On our deathbed, we will have much greater regret for the things we should have done but did not, than for the things we did but should not have done.
Start now to lessen your regret.

Robert

Click on the Pink

Do this once a day. It's easy....

We can make a pretty good contribution if we'll all do this each day for the rest of the month!

This only takes 30 seconds and you don't have to do anything else. If you go to the Cigna web site and click on the pink ribbon, Cigna will donate $1.00 to fight breast cancer. Only good the month of October - pass it on!

CIGNA Foundation


Make it your home page for the month so you don't forget!

PASS IT ON!

Ahrre Maros
www.ahrre.com

NASA Use of Remotely Controlled Aircraft Aids Coffee Growers

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

A solar-powered uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully completed a NASA remote-sensing applications demonstration. The Pathfinder-Plus airplane loitered more than four hours, over Hawaii's largest coffee plantation on the island of Kauai, taking digital images to make a "clear-sky" mosaic.

The NASA team combined pre-planned, fixed flight lines with spontaneous, remotely controlled maneuvers to guide the UAV into cloud-free areas over the coffee fields. Despite an often 80 percent cloud cover, the project demonstrated how a solar-powered UAV, equipped with a ground-controlled aerial-imaging system, could aid coffee growers by informing them of the ripest fields for daily harvest. This type of technology may eventually aid farmers and ranchers and lead to more effective and efficient harvesting methods.

More...

My Best Friend, Joe

Our columnist goes for coffee with the java junkies behind ‘The Caffeine Advantage’

NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Oct. 15 — Hello, my name is Gersh and I’m a drug addict. And apparently, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

More...

Mauna Loa's impending eruption

Some one in alt.coffee asked if the recent to-do about Mauna Loa's impending eruption had any implications for Kona Coffee. My response:
Actually, we are always at risk here in South Kona. 52 years ago, a lava flow came within 10 miles of our farm. The last time a lava flow actually came over this farm was approximately 2500 years ago.

We live, in South Kona, on the slopes of Mauna Loa.

Mauna Loa takes up 53% of this island of Hawaii. When I read the current Volcano report, it indicates that the most probably place for an eruption may be 25 miles south of here, but they don't really know. We don't live in terror. We can't afford that. Coffee is happy out there.

Aloha,
Cea
www.smithfarms.com

Farmers & Sellers of our 100%
Kona Coffee & other Good Stuff!

Why Keep Kona Coffee GM-Free

By Christine Sheppard, President, Kona Coffee Council

There are no genetically modified coffee plants growing in Kona. In fact none exist in the field anywhere in the State of Hawaii. So why have Kona coffee farmers been pushing the Department of Agriculture for new rules on field testing of GM coffee in Kona?

Because the current rules give Kona coffee farmers no input into the permitting process for field tests. Because we will not know GM crops are in the field until it is too late to prevent it. Because GM coffee in Kona would cross-pollinate with our heritage stock and ruin its marketability.

Scientists at CTAR (University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources), HARC (Hawaii Agricultural Research Center), and ICT (a private company Integrated Coffee Technologies, Inc.) all have labs on Oahu where they are researching genetically engineered coffee plants. They have lofty ideals of making coffee plants that are nematode-resistant, that are naturally decaffeinated, that will ripen all their beans at the same time....

When Kona coffee farmers tell them we don't want their genetically modified plants here's what they tell us. "The Kona coffee industry may need to use this technology in the future to address a pressing problem" - Dean Andrew Hashimoto, CTAHR. "I hope Kona coffee will never need to be saved by a GM coffee like the papaya industry in east Hawaii was" - Dr. Skip Bittenbender, UH. "GM techniques offer many opportunities for development of specialty coffee including altered caffeine content, unique flavor, and disease and pest resistance; this latter leads to reduced pesticide use" - Stephanie Whalen, President of HARC.

What these scientists seem unable to grasp is that, right now, our biggest problem is them!

We have the healthiest coffee trees in the world, the most disease and pest free, we do not use any pesticides on coffee in Kona. Nematodes are being dealt with by traditional methods. Our taste profile is considered one of the worlds finest and is already a unique flavor. Kona coffee sells at the highest niche in the specialty gourmet coffee market. If some terrible disaster should wipe out our heritage crop, GM-coffee could not help us because it would not sell at that high niche price. Even if they made a coffee tree that bore 40 lbs of cherry, needed no fertilizer or water, and had beans that jumped off the tree into the picking basket, it would not be Kona coffee with its 175 year heritage and world-renowned flavor.

We all know the economics of coffee farming in Kona. It is mostly hand labor on small farms. We are the only non-third-world country producing coffee. The only place with fair wages, U.S. land prices and operating costs. We cannot survive on a lower price for our coffee. Coffee farms on Maui and Oahu stand abandoned because those island coffees could not command Kona's price. It was uneconomic for them to continue.

If we introduce GM coffee into Kona we will be in the same position. The Specialty Coffee Association of America's Sustainability Committee says that a GM coffee does not meet the definition of quality needed to be a specialty coffee. Many foreign markets (Japan, Europe) will be highly resistant or even closed to GM coffee imports. Kona coffee sells for three times most other coffees. Our buyers are discriminating and savvy about their purchases. Many will reject GM coffee.

Even a field-test site poses a real danger of cross-pollination. Once you let the genie out of the bottle there is no cramming it back, as the corn farmers on the mainland found out to their disadvantage.

There is good news too.... CTAHR, HARC, and ICT have given undertakings not to field-test in Kona while the coffee industry is in opposition. We are grateful for their assurances. But who else is doing research that we do not know about?

The REAL gate-keeper in this issue is the Hawaii Department of Agriculture. Permits for field-testing of GM crops are issued by APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the USDA). APHIS allow the State DoA to veto a permit application. Requests from the Kona Coffee Council, the Kona Farmers Alliance, and efforts on our behalf from Hawaii Pride (papayas), asked that the Kona coffee industry be included in a review of permit applications. The only response has been a letter from James Nakatani, Chairperson, Board of Agriculture, which restated the current ineffective policy, "the State has the opportunity to address local concerns, when needed".

Fortunately our County Council is more foresighted. They saw the need to protect Kona coffee's unique niche. They recognized that introduction of GM coffee into Kona would cause unacceptable risk to the industry. On September 25th the HCC voted in a Resolution supporting the development of a regional protocol prior to any release or planting of genetically modified coffee in North and South Kona. Such protocol to be established in collaboration with appropriate government agencies, the scientific community, and the Kona coffee industry stakeholders.

The unity among the Kona community was solid. Testifying for the resolution were the Kona Coffee Council, the Kona Farmer Alliance, the Kona Pacific Farmers Cooperative, the Kona County Farm Bureau, the Hawaii Organic Farmers Association, and more than a dozen individual coffee farmers.

What's the next step?

With the support of our County Council Resolution, we are taking our case back to James Nakatani at the Department of Agriculture. We request that we are included in the loop, that we have the opportunity to be a part of the organization that can veto field-test applications within our growing area. It is the only way we can safeguard against a cross-pollination spill that would take our livelihood away.

Those who develop genetically modified plants make profit when they get those plants into farmers' hands. The farmer only makes profit when he sells his crop, and if the world doesn't want to buy it, why grow it?

According to its web-site the Hawaii Department of Agriculture's Plant Quarantine Program began over a hundred years ago when, in 1888, King David Kalakaua decreed that in order to protect the coffee industry in Hawaii, new coffee plants would not be allowed into the islands. This protection has resulted in Hawaii having the only 100-plus year old trees still producing coffee.

Scientists, please continue to keep invasive pests and diseases out of our islands. Don't introduce varieties that put us at risk. Let's keep Kona Kona, pure and simple.

Larry Miller on Israel

Larry Miller,contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles He recently went on a rant about the Middle East situation:

"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need.
Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."

I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel.

They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews.

Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away.

However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight.

We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id . . .ooh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)"

Please feel free to pass this along to your friends