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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, March 22, 2003

Letters to the Editor

News coverage shows a pro-military slant

Your news coverage on Thursday was typical of the pro-military bias of the editorial staff of The Honolulu Advertiser.

The front page was covered with propaganda from the White House about the latest U.S. war, but a peace demonstration on Kalakaua Avenue the previous evening, which easily could have been included in that edition, was not even mentioned.

Moreover, military police put peace activists under obvious surveillance, although the peace activists were on city property, but there was no mention of that in the community newspaper.

Could you explain why you have space to run wire photos promoting war on Page One, but have no space for local photos of a peace demonstration put under surveillance by military police?

Eddy Conway


Blood quantum issue has been misunderstood

Clifford Wassman's Feb. 12 letter illustrates that he, like many others, simply does not understand the significance of the blood quantum requirement of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) of 1920 and the Admission Act, section 5(f), ceded land trust.

The blood quantum criteria are designed to reach the closest relatives, by degree of kinship, who are heirs to the native tenants who never received their share of lands since the time of the Mahele of 1848, and for whom Congress sought to treat under the HHCA and section 5(f).

Congress, in 1920, then closer in time to the overthrow of 1893, looked past the overthrow and back to the Mahele to find the root cause of the mass dispossession of native Hawaiians and an aggravating factor in the demise of their population.

Left landless and destitute and driven to a point near the edge of extinction, the conditions of native Hawaiians were so dismal by 1920 that Congress moved to enact the HHCA to treat this particular class of native Hawaiians. Persons of half to full native Hawaiian blood are more closely related to the native tenants in the Mahele of 1848 than, say, a 1/64th part-Hawaiian under the Akaka bill.

Also important to understand is the compelling governmental interest behind the HHCA to rehabilitate the dying race of the half- to full-blooded native Hawaiians, whose population in 1920 was fewer than 40,000. Today the number is approximately 80,000.

In stark contrast, under the Akaka bill definition of a "Native Hawaiian," the population of such a class is enlarged to 450,000 people claiming a trace of Hawaiian blood. At that point, "Native Hawaiians" are no longer considered a dying race, and, thus, there is no compelling governmental interest to rehabilitate native Hawaiians under the HHCA.

Emmett E. Lee Loy


UH fans should get involved from the tipoff

I don't understand UH "fans." Why do they just sit there? They tell people who are cheering to shut up and sit down. At big schools with big basketball programs, the second the other team touches the ball, the entire arena shakes, rattles and rolls.

Big schools with exciting programs cheer like that and not just for the last five minutes of the game, but from tipoff. This could be a reason why UH has such a hard time winning on the road.

Jack Dempsey


Voting more than once takes away fun

I would like to place my opinion on the Hawai'i's Bachelor contest.

While I think it is all in good fun, I know one of the candidates, who is a great guy. He was told that his friends could vote as many times as they like. I think this is unfair, as it throws the whole event off balance and takes the fun out of it.

I understand there is software that can be set to click away and vote all day long. Do you really think this would be a fair win? If there is software like that, then there has to be software that can detect and calculate a vote only once, like in the real world.

It doesn't make sense to vote more than once. It is like cheating on a test — you'll get a good grade by cheating, but you really didn't earn it.

Linda Elder
Kailua


War will affect oil we get from Indonesia

Local economists recently said that since most of our crude oil is imported from Indonesia, we shouldn't see any significant price increase due to the war in Iraq. Right after the article was printed, we did in fact get a price increase at the pump.

What surprised me was that these local economists could believe this. Basic economics is the law of supply and demand. If we cut off or reduce our supply of oil from the Middle East, our demand for Indonesian oil will only increase. This increase will lead to an increase in the price we pay for Indonesian crude oil. The prices will continue to increase until the war is over and the flow of oil from the Middle East is restored.

The only losers in this scenario are us, the big users of oil. Save yourself some money and catch the bus — it's fast, easy and, best of all, cheap.

Guillermo S. Colon
Mililani