• Hawaii doesn’t need RIMPAC • Housing: A bigger problem • Seed companies not a friend to Kauai Hawaii doesn’t need RIMPAC Rim of the Pacific War Preparation Exercises (RIMPAC) is back. Warships from 27 navies descend on our Hawaiian ocean. For marine
• Hawaii doesn’t need RIMPAC • Housing: A bigger problem • Seed companies not a friend to Kauai
Hawaii doesn’t need RIMPAC
Rim of the Pacific War Preparation Exercises (RIMPAC) is back. Warships from 27 navies descend on our Hawaiian ocean.
For marine animals like whales and dolphins it is not just an exercise, it is real war. Powerful sonar pulses and underwater explosions deafen and disorient these animals.
For them, hearing is as essential to survival as hearing, seeing and feeling combined are for humans. What does RIMPAC offer that outweighs destructive impacts to cetaceans and all other life down the food chain? One, it’s a public relation blitz for navy militarism. Two, it’s a weapons bazaar for countries to showcase latest advancements in lethality. Raytheon Corporation will team with Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen Corporation pitting their missile against Lockheed Martin’s to be chosen to try to sink a ship.
A warship shoot ‘em up called “Naval GunFire Rodeo,” per RIMPAC 2014, will follow.
A slick television commercial promotes the U.S. Navy as “a force for good” with a map showing dozens of locations that port Navy warships around the Pacific basin. One, in South Korea, is only 300 miles from China’s coast.
Military muscle flexing and provocation may be a force, but we should question what defines “good.” A Navy purposed for quick response to natural disasters, for ocean cleanup, for wave and tidal energy generation research, for assisting climate change refugees and yes for defense of the nation’s borders would be a “force for good.”
This RIMPAC is obsolete, a waste of resources and a threat to the ocean environment on which we all depend.
Kip Goodwin, Kapaa
Housing: A bigger problem
Wednesday, June 15, announced with great flurry that a new housing project of 151 homes will be built as part of the Lihue-Hanamaulu master plan. However, only 40 of them are to be low income.
Whoops! I call on the council to require that no homes be built except for low-income housing until the demand for low-income housing has been met. Sacramento, California was able to do this by determining a ratio of the number of low income families to the total number of families and requiring only low-income housing be built until the ratio is met in the type of housing available.
Further, if one looks at the numbers of non-low income homes already available for sale on the island, we find abundance. Why do we need more homes priced above $400,000?
As I understand there is a need for 5,000 new homes for low-income families. I also understand that there are at least 400 people on the OHA list that qualify for homelands and for which no homelands have been granted. The need is great!
We continue to encourage tourists to come to the island but we do not encourage workers to service the tourist industry because there is no housing for them. We have difficulty keeping teachers because they cannot find housing. We can do something about this.
Marjorie Gifford, Princeville
Seed companies not a friend to Kauai
Lonnie Sykos, thank you so much for your letter on June 12. I have been wanting to address Mr. Parachini’s letters ever since he started writing them. His support of the seed companies is frightening.
As a resident of Waimea and Kekaha, I am appalled our elected representatives are not standing up to these companies who are poisoning the land, the water and the people of the Westside. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at their track record since the 40s and see they only care about control and profits. They manufacture chemotherapy drugs as well and they threaten to take a doctor’s license away if he doesn’t recommend chemotherapy.
What will it take for the world to come to its senses?
Linda Oshiro, Waimea
