• Is this a nation? • Rethink highway safety Is this a nation? Regarding Fred Dente’s Sept. 16 letter “America’s Death Wish” and the Sept. 19 response by Pete Antonson “Closed Minds,” in which he called Mr. Dente a closed-minded
• Is this a nation? • Rethink highway
safety
Is this a nation?
Regarding Fred Dente’s Sept. 16 letter “America’s Death Wish” and the Sept. 19 response by Pete Antonson “Closed Minds,” in which he called Mr. Dente a closed-minded extremist malcontent for sounding the well deserved alarm over the dangerous expansion of the Barking Sands Missile Base to include Aegis missiles, and for Mr. Dente’s criticism of the kupuna who blessed this expansion of America’s death trade…
Fred pointed out that this is a transition stage to establish missile sites in Asia within easy striking distance of China, Russia and Korea. I was pretty sure we were over the Cuban missile crises and that we had spent quite a few years pursuing détente and a world of co-operative relations. Mr. Antonson uses fine words about Hawaiian leaders who bless military sites as “voices of reason and reconciliation whose language is always academic; not inflammatory.” And that somehow these leaders “had gained perspective and balance.”
Americans can put their hands over their hearts and pledge “justice for all” until they’re red, white and blue in the face, but the fact remains there is a new generation of kanaka maoli who know their Polynesian history and culture and look forward to a life of frustration and marginalization that hardly seems balanced, in the continuing slow-grinding rape of this otherwise legally sovereign nation of Hawai‘i. When you smell the smoke and feel the flames in the theatre, you don’t stop to debate the political sentiments of the person who shouted “fire.”
We must not be insensitive to the plight of Hawaiian leaders who bless such facilities. That still appears more a dance of coercion than “wise perspective.” What are they to do after hundreds of years of callous strong-armed disregard for their culture and nation by the very institutions that they bless?
In exchange, they get a few jobs for their people. If they’re lucky, they get a “sorry about that” and a slap on the back — but “this is our place now.” When so many Americans do so little to curb this nation’s war machine, the irony of demanding it from the compromised Hawaiians borders on the tragic.
This is a time of heightened world tensions, where the United States murders a million people in Iraq to take out a dictator that they put in power in the first place, and supplied him with weapons including materials to produce poison gas used to kill a half a million Iranians and Kurds. The invasion was based on fabricated documents falsely claiming weapons of mass destruction.
And Mr. Antonson calls for more aggression. A war in Afghanistan based on the false flag attacks in New York and Washington that saw the free fall demolition of three skyscrapers, one not even hit, and a hole in the Pentagon without plane wreckage in sight. And, don’t forget the Afghani heroin that showed up in American cities weeks after the invasion. The Golden Triangle is not my idea of nostalgia. Perhaps Mr. Antonson lives in a shrinking, insular and provincial closet himself.
How many people in this state realize that any young man in Hawai‘i who applies for a driver’s license is secretly enrolled in the military records, with their private information turned over to the generals and politicians? It is positively dangerous to be a teenage male in Hawai‘i at this point of planetary bloodshed. You are in great danger of becoming expendable government property to be used to mop up American military crimes all over the world.
Where are Mr. Antonson and those patriots and truth seekers at Barking Sands? Defending their rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in a union of freely associating citizens? My guess is nowhere. The military complains that jihadist terrorists hide themselves among civilians. Is this not exactly the same as PMRF, another cult growing like a cancer on this jewel of the Pacific?
Kelly Ball, Kapa‘a
Rethink highway safety
My deepest sympathy goes out to the people’s families who lost their loved ones (in past and present) at “Blood Alley” in Wailua.
It is time for our state Department of Transportation to rethink that area of travel near the jail and golf course. There’s been much too many accidents and fatalities there.
How many more must die before the state decides to make corrections there? Some of the accidents there could have been human error. However, most of it is the building of that road in the section of Kuhio Highway.
On both (northbound and southbound) directions there are downhills then it meets at the leveled curve where a vehicle approaches at high speed that can cause a drifting effect. Unfortunately it drifts the speeding vehicle to cross the center lane and causes a head-on collision.
I never drove the bypass road in the area. However, if it is a safer route to avoid “Blood Alley,” it might be something for the DOT to think about. There is still plenty of available space in that area to make corrections and make it safe for traveling.
Let’s help save lives by rethinking highways and roadways on Kaua‘i. Utilize some of the old cane haul roads for safer traveling.
Howard Tolbe, ‘Ele‘ele
