Posted by Free Hawai`i on September 3, 2009 at 7:00am
HAWAI`I FAKE STATE PROTEST -WAS BURNING THE 50th STAR JUST?First off, he kanaka `oiwi au. (I am native.)I was one of the protesters and would like to point out that removing and burning just that star (and not the whole flag) was actually a show of restraint. It was a fairly mild and reserved act of defiance compared to the sort of protests you could find elsewhere in the world.Secondly, the overthrow was not pono. The Republic of Hawai`i was not pono and neither were the means by which territorial status and statehood were obtained.Third, if we're going to talk about "desecration," what about the desecration of na iwi kupuna, (ancient native burials) ground to dust beneath skyscrapers and malls? What about the desecration of our `aina (Makua valley, Ho`opili anyone?), our oceans (ordnance reef), and the culture, language and socioeconomic status of an entire living people?So much fuss over burning one cloth star when we've (by "we" I mean both the `aina and na kanaka maoli, for we are one and the same) been getting burned for over a century.Injustice cannot be relegated to the past if it is perpetuated in the present.PuaenaPearl City, O`ahuRead more…
Posted by Free Hawai`i on September 2, 2009 at 5:41am
FREE HAWAI`I TVTHE FREE HAWAI`I BROADCASTING NETWORK"DON'T FALL INTO THEIR TRAP!"The Office Of Hawaiian Affairs Is Hoping You'll Fall Into Their Latest Trap.They've Laid The Bait, But It's Not Too Late!What To Do To Not End Up As Their Tool? Watch & Find OutThen Send This Video To One Other Person Today.Read more…
Posted by Pono Kealoha on September 1, 2009 at 9:30pm
Prejudice in ParadiseHawaii Has a Racism ProblemBy Larry Kellerhttp://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1081Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey.When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting his ear, and choked and punched him, Padron says. Police officers persuaded the Padrons not to press charges, saying it would be expensive for them to return for court appearances and a Hawaiian judge would side with the Hawaiian assailants, the doctor contends.Professor Haunani-Kay Trask believes Native Hawaiians have every right to feel hostile toward whites."There is no doubt in my mind [the attack] was racially motivated," she adds.With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state's 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%.Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn't begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools. For example:The last day of school has long been unofficially designated "Beat Haole Day," with white students singled out for harassment and violence. (Haole — pronounced how-lee — is slang for a foreigner, usually white, and sometimes is used as a racial slur.)A non-Native Hawaiian student who challenged the Hawaiian-preference admission policy at a wealthy private school received a $7 million settlement this year.A 12-year-old white girl new to Hawaii from New York City needed 10 surgical staples to close a gash in her head incurred when she was beaten in 2007 by a Native Hawaiian girl who called her a "fucking haole."A vocal segment of Native Hawaiians is pushing for independence to end the "prolonged occupation" by the United States and governance by natives.Demonstrators shouting racial epithets at whites disrupted a statehood celebration in 2006.Anti-white sentiments such as these have been more than 200 years in the making. The pivotal event occurred when American and European businessmen, backed by U.S. military forces, overthrew Hawaii's monarch in 1893 and placed her under house arrest two years later. The United States annexed the islands as a territory in 1898, and they became a state in 1959.Little wonder then that as Hawaii prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of becoming the 50th state on Aug. 21, it will a muted celebration, devoid of parades or fireworks.Classroom WarfareTina Mohr has lived in Hawaii for 25 years. She has Native Hawaiian friends. But in the 2003-04 school year, her twin blond-haired daughters, aged 11 at the time, began getting harassed by Native Hawaiian kids at their school on the Big Island. "Our daughters would come home with bruises and cuts," she tells the Intelligence Report.One of her girls was assaulted twice in the same day. In one scuffle, she had her head slammed into a wall, and her attacker continued to threaten her. Her daughter suffered a dislocated jaw and had headaches for five weeks, Mohr says.The torment continued in the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Native Hawaiian girls stalked and threatened her daughters and yelled "fucking haole" at them. Midway through the 6th grade, Mohr began to home-school her daughters.She filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. It was only recently, on Dec. 31, 2008, that the division finally released its report. The report concluded there was "substantial evidence that students experienced racially and sexually derogatory name-calling on nearly a daily basis on school buses, at school bus stops, in school hallways and other areas of the school" that Mohr's children attended.The epithets included names such as "f*****g haole," "haole c**t" and "haole whore," according to the report. Students were told "go home" and "you don't belong here." Most of the slurs were directed by "local" or non-white students at Caucasians, especially those who were younger, smaller, light-skinned and blond.The report also concluded that school officials responded inadequately or not at all when students complained of racial harassment. Students who did complain were retaliated against by their antagonists. "They learned not to report this stuff," Mohr says of her own daughters.The Hawaii Department of Education settled Mohr's complaint with a lengthy agreement in which educators promised to take various steps to improve the reporting, investigating and eliminating of student harassment in the future. Today, Mohr's daughters are again attending the school where they used to have trouble. They haven't been assaulted, but one was threatened on a school bus earlier this year.Racial LegaciesThe resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to "ancestral memory," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. "That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It's more akin to American Indians" because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds. (One difference now, of course, is that Native Hawaiians in Hawaii are far more numerous than American Indians are in their own ancestral regions, where the Indians remain politically weak and largely marginalized by the far larger white population.)Racial violence directed at whites in Hawaii, while deplorable, is minor compared to the larger issues underlying it, Matsuoka says. The Hawaiian spirit of aloha "is pervasive, but you have to earn aloha. You don't necessarily trust outsiders, because outsiders [historically] come and have taken what you have. It's an incredibly giving and warm and generous place, but you have to earn it," he says.Further fueling the resentment that some Native Hawaiians feel for outsiders are attempts by the latter to usurp entitlement programs given the former to redress previous wrongs. In recent years, non-native residents have used the courts to try and rescind these entitlements on grounds that they are racially discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution.Retired professor and "anti-sovereign" white activist Kenneth Conklin and others prevailed in a lawsuit in 2000 that challenged a requirement that trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — OHA — be of Native Hawaiian descent. OHA oversees huge tracts of lands that the United States took from Hawaii when it annexed the islands as a territory, and collects revenues from them for programs that benefit Native Hawaiians.The state government was going to sell 1.2 million acres of these lands to developers for two state-sponsored affordable housing projects when OHA and four Native Hawaiian plaintiffs sued to stop the deal. A state court sided with the government, but the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed in favor of the plaintiffs. This March 31, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Hawaii high court erred and sent the case back for further action.There also was an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, passed by Congress in 1921. The act allows a Hawaiian agency to make 99-year leases at $1 per year to Native Hawaiians (but not other residents) for authorized uses on lands ceded to the United States when it annexed Hawaii. More than 200,000 acres of land were designated for uses such as homes and ranches.One of the more protracted legal battles involved a lawsuit filed in 2003 by a non-Native Hawaiian student against the hugely wealthy and influential private Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha operates three campuses for the benefit of children of Hawaiian ancestry. The student's attorneys contended that violates civil rights laws. As the U.S. Supreme Court was about to announce last year whether it would hear the case, Kamehameha paid $7 million to settle it out of court.'A Hateful Place'A violent incident with racial overtones in 2007 near Pearl Harbor prompted a good deal of soul searching about race in Hawaii. A Native Hawaiian man and his teenage son brutally pummeled and kicked a Caucasian soldier and his wife near Pearl Harbor after the soldier's SUV struck the other man's parked car. The son shouted "fucking haole" while attacking the soldier. The husband and wife suffered broken noses, facial fractures and concussions. A prosecutor said the assault was a road-rage incident, not a hate crime. But it generated much debate on newspaper websites and blogs about the use of the word haole and whether whites are the targets of racism in Hawaii."It is a hateful place to live if you are white," wrote a woman on one Hawaii website's comments section. A Hawaii native who is white wrote, "Racism exists in Hawaii. My whole life I've never really felt welcome here." A sailor stationed at Pearl Harbor added that "this island is the most racist place I have ever been in my life."Other white residents, however, wrote that they had had no such experiences. And many people maintained that arrogant mainlanders are the most likely to incur natives' wrath. It's their "cultural inability to be humble [that] is a huge contributing factor in a lot of violence against them," one person wrote. "There is a high degree of arrogance and lack of respect that mainlanders exhibit," added another.A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, is one of the most caustic critics of whites in the islands. In her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, Trask wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."Trask's opposite number is Conklin, the "anti-sovereignty" white activist who has lived on Oahu for 17 years and says he loves Hawaii's culture, spirituality and history, but is labeled a racist by some of his detractors. He wrote a book entitled Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State."Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it," says Conklin, who manages a massive website on Hawaiian issues. "The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush."State and RaceIt's against this backdrop that Hawaii approaches its 50th anniversary of statehood. The non-celebration will consist largely of educational events at various venues. Iolani Palace won't be one of them. Once home to Hawaii's monarchy and where the last monarch was imprisoned after her government was overthrown, the palace is a potent symbol of anti-statehood — and anti-white — sentiment.Republican state Sen. Sam Slom learned that the hard way. Although Statehood Day is a holiday in Hawaii, there were no celebrations for about 10 years, until he organized one in 2006 at the palace. He and others were confronted by demonstrators shouting racial epithets. Slom, who is Caucasian and has lived in Hawaii since 1960, said the 30 to 40 "hard-core" protesters intimidated a high school band, which left early, as well as some spectators.The 50-year anniversary events figure to be "soft celebrations" aimed at defusing sovereignty passions, Slom says. "It is a divisive wedge that some people have exploited," he says. "There are people who have made it a racial thing. [But] the vast, overwhelming majority are proud to be United States citizens."Still, a statehood commission planning commemorative events opted not to re-enact the phone call to the Territorial House of Representatives meeting at Iolani Palace in 1959 informing representatives that Congress had voted in favor of Hawaiian statehood. Commission member Donald Cataluna strongly opposed a reenactment, according to the Honolulu Advertiser, saying he "didn't want any blood to spill."That won't completely mollify sovereignty activists, Slom predicts. "There will be protests, there's no question about it."Read more…
Posted by Pono Kealoha on September 1, 2009 at 7:30pm
Akaka, Danner, Inouye, et al. want us to subscribe to the U.S. racist documents of Manifest Destiny that still exists today. How dare they! This is why they don't want our voices to be heard. On the U.S. continent, birth certificates do not have the category for native Hawaiian but its included under the heading of asian/pacific islanders. The world almanac editions published within the U.S. had already removed native Hawaiians as a separate group in the States census and included them under Asians and Pacific Islanders category for at least twenty years ago.We already have our nation that still exists and you'll find all those dreams are already realized and once the U.S. de-occupies our nation-state; it can continue to fulfill those dreams that have been cut off by the U.S. We know who we are even if you don't. How can we all heal and move forward when OHA refuse to have us, the Hawaii nationals, sit at the table with them?What the Akaka Bill does is allow native Hawaiians to relinquish their Hawaiian citizenship of the Kingdom of Hawai'i to U.S. citizenship as a native American-Hawaiian tribal people, wards of the U.S.A. Hawaiians that give up their Hawai'i national citizenship won't have the clout or voice that the remaining Hawai'i nationals have who are still part of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In essence, this would eliminate them from being beneficiuaries to all the ali'i trusts or would it? Maybe those trusts would establish Hawai'i nationals as a priority before U.S. American-Hawaiians rather than blood quantum of the neo-indian tribe of America.OHA, Nationbuilding /Kau Inoa/the Akaka Bill is for the mentally challenged and is part of the U.S. mechanism! If my name has been put on the Kau Inoa; please remove it.Tanetane_1@msn.com
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Posted by J. D'Alba on September 1, 2009 at 9:18am
"Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty", the award winning documentary film by filmmaker Catherine Bauknight, launches its world tour in Hilo this Saturday and Sunday. The presentations take place Saturday, September 5th at 7 p.m. and Sunday, September 6th at 2:30 p.m., at the Palace Theater in Hilo.To enhance the educational value of this film, up to eight children accompanied by two adults, will be admitted for the discounted price of only one dollar each."Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty" received the Audience Award Best Hawai’i Film, at this year's Maui Film Festival. The film explores the people, culture, land, and the self-sustainable lifestyle of Native Hawaiians. Through the voice of the Native Hawaiian People , they explain the affects that US occupation has had on their lives since the takeover in 1893. See www.catherinebauknight for further information along with the film's trailer.The Hilo presentation begins the world tour of this important film. Following the Hilo presentation the film will be presented throughout the Hawaiian Islands, the US Mainland, Japan, and New Zealand. Bring ohana, friends, and guests and journey through the oral history of the Native Hawaiian People through "Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty".
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Posted by Donna Burns on September 1, 2009 at 6:29am
Read. Decifer. And...try not to swallow.----------------------------The Rise of Mercenary Armies: A Threat to Global SecurityHelp White House Thwart Peace MovementBy Sherwood RossURL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14972Global Research, August 31, 2009The growing use of private armies not only subjects target populations to savage warfare but makes it easier for the White House to subvert domestic public opinion and wage wars.Americans are less inclined to oppose a war that is being fought by hired foreign mercenaries, even when their own tax dollars are being squandered to fund it.“The increasing use of contractors, private forces, or, as some would say, ‘mercenaries’ makes wars easier to begin and to fight---it just takes money and not the citizenry,” said Michael Ratner, of New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights. “To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars, and, in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars.”Indeed, the Pentagon learned the perils of the draft from the massive public protests it provoked during the Viet Nam war. Today, it would prefer, and is working toward, an electronic battlefield where the fighting is done by robots guided by sophisticated surveillance systems that will minimize U.S. casualties. Meanwhile, it tolerates the use of private contractors to help fight its battles.Iraq offers a heart-breaking example of a war in which contract fighters so inflamed the public they were sent to “liberate” that when fighting broke out in Fallujah the bodies of privateer Blackwater’s four slain mercenaries were desecrated by enraged mobs. This horrific scene was televised globally and prompted the U.S. to make a punishing, retaliatory military assault upon Fallujah, causing widespread death and destruction.Just as the American colonists despised the mercenary Hessians in the Revolutionary War, Iraqis came to hate Blackwater and its kindred contractors worse than U.S. soldiers, who often showed them kindness, according to a journalist with experience in the war zone.“It wasn’t uncommon for an American soldier, or even an entire company, to develop a very friendly relationship with an Iraqi community. It didn’t happen every day, but it wasn’t unheard of,” writes Ahmed Mansour, an Egyptian reporter and talk show host for Qatar-based al-Jazeera, the Middle East TV network.“It was also definitely not uncommon to see American troops high-fiving Iraqi teenagers, holding the arm of an elderly woman to help her cross a street, or helping someone out of a difficult situation...This was not the case with mercenaries. They knew they were viewed as evil thugs, and they wanted to keep it that way.”In his book “Inside Fallujah”(Olive Branch Press), Mansour says, “Mercenaries were viewed as monsters, primarily because they behaved monstrously. They never spoke to anyone using words---they only used the language of fire, bullets, and absolute lethal force. It was fairly common to see a mercenary crush a small civilian Iraqi car with passengers inside just because the mercenaries happened to be stuck in a traffic jam.”Mansour, best known as host of the talk show “Without Limits,” says his viewing audience was “outraged by the mere idea that a political superpower like the United States would hire mercenaries to do their unpleasant work instead of employing soldiers who believe in their country and its mission. Viewers were also obviously outraged over the horrendous war crimes committed by the mercenaries.”Blackwater was finally censured after its forces mowed down 17 civilians on Sept. 16, 2007, in what Iraqi officials said was an unprovoked assault in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, after which they refused to renew its operating license. The Moyock, N.C.-based security outfit changed its name to Xe Services and, according to The Nation magazine, was still allowed to ink a $20 million renewal pact good through Sept. 3rd, to guard State Department officials. Part of its work, though, has been assumed by Triple Canopy, of Herndon, Va., a firm also with a blemished history.Triple Canopy employs “private security guards (who) have allegedly targeted Iraqi civilians for sport, attempting to kill them, while doing work for Halliburton/KBR,” claims Pratap Chatterjee in his book, “Halliburton’s Army”(Nation Books). Speaking of mercenaries as a group, Brig. General Karl Hors, an advisor to the U.S. Joint Force Command, once observed, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There is no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them when they escalate in force. They shoot people and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”On June 27, 2004, the day before L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional authority, left Baghdad, he issued Order 17 that barred the Iraqi government from prosecuting contractor crimes in domestic courts. Result: When the Iraq government probed Nisour Square, it reported “the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation.” As the Associated Press reported last April 1, “The company does not face any charges. But the Baghdad incident exacerbated the feelings of many Iraqis that private American security contractors have operated since 2003 with little regard for Iraqi law or life.” Baghdad also charged Blackwater was involved in at least six deadly incidents in the year leading up to Nisour Square, including the death of Iraqi journalist Hana al-Ameedi.By Spring, 2008, there were 180,000 mercenaries operating in Iraq. How many of them have been killed is not known. Their deaths do not appear on Pentagon casualty lists. Since many perform non-combat duties, it is not likely they have suffered as many deaths and wounds as GI’s. By some estimates, perhaps 1,000 perished in Iraq, about one mercenary for every four GI’s killed.According to Mansour, an Iraqi group, Supporters of Truth, claims that low-flying U.S. helicopters dropped the bodies of slain mercenaries into the Diyala River near the Iranian border. Another group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, “uncovered mass graves for mercenaries who worked for the U.S. forces....He said uncovering mass graves of mercenaries had become common in Iraq...” Whether these were local mercenaries or imported fighters was not clear.Many soldiers of fortune on private payrolls previously served dictators in South Africa, Chile, and elsewhere. “In Iraq, the private security firms that are the second-large component of the ‘coalition of the willing’ are dipping into experienced pools of trained fighters, almost 70 percent from El Salvador, it is estimated, Noam Chomsky writes in “Failed States”(Metropolitan/Owl). “The trained killers from the Reagan-run state terrorist apparatus can earn better pay pursuing their craft in Iraq than in what remains of their societies at home.”Other mercenaries have been recruited from the Iraqi population itself. Sociologist James Petras, in his “Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire,”(Clarity Press) writes, “The use of local mercenaries creates the illusion that Washington is gradually handing over power to the local puppet regime. It gives the impression that the puppet regime is capable of ruling, and propagandizes the myth that a stable and reliable locally-based army exists. The presence of these local mercenaries creates the myth that the internal conflict is a civil war instead of a national liberation struggle against a colonial power.”Petras also writes, “the failure of the US policy of using Iraqi mercenaries to defeat the resistance is evident in the escalation of US combat military forces in Iraq in the spring of 2007, after five years of colonial warfare---from 140,000 to 170,000 troops, not counting the presence of some 100,000 mercenaries from American firms such as Blackwater.” He said the Iraqi mercenary force is plagued by high levels of desertion.In “The Sorrows of Empire”(Metropolitan/Owl), Chalmers Johnson wrote, “The use of private contractors is assumed to be more cost-effective, but even that is open to question when contracts go only to a few well-connected companies and the bidding is not particularly competitive.” Blackwater Security got a $27 million no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional authority in 2003. According to Joseph Stiglitz in “The Three Trillion Dollar War” (W.W. Norton), that was expanded to $100 million a year later and by 2007, Blackwater held a $1.2 billion contract for Iraq, where it employed 845 private security contractors.Stiglitz notes that in 2007 private security guards working for firms like Blackwater and Dyncorp were earning up to $1,222 a day or $445,000 a year. By contrast, an Army sergeant earned $140 to $190 a day in pay and benefits, a total of $51,100 to $69,350 a year.Since U.S. taxpayers are underwriting private soldiers’ paychecks, where’s the savings? It is money from taxpayer’s pockets that has made these shadow armies great.In his bestseller “Blackwater: The Rise of The World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army(Nation Books) reporter Jeremy Scahill writes: “Its seven-thousand-acre facility in Moyock, N.C., has now become the most sophisticated private military center on the planet, while the company possesses one of the world’s larget privately held stockpiles of heavy-duty weaponry. It is a major training center for federal and local security and military forces in the United States, as well as foreign forces and private individuals....It is developing surveillance blimps and private airstrips for its fleet of aircraft, which include helicopter gunships.” Company officials say they have been training about 35,000 “law enforcement” and military personnel a year.The idea of the Pentagon outsourcing much of its work, from kitchen police to war zone truck drivers, came largely from then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the early 1990s, when he was tasked by Congress to reduce Pentagon spending after the Cold War thawed. And after leaving his Defense post to become CEO of Halliburton, Cheney also oversaw the use of contractors to support the military then engaged in the former Yugoslavia. As Pratap Chatterjee reminds in “Halliburton’s Army” (Nation Books), “Approximately one in one hundred people on the Iraqi battlefield in the 2001 Operation Desert Storm were contractors, compared to today in Operation Enduring Freedom, where the number of contractors are roughly equal to those of military personnel.”And since mercenaries can work in civvies, they are useful to the Pentagon when it seeks to build a military presence in a country without attracting undue attention. As Scahill writes, “Instead of sending in battalions of active U.S. military to Azerbaijan, the Pentagon deployed ‘civilian contractors’ from Blackwater and other firms to set up an operation that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West’s new profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically dominated by Russia and Iran, and possibly laying the groundwork for an important forward operating base for an attack against Iran.”Scahill says “Domestic opposition to wars of aggression results in fewer people volunteering to serve in the armed forces, which historically deflates the war drive or forces a military draft. At the same time, international opposition has made it harder for Washington to persuade other governments to support its wars and occupations. But with private mercenary companies, these dynamics change dramatically, as the pool of potential soldiers available to an aggressive administration is limited only by the number of men across the globe willing to kill for money. With the aid of mercenaries, you don’t need a draft or even the support of your own public to wage wars of aggression, nor do you need a coalition of ‘willing” nations to aid you. If Washington cannot staff an occupation or invasion with its national forces, the mercenary firms offer a privatized alternative---including Blackwater’s 21,000-man contractor database....If foreign governments are not on board, foreign soldiers can still be bought.”In Jan., 2008, the UN working group on mercenaries found an emerging trend in Latin America of “situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate.” And South Africa’s Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, termed mercenaries “the scourge of poor areas of the world, especially Africa. These are killers for hire. They rent out their skills to the highest bidder. Anybody that has money can hire these human beings and turn them into killing machines or cannon fodder.”Mincing no words, Ratner warns, “These kinds of military groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law.”Of course, contract warrior firm officials see themselves in a nobler light. Blackwater’s Vice-Chairman Cofer Black in one speech compared his company to King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, asserting they “Focus on morals and ethics and integrity. This is important. We are not fly-by-night. We are not tricksters. We believe in these things.” For all such claims, the final judgment on the performance of contract military firms must come from the people these noble knights purport to serve. And if Blackwater is any example, they are hated.Sherwood Ross has worked for major dailies and wire services and served in an executive capacity in the U.S. civil rights movement. He currently is active in the anti-war movement and operates a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
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Posted by Free Hawai`i on September 1, 2009 at 5:26am
Honolulu Star-Bulletin - August 31, 2009The US Commission on Civil Rights has sent a letter to congressional leaders urging opposition to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, also known as the Akaka Bill.In the letter issued Friday, the commission said it believes Congress does not have the “constitutional authority to ‘reorganize’ racial or ethnic groups into dependent sovereign nations unless the groups have a long and continuous history of separate self-governance.” The letter said creating such a entity would be a “harmful precedent.”“Ethnic Hawaiians will surely not be the only group to demand such treatment,” the letter said. “On what ground will Congress tell these other would-be tribes ‘no?’”The commission called the bill an end-run around the Supreme Court’s decision in Rice v. Cayetano and City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., and opposed passing “legislation with the purpose of shoring up a system of racially exclusive benefits.”The letter closed by quoting the 1840 Kingdom of Hawai`i Constitution, signed by King Kamehameha III and Keoni Ana, the son of British-born minister John Young: “God has made of one blood all races of people to dwell upon this Earth in unity and blessedness.”The letter said, “It would be ironic to attempt to honor the dynamic, cosmopolitan Kingdom of Hawai`i by disdaining these words.”Read more…
Posted by AkAhAi KaHaLe on September 1, 2009 at 1:15am
Halelu 136: 1-5E mililani aku ia Iehova, no ka mea, ua mau loa kona lokomaikai.E mililani aku i ke Akua o na akua; no ka mea, ua mau loa kona lokomaikai.E mililani aku i ka Haku o na haku; no ka mea, ua mau loa kona lokomaikai.I ka mea nana wale no ina hana na hana mana nui, no ka mea, ua mau loa kona lokomaikai;I ka mea nana i hana ka lani ma ke akamai; no ka mea, ua mau loa kona lokomaikai.Alojah!!!Mai Name is Akahai Kahale, I was raised on da Lovely Island of Niihau ( which I call da Land who belongs 2 Mai Heavenly Father above) but, I know everyone call it da 4bidden Island. I Love Mai precious Island dat I was raised on by mai Lovely Parents which I Love so very much, Now, I want 2 Praise N Thank God 4 da breath of life each day, I want 2 give him all da glory N honor each day of mai daily life... He gave meeh life on dis very earth, N I praise N thank God 4 mai family N friends who LOVES meeh 4 who I am N 4 alwaiz bein there 4 meeh 24/7.... I am livin 4 da Lord, da Lord God has blessed meeh with so much which I dont know where 2 start, Da Lord God has a control of mai life... I want 2 praise N thank God 4 for creating dis wonderful world 4 meeh 2 enjoy every bit of his very beautiful creation all around us.. 2 Mai Crew 4 Da Lord Lets keep up da good, use da gift da Lord has bless you with, use it 4 good not 4 bad... Praise God, Hallelujah.... " I worship you oh God "... " Jesus is da winna man ".... " God Is Good, all da time ".....GOD IS LOVE ALWAIZ N WILL ALWAIZ B DA GOD OF LOVE...CREW 4 DA LORD.........
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Be cool and stay in school. Life can be tough and at times we just wanna "squeeze" more life out of something. Kinda of funny, sound familiar, then you and I have something in common. There are many things I would like to do, just don't have enough time in a day.Don't forget to pat yourself on the back, breathe one time and do it again. It is a way for me to relax! The greatest blessing to day is a friend sharing ways to exercise and eat healthy. I was amazed when said to eat more cucumbers, tomatos and avacados! Hmm. Sounds like a healthy dish, got to have da olive oil too just to add a "dash" of flavor.I'm glad I'm around people who care. This is non kanaka, yet 'olu'olu to walaau to. Sounds so healthy, I had a salad for lunch today. Don't forget to take care of yourself and eat healthy. Hmm, in three months, I shoud be _____ lighter!Exercise and eat healthy will lead to a longer life. For our own people, we are at risk. Start today towards a healthier lifestyle. I didn't hesitate, we all need kokua, especially if the food we eat today is making sick. This will help me make better choices when I know what I'm up against - live a longer life!Have a nice day...namaka'eha
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Posted by Donna Burns on August 30, 2009 at 5:57pm
INOUYE...get it straight...we are NOT indigeneous to the United States you idiot. It is a land grab, a take over of our homeland by outsiders (including you) and you need to behave....OR GO HOME.-----------------------------------------COUNCIL FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN ADVANCEMENTWEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2009The shaping of public policy can occur in many different ways. It can be donegently and by consensus. It can come as a result of negotiation and compromise. Itcan occur violently, amid hostile protest. As it relates to setting the course for amore hopeful policy for the benefit of Native people, of Native Hawaiians, it isimportant that we know our history.In my 30 years on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, I have been fortunate tolearn about the history of our country and its relations with the indigenous, Nativepeople of this land. It has not been, for the most part, a proud and glorious history.As a nation, we have changed course many times in the policies which governed ourdealings with Native people. We began with treaties between ourselves and theNative tribes, and then we turned to war. We made promises and then broke them.We enacted laws to recognize Native governments, and then we passed new laws toterminate those relationships.In more recent years, we have worked to restore our relationships with Nativegovernments, and have recognized the rights of our nation’s first Americans to selfdeterminationand self-governance.Similarly, Native Hawaiians have had a political and legal relationship with theUnited States for the past 183 years, as demonstrated by treaties with the UnitedStates, and more recently, by about 190 federal statutes. And, like the Native tribeswhose federally recognized status was terminated, Hawaii’s monarchy was alsoterminated and the Native Hawaiian government illegally overthrown. As such, theNative Hawaiian people never voluntarily gave up or extinguished their sovereignty.The Hawaiian protests on Statehood day dampened the commemoration of our 50thanniversary. There was a sadness, as it bruised our conscience. It made clear to methat reconciliation is long overdue.With the support of the Obama White House, Senator Akaka and I are confidentthat the Akaka bill will become law in this Congress. With its passage, agovernment-to- government relationship can, at long last, be established. Returningto Native Hawaiians their right to self-determination and self-governance, and withit, a measure of dignity and self-esteem. I am hopeful that the healing may then bemeaningful and long-lasting.As a part of this process, I encourage non-Hawaiians to step forward to supportHawaiian self-governance. There is nothing to be afraid of. While we can neverhope to repay or restore what was taken or lost, we can and we must do what wecan. For me, it is a simple moral obligation and duty.Native Hawaiians are Native Americans. Alaska Natives are Native Americans.You all have as your right, a cloak of sovereignty. Once Native Americans aredeprived of their sovereignty that will be the end of Native America. An attack onone is an attack against all. United, we must stand strong together. Divided, youwill fail.To fully effectuate this policy of Native Hawaiians taking their rightful place next totheir tribal brothers, with your permission, I would like to pursue two parallelactions. First, to add Native Hawaiians, where it makes sense, to existing Native setasides by adding additional funds to those accounts.I promised Native America when I became the Chair of the Indian AffairsCommittee that I would never take from their few resources, and give it to theHawaiians. Rather, parallel Hawaiian programs were established in some areas.By adding monies to the roads, water and community development tribal programsfor example, Hawaiians would have a place at the Native American table.Second, I want to work with you to establish new tribal set asides for Indians,Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians – in areas of renewable energy andbroadband technology, for example. Let’s work together on new opportunities forNative America, in line with the priorities of the Obama White House. This wouldbe both exciting and fulfilling.What can each of you do to positively shape Native Hawaiian policy? It is verysimple. Let us celebrate our successes, and quiet the “talk stink” chatter. Let us beproud of each other’s achievements, and not constantly pull each other down likethe a’ama crabs in the bucket. If we wallow in self-pity, it very easily becomes aself-fulfilling prophecy. Conversely, if we aloha and encourage the achievements ofour brothers and sisters, the perception of reality is much brighter and hopeful.I was on Maui last Friday for a few events. The first was to celebrate thedesignation of the Maui Supercomputer as an official resource center of theDepartment of Defense because of their outstanding performance. What began asan earmark is today a budgeted Pentagon asset. The man in charge - a NativeHawaiian. Gene Bal.The next Maui event was also to celebrate an earmark – the Joint InformationTechnology Center – becoming an official $20 million dollar program of theDepartment of Defense. The President & CEO - a Native Hawaiian. VaughnVasconcellos.A few days earlier, I was on the Big Island. I had the good fortune of attending ablessing to kick off, with economic stimulus funds, an environmental cleanup ofPelekane Bay, from mauka to makai. It is a beautiful, historic area, and the home ofthe Pu’ukōhōla Heiau, a strong symbol of the unifying force of Kamehameha theGreat. It is a Historic Site of the National Park Service. The Superintendent - aNative Hawaiian. Daniel Kawaiaea.The following day, I was so very honored and humbled by a Native Hawaiianwelcoming ceremony at the Hawaii Community College in Hilo. It is a place ofmuch promise, where culture so naturally and elegantly embraces the aspects ofacademic life, from the vocational trades, to culinary arts and the sciences. TheChancellor - a Native Hawaiian. Rockne Freitas.And, this all happened last week. I could go on and on. Nearly 100 NativeHawaiian doctors have graduated from the University of Hawaii School ofMedicine. The University of Hawaii at Hilo offers the first Doctoral degree inNative languages in our nation.A little bragging would be good. Be proud of yourselves, and be positive about theaccomplishments of Native Hawaiians. Perception drives reality, and perceivedreality drives policy.To the young leaders, you provide the hope for a brighter chapter in our nation’shistory. You carry the torch. You light the path, and make room for others. And,as the path gets bigger, the task becomes less burdensome.Stand tall – steadfast and proud.
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Posted by Pono Kealoha on August 30, 2009 at 3:12pm
Response of a Hawaiian national regarding the Akaka Bill/ NHGRAMembers of the Commission Gerald A. Reynolds, Chairperson Abigail Thernstrom, Vice Chairperson Jennifer C. Braceras Peter N. Kirsanow Arlan D. Melendez Ashley L. Taylor Michael Yaki Kenneth L. Marcus, Staff DirectorU.S. Commission on Civil Rights624 Ninth Street, NWWashington, DC 20425(202) 376-8128 voice(202) 376-8116 TTYwww.usccr.gov Executive SummaryOn January 20, 2006, a panel of experts briefed members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005. Noe Kalipi, the Democratic Staff Director on the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs; H. William Burgess, Lead Attorney, Grassroots Institute of Hawaii; H. Christopher Bartolomucci, Partner, Hogan & Hartson; and Gail Heriot, Professor of Law, University of San Diego Law School made presentations and offered their expertise. The briefing was held at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights headquarters in Washington, D.C. A transcript of the briefing is available on the Commission’s website, www.usccr.gov, and by request from Publications Office, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 624 Ninth Street, NW, Room 600, Washington, D.C. 20425, (202) 376-8128, publications@usccr.gov. The Commission received sixteen timely public comments from this briefing. Most of these comments were from individuals who oppose the legislation on the ground that it would be racially divisive. Comments supporting the legislation were received from the State of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, the American Bar Association, the State of Hawaii’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and a University of Colorado law professor...............................................30 August 2009 Dear Commisioners: Your panel of experts are highly questionable and neglected to report all findings at the hearings it held in Hawai'i. I'm astounded how they manipulate facts to fit their agenda. Some statements regarding the "Native Hawaiian" as being the minority in Hawai'i at the time of the U.S. invasion and belligerent occupation is blatantly false. According to the 1890 census within the Kingdom of Hawai'i, 50.1% of the population were Hawai'i subjects/citizens who were nationals of this Hawaiian nation. Of the 50.1%, 84.4% were kanaka maoli and 15.6% were of non-kanaka maoli or of foreign blood and multi-ethnic. Only 88 persons were allowed dual citizenship who were pressed into service of the Kingdom with the compulsory oath of allegiance to the Kingdom's government as commissioned by the King. There were 49.9% foreigners residing in Hawai'i that were not citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Most were contracted Asian laborers, some were Pacific Islanders, some were Europeans and contracted laborers, and some were U.S. Americans. Nonetheless, the country is founded by Polynesian Hawaiians, of Polynesian Hawaiians, and for Polynesian Hawaiians. I and many of us oppose the bill known as the Akaka Bill because it is errantly labelling, kanaka maoli, as a tribal, indigenous native Americans, when in truth, we are Hawai'i nationals under the belligerent occupation of the criminal U.S.A. which means our Hawaiian nation-state still exists. Under the U.S. doctrines of Manifest Destiny, imperialism, and expansionism, you are trying to relegate us from a lawful nation to a lowly tribal group under the heading of Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005 (S.147 and H.R. 309). This proposed governing entity does not have lawful jurisdiction to negotiate with the U.S. in addressing specified matters, including the transfer of lands, natural resources, and other assets, and the protection of existing rights related to such lands or resources. This is still your left hand dealing with your right hand without extending those hands to the lawful party, the U.S. occupied Kingdom of Hawai'i. This is not a government to government relationship; nor is this a nation within a nation which is simply defined as a belligerent occupation. In reality, this is an exclusive elite club of U.S. Americans calling the shots without jurisdiction. and for their own pecuniary advantage. We know the disingenuous Morgan Report was created by the Dragon Master of the KKK himself to exonerate the U.S. duplicious involvement as a cover-up. Thus, any reference to his contrived report or cite it as trustworthy is not credible or noteworthy. It is odd or true to form that you have included commenters belonging to the same group as H. William Burgess, Lead Attorney, Grassroots Institute of Hawaii; while habitually excluded the commenters that oppose the bill solely because we stand on our Hawai'i nationalism. While you all squabble to define us; we are telling you who we are: Hawai'i nationals of the belligerently U.S. occupied Kingdom of Hawai'i. So, why won't you listen! The U.S. is like an old dog dancing around; trying to catch its own tail. It's apparent that everyone wants to speak for the Hawaii nationals, the kanaka maoli. We know how to speak; you stay on your side and let us stay on our side and listen to what we are saying. It is concrete evidence and documentation that the U.S. Government and it's officials have been trying to annex Hawai'i for over 60 years prior to its unlawful invasion and belligerent occupation beginning in 1893. The Akaka Bill does not attempt true reconcilliation for the Hawai'i nationals and heads in the wrong direction to further subjugate us in your racist society. We are very cognizant of the deceit and fraud involving the U.S. invasion of our nation, belligerent occupation, disregarding our neutrality status, violating our treaties, using the unlawful Newlands Resolution by which Congress exceeded its constitutional authority, and creating a fake statehood committed by the U.S.A. and its representatives. These violations have been continuous and consistent with your WASP racist dogmas of Manifest Destiny you insistently apply. We strongly urge the U.S.A.'s government to cease and desist in their criminal affairs which is contrary to international laws, national laws, and internal laws. It behooves you to familiarize yourselves with your U.S. Constitution; in particular: Article I: Section 7/Section 10; Article II: Section 2; Article III: Section 2/Section 3; Article IV: Section 3; Article V; and Article VI. It is also hypocritical to state that we must adhere to the protections and guarantees of the U.S. Constitution when in truth, the U.S. doesn't follow it's own constitution; but uses a double-standard. The U.S. cannot continue the sham that it owns Hawai'i or that we had voluntarily embraced the theft of our nation. Our Ku'e Petitions of 1897 protest against annexation was signed and supported by 96% of its bona fide citizens in support of Queen Lili'uokalani. The Memorial, the Queen's Formal Protest, along with the Ku'e petitions helped in U.S. Congress to reject the treaty of cession/annexation. U.S. Rep. Ball said it all, " ...a deliberate attempt to do unlawfully that which can't be lawfully done." The legal opinion from the Dept. of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, "It is therefore unclear which constitutional powr Congress exercised when it acquired Hawai'i by joint resolution. Accordingly, it is doubtful that the acquisition of Hawaii can serve as an appropriate precedent for a congressional assertion of sovereignty over an extended territorial sea." In constant light of these facts, it makes more sense to reject the Akaka Bill and its contents for these reasons and not solely on your panel of experts opinion that comprise of a "stacked deck". We are the ones you rarely get to hear from that have been barred in so many ways to be heard. I hope this has brought a broader scenario more realistic to the issue. Mahalo, Tane
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Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 30, 2009 at 9:24am
There’s a Trojan horse loose in Hawai`i, and more people need to notice.The Office Of Hawaiian Affairs is currently holding Community Consultation Network (CCN) meetings throughout the islands and in US cities where Hawaiians live.OHA will tell you their CCN events are designed to get input from the various Hawaiian communities wherever they are. They claim they’re interested in hearing what you have to say.But the real reason for CCN however is something entirely different.In reality it’s another OHA Trojan horse with a hidden agenda buried deep inside. Want to know what they're really up to? Find out this coming Wednesday on Free Hawai`i TV.We bring you a brand new Voices Of Truth show this week featuring Hiko Hanapi who tells us about an exciting fine arts program from Hawai`i Island. Don’t miss our fascinating visit to discover what some of Hawai`i’s finest master artists are creating, where it came from, and who it’s for on Voices Of Truth – One-On-One With Hawai`i's Future.MONDAY, August 31st At 6:30 PM –Maui – Akaku, Channel 53“Ho`ea - A Long Sought Vision – A Visit With Hiko Hanapi”A first-of-its-kind native Hawaiian arts school, Ho`ea brings master artisans from throughout the Pacific to teach both indigenous & contemporary art to students ranging from young to old. Speaking for the first time about the project, Hiko reveals their goal – mentor students intensively to produce world-class art. Filmed at the Hawai`i Prep Academy in Waimea, you’ll soon see why this native fine arts school is uniquely like no other – Watch It Here.MONDAY, August 31st At 7:00 PM & FRIDAY, September 4th At 5:30 PM –Hawai`i Island – Na Leo, Channel 53THURSDAY, September 3rd At 8:30 PM & FRIDAY, September 4th At 8:30 AM -Kaua`i – Ho`ike, Channel 52SATURDAY, September 5th At 8:00 PM –O`ahu, `Olelo, Channel 53“Cultural Revolutions – A Visit With Ramsay Taum”The past still exists right beside the present for Ramsay Taum. A noted cultural and sustainability expert, he knows the value of our kupuna and the cost if these elders pass without gaining their knowledge and insights. Yet he shows us how the past is always with us including those who have gone before. As you’ll find out, it’s much more than a “revolutionary” way of thinking - Watch It Here.Voices Of Truth interviews those creating a better future for Hawai`i to discover what made them go from armchair observers to active participants. We hope you'll be inspired to do the same.If you support our issues on the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network, please email this to a friend to help us continue. A donation today helps further our work. Every single penny counts.Donating is easy on our Voices Of Truth website via PayPal where you can watch Voices Of Truth anytime.For news and issues that affect you, watch Free Hawai`i TV, a part of the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network.Please share our Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network videos with friends and colleagues. That's how we grow. Mahalo.Read more…
Posted by Kaleo Farias on August 30, 2009 at 3:36am
Did any of you ever wonder what "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE" means? As a Hawaiian Subject/National of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which all of us who were born on Hawaiian Soil is, need to understand and realize that we all, individually and collectively must come to the end of our own selves, to accept this deep fact and truth that we can enjoy and believe that we are most protected under our own Country's 1839 Declaration of Rights and our own Ratified Constitutions of 1840 and 1852. So the next time you sign your name on the dotted line, be proud, knowing that only under your own Country's Declaration of Rights and Constitution will you find that "ALL OF YOUR RIGHTS WILL BE RESERVED, WITHOUT BEING SENTENCED, FINED, CHARGED, OR FALSELY ACCUSED, UNTIL AS SUCH TIME EVIDENCE AGAINST YOU CAN PROVE OTHERWISE". Be assured of this, our ancestors and kupuna's knew exactly who they were when they signed, sealed and delivered 38,900 signatures, letting the united States and the world know then that they were Hawaiian Subjects/Nationals of the Country of Hawaii. They never associated in any way, shape or form that they were any part of the united states or u.s. citizens for that matter.We as heirs today must have that same resiliency, pride, certainty, confidence, and knowing that if we always do the pono thing, like our ancestors did, then we to will find and get our most protection under our own Country's Constitution & Laws. Until next time on "Did You Know" A Hui Ho. Malama Pono. AeMahalo,Bruddah Kaleo
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Join us on September 3, 2009, as Ka Huli Ao hosts a Maoli Thursday discussion re-visiting issues of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, also known as the Akaka Bill. View our MaoliWorld events page by CLICKING HERE.
REmember people and our family i thought in the old days this was all we done is rememberin people an loving people and forgiveness, inmy pictures in maioli world shares the peple who is here andthe people who i cherish that has gone has all of us lt that family reunion andlove for oneanother no, i do respect my elders who has passed on and they did alot for the hawaiians today , yes issues arises in every day life i to rspect the people and the nature around it when wecare for eachother and love it conquers all so good by o my aunty Terry ttugmanfrom newzealand i have no wayoget there this sun and also to my other family before this dias family tilton faily bless you all and also theola silva of waianae tonight at sacred hearts chrch god bless your family too and aunty and uncle rodrigues from kalihi t their faily the girl who passed on thats no n good god bless all of them. tugman was my some what olympics person when i was in nanikapono elem in nanakuli i was there before and i seen her come down she was also my moms family we use to go to the funerals and we use to see her all the time when had funeral or some kind of stuffs was going owas young she was a campbell her momis caroll campbel that is my family and clara campbell , her grandchildrens are casey wilson and this is the family i remember she only comes down here to oahu when she needs too i remember her she knew my mom. if i not mistaken my aunty mary hanakahi family silva just passed on theolagean kanoelani aiwohi silva the miles family this is my family too god blessthem too i use to go to funerals there atsacred dheart when my other family ps on when i was young at sacred hearts church, and i am remmembering uncle rodrigues and his daughter god bless them tonight and all the family i leave yu to god amen. i sen one of the rodrigues family at one church dowentown god bless you ll ord of life and new hope comming back double and power to god.
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Posted by Jeff Renaud on August 28, 2009 at 5:26pm
Searchin for info regarding Henry Kainoa Daniels married Rose Ah Leong his father Daniel (Kaniela) Pupuka and mother Kaleo Kaiama of Kohala.
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There needs to be a "Coalition" between OHA, DHHL, Kingdom of Hawaii to invest funds into community programs that will "malama our environment" and create jobs for our people in sustainable energy programs. With resources of wind, ocean currents and surf, sun, why aren’t we leaders in sustainable energy?Why are we not designing Hawaiian homes that honor our environment? We need to be on the forefront of design and sustainability, and create Hawaiian Homes/Properties that are totally “self sufficient” with rain gutters and catchments that will “slow down run off” and collect rainwater for our family gardens, Solar panel roofs that will harvest the suns energy for hot water and wind generators for electricity, Compose toilet systems. These homes can be very beautiful and of the highest quality and leading in technology!Getting off the grid is the ONLY way we will be independent of the U.S.A who CONTINUES to Oppress us with western conveniences that lure us away from the basics. Hawaiian homes and OHA has the resources to create and build the infrastructures that can be used to generate revenues that will lead Hawaii and its people away from being “dependent”. We (OHA/DHHL/ Hawaiian Kingdom) need to design, build, manage/control our resources; clean water wells, sewage systems, landfill sites, recycling plants, Solar/Wind energy…then we can sell our resources/services to the many resorts that are being built all over the islands!! If we can’t collect the revenues from the taxes that the USA Government steals, lets collect directly from the consumers (resorts, condos, public)This will create lots jobs in various fields for KANAKA's who are seeking engineering, agriculture, aquatics, marine biology, enviromental, degrees and will open up an entire program in education, business management, etc...I feel its time t o get away from the Visitors Industry, and focus on "Nurturing our Golden Goose"Denmark for centuries has been harvesting energy from wind and water with their windmills. Its time we look to our cultural history/past and our environment to take us into our future.
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Prejudice in ParadiseHawaii Has a Racism ProblemBy Larry Kellerhttp://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1081Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey.When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting his ear, and choked and punched him, Padron says. Police officers persuaded the Padrons not to press charges, saying it would be expensive for them to return for court appearances and a Hawaiian judge would side with the Hawaiian assailants, the doctor contends.Professor Haunani-Kay Trask believes Native Hawaiians have every right to feel hostile toward whites."There is no doubt in my mind [the attack] was racially motivated," she adds.With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state's 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%.Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn't begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools. For example:The last day of school has long been unofficially designated "Beat Haole Day," with white students singled out for harassment and violence. (Haole — pronounced how-lee — is slang for a foreigner, usually white, and sometimes is used as a racial slur.)A non-Native Hawaiian student who challenged the Hawaiian-preference admission policy at a wealthy private school received a $7 million settlement this year.A 12-year-old white girl new to Hawaii from New York City needed 10 surgical staples to close a gash in her head incurred when she was beaten in 2007 by a Native Hawaiian girl who called her a "fucking haole."A vocal segment of Native Hawaiians is pushing for independence to end the "prolonged occupation" by the United States and governance by natives.Demonstrators shouting racial epithets at whites disrupted a statehood celebration in 2006.Anti-white sentiments such as these have been more than 200 years in the making. The pivotal event occurred when American and European businessmen, backed by U.S. military forces, overthrew Hawaii's monarch in 1893 and placed her under house arrest two years later. The United States annexed the islands as a territory in 1898, and they became a state in 1959.Little wonder then that as Hawaii prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of becoming the 50th state on Aug. 21, it will a muted celebration, devoid of parades or fireworks.Classroom WarfareTina Mohr has lived in Hawaii for 25 years. She has Native Hawaiian friends. But in the 2003-04 school year, her twin blond-haired daughters, aged 11 at the time, began getting harassed by Native Hawaiian kids at their school on the Big Island. "Our daughters would come home with bruises and cuts," she tells the Intelligence Report.One of her girls was assaulted twice in the same day. In one scuffle, she had her head slammed into a wall, and her attacker continued to threaten her. Her daughter suffered a dislocated jaw and had headaches for five weeks, Mohr says.The torment continued in the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Native Hawaiian girls stalked and threatened her daughters and yelled "fucking haole" at them. Midway through the 6th grade, Mohr began to home-school her daughters.She filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. It was only recently, on Dec. 31, 2008, that the division finally released its report. The report concluded there was "substantial evidence that students experienced racially and sexually derogatory name-calling on nearly a daily basis on school buses, at school bus stops, in school hallways and other areas of the school" that Mohr's children attended.The epithets included names such as "f*****g haole," "haole c**t" and "haole whore," according to the report. Students were told "go home" and "you don't belong here." Most of the slurs were directed by "local" or non-white students at Caucasians, especially those who were younger, smaller, light-skinned and blond.The report also concluded that school officials responded inadequately or not at all when students complained of racial harassment. Students who did complain were retaliated against by their antagonists. "They learned not to report this stuff," Mohr says of her own daughters.The Hawaii Department of Education settled Mohr's complaint with a lengthy agreement in which educators promised to take various steps to improve the reporting, investigating and eliminating of student harassment in the future. Today, Mohr's daughters are again attending the school where they used to have trouble. They haven't been assaulted, but one was threatened on a school bus earlier this year.Racial LegaciesThe resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to "ancestral memory," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. "That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It's more akin to American Indians" because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds. (One difference now, of course, is that Native Hawaiians in Hawaii are far more numerous than American Indians are in their own ancestral regions, where the Indians remain politically weak and largely marginalized by the far larger white population.)Racial violence directed at whites in Hawaii, while deplorable, is minor compared to the larger issues underlying it, Matsuoka says. The Hawaiian spirit of aloha "is pervasive, but you have to earn aloha. You don't necessarily trust outsiders, because outsiders [historically] come and have taken what you have. It's an incredibly giving and warm and generous place, but you have to earn it," he says.Further fueling the resentment that some Native Hawaiians feel for outsiders are attempts by the latter to usurp entitlement programs given the former to redress previous wrongs. In recent years, non-native residents have used the courts to try and rescind these entitlements on grounds that they are racially discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution.Retired professor and "anti-sovereign" white activist Kenneth Conklin and others prevailed in a lawsuit in 2000 that challenged a requirement that trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — OHA — be of Native Hawaiian descent. OHA oversees huge tracts of lands that the United States took from Hawaii when it annexed the islands as a territory, and collects revenues from them for programs that benefit Native Hawaiians.The state government was going to sell 1.2 million acres of these lands to developers for two state-sponsored affordable housing projects when OHA and four Native Hawaiian plaintiffs sued to stop the deal. A state court sided with the government, but the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed in favor of the plaintiffs. This March 31, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Hawaii high court erred and sent the case back for further action.There also was an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, passed by Congress in 1921. The act allows a Hawaiian agency to make 99-year leases at $1 per year to Native Hawaiians (but not other residents) for authorized uses on lands ceded to the United States when it annexed Hawaii. More than 200,000 acres of land were designated for uses such as homes and ranches.One of the more protracted legal battles involved a lawsuit filed in 2003 by a non-Native Hawaiian student against the hugely wealthy and influential private Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha operates three campuses for the benefit of children of Hawaiian ancestry. The student's attorneys contended that violates civil rights laws. As the U.S. Supreme Court was about to announce last year whether it would hear the case, Kamehameha paid $7 million to settle it out of court.'A Hateful Place'A violent incident with racial overtones in 2007 near Pearl Harbor prompted a good deal of soul searching about race in Hawaii. A Native Hawaiian man and his teenage son brutally pummeled and kicked a Caucasian soldier and his wife near Pearl Harbor after the soldier's SUV struck the other man's parked car. The son shouted "fucking haole" while attacking the soldier. The husband and wife suffered broken noses, facial fractures and concussions. A prosecutor said the assault was a road-rage incident, not a hate crime. But it generated much debate on newspaper websites and blogs about the use of the word haole and whether whites are the targets of racism in Hawaii."It is a hateful place to live if you are white," wrote a woman on one Hawaii website's comments section. A Hawaii native who is white wrote, "Racism exists in Hawaii. My whole life I've never really felt welcome here." A sailor stationed at Pearl Harbor added that "this island is the most racist place I have ever been in my life."Other white residents, however, wrote that they had had no such experiences. And many people maintained that arrogant mainlanders are the most likely to incur natives' wrath. It's their "cultural inability to be humble [that] is a huge contributing factor in a lot of violence against them," one person wrote. "There is a high degree of arrogance and lack of respect that mainlanders exhibit," added another.A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, is one of the most caustic critics of whites in the islands. In her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, Trask wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."Trask's opposite number is Conklin, the "anti-sovereignty" white activist who has lived on Oahu for 17 years and says he loves Hawaii's culture, spirituality and history, but is labeled a racist by some of his detractors. He wrote a book entitled Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State."Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it," says Conklin, who manages a massive website on Hawaiian issues. "The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush."State and RaceIt's against this backdrop that Hawaii approaches its 50th anniversary of statehood. The non-celebration will consist largely of educational events at various venues. Iolani Palace won't be one of them. Once home to Hawaii's monarchy and where the last monarch was imprisoned after her government was overthrown, the palace is a potent symbol of anti-statehood — and anti-white — sentiment.Republican state Sen. Sam Slom learned that the hard way. Although Statehood Day is a holiday in Hawaii, there were no celebrations for about 10 years, until he organized one in 2006 at the palace. He and others were confronted by demonstrators shouting racial epithets. Slom, who is Caucasian and has lived in Hawaii since 1960, said the 30 to 40 "hard-core" protesters intimidated a high school band, which left early, as well as some spectators.The 50-year anniversary events figure to be "soft celebrations" aimed at defusing sovereignty passions, Slom says. "It is a divisive wedge that some people have exploited," he says. "There are people who have made it a racial thing. [But] the vast, overwhelming majority are proud to be United States citizens."Still, a statehood commission planning commemorative events opted not to re-enact the phone call to the Territorial House of Representatives meeting at Iolani Palace in 1959 informing representatives that Congress had voted in favor of Hawaiian statehood. Commission member Donald Cataluna strongly opposed a reenactment, according to the Honolulu Advertiser, saying he "didn't want any blood to spill."That won't completely mollify sovereignty activists, Slom predicts. "There will be protests, there's no question about it."
Akaka, Danner, Inouye, et al. want us to subscribe to the U.S. racist documents of Manifest Destiny that still exists today. How dare they! This is why they don't want our voices to be heard. On the U.S. continent, birth certificates do not have the category for native Hawaiian but its included under the heading of asian/pacific islanders. The world almanac editions published within the U.S. had already removed native Hawaiians as a separate group in the States census and included them under Asians and Pacific Islanders category for at least twenty years ago.We already have our nation that still exists and you'll find all those dreams are already realized and once the U.S. de-occupies our nation-state; it can continue to fulfill those dreams that have been cut off by the U.S. We know who we are even if you don't. How can we all heal and move forward when OHA refuse to have us, the Hawaii nationals, sit at the table with them?What the Akaka Bill does is allow native Hawaiians to relinquish their Hawaiian citizenship of the Kingdom of Hawai'i to U.S. citizenship as a native American-Hawaiian tribal people, wards of the U.S.A. Hawaiians that give up their Hawai'i national citizenship won't have the clout or voice that the remaining Hawai'i nationals have who are still part of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In essence, this would eliminate them from being beneficiuaries to all the ali'i trusts or would it? Maybe those trusts would establish Hawai'i nationals as a priority before U.S. American-Hawaiians rather than blood quantum of the neo-indian tribe of America.OHA, Nationbuilding /Kau Inoa/the Akaka Bill is for the mentally challenged and is part of the U.S. mechanism! If my name has been put on the Kau Inoa; please remove it.Tanetane_1@msn.com
QUEEN LILI`UOKALANIHer 171st Birthday - Sept. 2, 2009 4 - 7 PM`Iolani Palace Grounds At The AhuHonolulu
