Letters for Tuesday – August 1, 2006

• On the ho‘okupu

• On littering

• A local perspective on the Mideast

• Apples and grenades

On the ho‘okupu

Editor’s note: If those in our island community can ever find it in their hearts to forgive us this egregious error, we will be forever grateful and attempt to be more sensitive to the Kaua‘i way. I wish we could promise something like this will not occur again in the future, but alas, we are a human endeavor and thus subject to the follies of being such. Aloha and mahalo.

In the Saturday morning The Garden Island, a front-page story describes the Made in Kaua‘i logo as depicting a pair of hands holding a pineapple.

Any resident could tell that the logo is not a pineapple n and that a pineapple is not native to Kaua‘i anyway.

A bit of research would find that “Kauai Made products are identified by the ho‘okupu, an offering of an “honored gift” in traditional Hawaiian custom. In the Kauai Made logo image, this gift is wrapped in ti leaf. Often the ho‘okupu was a lei (wreath) or an item of exceptional hand crafting and value. This symbol was chosen by the County of Kauai to reflect the deep respect we have for our aina (land), our people and the various cultures of our island.”

• Stan Godes
  Hanalei

On littering

Many thanks to Mike Dyer for his letter on littering. What I wonder is why the people driving on the road at the same time as this person that dumped all the packing peanuts on the road didn’t point out this person’s stupidity.

Or perhaps they did, and this person simply didn’t care, which would move them to the “intentional litterer” category. But then all littering is intentional at some level, isn’t it? Not taking the time to make sure you don’t litter is as bad as the litter act itself.

I’d like to point out another type of litterer, which I classify as wholly intentional — smokers that flick their ashes and throw their cigarette butts out onto the ground. How difficult is it to keep a small container in your car and dispose of your cigarettes there? There is much talk about how the waters are being polluted, causing damage to the oceans, yet people think it is OK to throw trash onto the ground. You’d think that in an island “culture” intimately tied to the ocean that people would have more respect. Where do you people think this trash ends up? There is no “litter menehune” coming around to clear up after you — it will find its way into the ocean eventually.

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal should revisit their Feb.19, 1999, classification of Kaua‘i as the “Garbage Isle.” A lot of people here really don’t deserve the beauty that surrounds them.

• Michael Mann
  ‘Ele‘ele

A local perspective on the Mideast

In regard to “localizing’ the situation in the Middle East, let’s look at it from the perspective of the neighbors of the “pakalolo” grower.

For over 64 years, this person and his friends have been killing innocent children in the neighborhood. Far from just growing “pot,” they are smoking and selling “ice” and running down the neighbors under a drug-induced hallucination that the neighbors are evil. The neighbors have tried to get the feds to help for decades but the only help they offer is to order the neighbors to give up their backyards, reasoning that if they are just allowed to grow more “pot” it will calm their desire to sell “ice.” When the neighbors see that this strategy is only fueling the arrogance of the “growers” and increasing their power to promote even more deadly “drugs,” the neighbors in desperation try to stop the “drug” trade on their own. Unfortunatly the majority of the “island” is already under the influence of the “growers’ drugs” and will do anything to alter the truth of the situation. They even try to tell the community that the “growers” are being persecuted and the reason we have to work for a living is because the intolerant neighbors are interfering with the whole communities desire to join in selling “drugs” and “lies” for a living.

• Mike Ensman
  Lawa‘i

Apples and grenades

I am writing in regards to the Monday, July 31 letter titled “Paying for the War.” With all due respect, Janos Samu, Hezbollah is a terrorist group which has killed over 800 people, not “somebody (who) is growing pakalolo in a Hanapepe backyard,” like you state.

To clarify the reasons behind the recent Israeli counter-attack, Hezbollah, a radical Shiite Islamic sect founded in Lebanon in 1982, has also claimed responsibility for the following acts of terrorism: a series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s; the suicide truck bombings that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane’s pilot leaning out of the cockpit with a gun to his head; two major 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina; the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy (killing 29) and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (killing 95).

A July 2006 raid on a border post in northern Israel in which two Israeli soldiers were taken captive sparked an Israeli military campaign against Lebanon to which Hezbollah responded by firing rockets across the Lebanese border into Israel.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to know more about current events and to even question what is going on in the Middle East, whether it be the war in Iraq or what is going on between Israel and Lebanon or Israel and the PLO; nevertheless, to try and “localize” this event as you did in your letter is an attempt to trivialize a situation that is far more tragic and complex than somebody illegally growing marijuana in their backyard.

In brief, the situation in Israel dates back thousands of years and has its origins in the Bible and its more contemporary origins dating only a couple of years after the genocide attempts of Adolf Hitler which killed over 6 million people of Jewish descent during World War II.

That being said, despite Hezbollah’s heinous history of torture and killing, I was also surprised and saddened by Israel’s reaction to the kidnapping of two of their soldiers. Like in all things related to the volatile Middle East, I was hoping there would be some kind of peaceful resolution of events. Nevertheless, diplomacy doesn’t always work with terrorists. This is a lesson the United States learned painfully on Sept. 11, 2001.

So, my question to you, Janos Samu, is how many more innocent people needed to die or be threatened before it was acceptable for Israel to respond?

• Noah Evslin
  History Instructor

Kaua‘i Community College