• Students seek community’s help for school project • Don’t forget the Israeli children • When good men do nothing • A layoff conspiracy • Gore sank his own ship Students seek community’s help for school project Editor’s note: Visit
• Students seek community’s help for school project
• Don’t forget the Israeli children
• When good men do nothing
• A layoff conspiracy
• Gore sank his own ship
Students seek community’s help for school project
Editor’s note: Visit www.thegardenisland.com to watch a video presentation of this letter.
I am in the fifth grade at Ripon Christian Elementary School in Ripon, Calif.
I have adopted your state as a class project. I will be doing a report and making a display about Hawai‘i.
Towards the end of April or the beginning of May, my class will be having a “State Fair.” I will display and show everything that I have gotten and learned about your great state to my whole school.
It would be helpful to me if you could ask your readers to send me postcards of your state, maps, brochures, information about wildlife industry, neat places to visit, statistics, sports teams and any other information and items your readers feel would be helpful.
I hope your readers will help me with my project. I am looking forward to hearing from them and promise to send a thank you to them for helping me. I am excited to learn about your state.
The address is: Mrs. Terpstra’s Class, Ripon Christian School, 217 N. Maple Ave., Ripon, CA 95366.
• Mishayla, Ripon, Calif.
Don’t forget the Israeli children
I am saddened to read the letter to The Garden Island by Dennis Chaquette (“Children in Gaza,” Letters, Jan. 25).
Dennis, all the children of the world are my children. I can not and do not distinguish by whose god or what color or the language they may speak. All are children of god.
You seem to have forgotten the Israeli children who have been victimized by indiscriminate rocket attacks that have been going on for years. They as well deserve no more nor any less than what we would all like to see, namely, peace for all.
• Monroe Richman, Koloa
When good men do nothing
In response to Cecelia Kennelly-Waeschle’s article (“Wake up and speak up,” Letters, Jan. 29), I have some questions. The warring that has been going on for over 60 years between Israel and the Palestinians is a terrible tragedy for both sides.
Cecelia quotes “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing” and my first question is “Where are all the good men” in Gaza, in Palestine? Why are they not standing up to do something for peace in that area? Where were all the good men in Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1930s and ‘40s; or China and North Korea in the ‘40s and ‘50s; or the Middle East in the ‘90s to the present?
It seems to me that the only “good guys and gals” that ever stand up to defeat “evil empires” was and are the American and English people. Not only did they stand up to defeat tyrants, or the ones we are still at odds with, but they rebuilt the defeated countries and introduced Democratic concepts into their societies.
As a “courtesy of the United States of America,” France, Germany, Norway, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Algeria, Morocco, Romania, Kosovo, Panama, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Denmark, Kuwait, Egypt, Montenegro, New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, Greece, Russia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Albania, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Libya, Korea, Japan, Iraq, and yes, even Israel, are free countries. Free to vote. Where are all the “good men” in the rest of the world?
America has stood up for other nations for decades, for 70-plus years of the last and present century, and now it’s time for Americans to stand up for America. It’s time we all stand up to participate in stopping the deliberate transformation of America’s ideals, freedoms, rights and values into negative values of tyranny, subversion, oppression and absolutism. Standing up to do something for peace is a two-way street.
So please do “wake up,” America, and begin working for the futures of our children and grandchildren by returning to and strengthening the values and ideas of our founding fathers, our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. We can start in our own backyard before its too late.
• John Hoff, Lawai
A layoff conspiracy
At the risk of seeming a bit paranoid, I ask this question: Is corporate America using mass layoffs in order to stymie President Obama’s chance for the successful achievement of his stated goals and objectives?
Whether they are capable of mounting such a conspiracy is not in question. Back door communications between major American corporations have existed for decades.
I believe that the possibility of mass layoffs in order to create massive unemployment is so important a possibility that it warrants a serious congressional investigation into every massive layoff including the 65,000 announced recently.
This is not such a wild suggestion when you consider examples such as the Enron fiasco and the disastrous results of the sub prime mortgage situation as examples of corporate misdoing.
• Harry Boranian, Lihu‘e
Gore sank his own ship
It seems that there are still people that believe Al Gore should have won the presidential election back in 2000 (“On President George W. Bush,” Editorial Roundup, Jan. 25).
It’s true that Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote — a procedure that has been in place for many decades.
What defeated Gore was the fact that the people of his home state Tennessee, those that have known the Gore family best, chose to not vote for him and cast their ballots for George Bush. Had it have been otherwise, Gore would have had enough electoral votes to have been elected.
In addition, their neighbor state of Arkansas, home to Bill Clinton, also chose not to support Gore. Arkansas’ electoral vote would have provided a very comfortable victory for Gore.
The Florida debacle was merely a circus sideshow. Remember, those who knew him best were his undoing.
• Joe Stoddard, Kapa‘a
