I personally wrote the judge about whistleblower Daniel Hale’s case requesting leniency in his sentencing. In my letter I stated “…how could a person of conscience not speak out? The impact of carrying out orders, carrying the burden of responsibility, would certainly wear a person down, questioning right from wrong, whether the ends justify the means, etc. Drone pilots are traumatized, with drug abuse, domestic violence and even suicide being the end result.” and “This young man strikes me as being an upstanding person of conscience who has suffered the ill effects of serving as a UAV pilot for targeted assassinations. I can well imagine Daniel obviously grappled with his conscience and decided to act on what in his estimation was the right, moral and just thing to do. I ask you to drop all charges against Daniel and not punish a young man for turning humane and for his actions of attempting to cease further harm.”
Daniel is a hero having provided the public with irrefutable proof that 90% of the victims of the US military drone strike program are innocents, striking wedding, funeral parties, agricultural workers, etc. e.g. Loved ones buried after US drone strike kills 30 pine nut pickers in Afghanistan. We now know that the claims for precision are outright lies. The program is slaughtering innocents including women and children. In addition to being illegal and immoral, the US military drone program makes US citizens less safe as it foments anger and hate and the desire to strike back at the US for their slaughtering of innocents (another 911 anyone?). This is just simple common sense. Only the out-of-control heartless, evil, and immoral military industrial complex benefits.
Cutting an ancestral tree like this should be a crime, not only in British Columbia, but worldwide. We know that old growth forests sequester more carbon than young forests. These ancient giants dwarf our cleverness and can be relied upon to maintain the Earth’s carbon cycle, if only we would let them.
It is high time that benign substitutes for petroleum-based plastics be researched and developed. We’re poisoning the living earth, especially the oceans, and ourselves, with plastics pollution. Green chemistry and biomimicry hold great promise for homo sapiens most vexing challenges. Now if we can shift the funding from nuclear weapons modernization to life giving R&D producing products like this, we can leave our descendants a livable Earth. #materials #plastics #biomimicry #spiders #silk #petroleum #pollution prevention #innovation #ecology #green chemistry