific writer, Chris Hedges, writes in Death of the Liberal Class (2010) “….magical thinking, the idea that human and personal progress is somehow inevitable, leads to political passivity….It has turned whole nations, such as the United States, into self-consuming machines of death.”

To bring us current on Kauai’s machine of death, all we need do is turn to the daily newspaper, The Garden Island. Almost every day we read about a living creature on the island who must be eliminated. Feral cats-according to some-responsible for the extinction of wild bird life . Crowing roosters and all wandering free range chickens-practically our island bird, they’re so beautiful-must be killed. Parakeets? Out with them. Coqui frogs? Noise polluters more annoying than helicopters, jets, drones, boom boxes, motorcycles or grumbling, rumbling over-size trucks carrying who- knows what, roaring up and down the highways day and night.  Ubiquitous traffic jams.  Horns honk, brakes squeal, humans and sirens scream.

Our super active military might,  RimPac and a ‘Naval Battle Gun Rodeo’ , with a 28 death quota allowed on mammals of the sea, wage visible war fare off shore.  This morning, Saturday, July 26, 2014, a whale beached itself and died in Hanalei. Coral reefs are dying. Ground water, fresh air, the very earth we walk and grow food on, are fouled by unlimited toxic herbicides and pesticides  sprayed everywhere without disclosure of quantity or brand. We know these toxins kill bees.

Truth, our planet is presently engaged in the sixth extinction and there are many who cheer and some who profit.

So how does a writer of fiction, with a passionate concern for life and living things, tell a story about Kauai that brings all this  madness into perspective?

Pare it down. In Children of the Extinction, I had to, as a friend said, bump off a lot of guys. Our number one problem: too many people? Solved.  Kauai cannot support the existing population and land speculators and tax collectors  want to bring in more. That had  to stop. Our economic system is a disaster. Out. Money is worthless. Power? Lights, water, communication, computers,  sewage and modern appliances out. Traffic problems solved. Can’t pump gas.

To me, as a writer of fiction, it was better  to do the above problems in than living things.