g
1. Kamakakuokalani Craft Fair 2007 >>>>THIS WEEKEND! :)
2. Globalnesia: Chuukese in Hawaii
3. Medicine for Gaza-Please Help
4. PKHCC 2008 Hawaiian Moon Calendar
5. [Monica Benderman] What do you know of war?
6. Superferry delayed, Restart date shifts to Dec. 6 because of damage to
a barge
7. New NT deputy chief to push Rudd on intervention (Australia)
8. US Army Reports Rising Desertion Rates
9. Tonga: US Military Harvesting In The Pasifik
10. The Peace Center trees-join us
11. Hawaii Land: Institutional Investors Moving In
12. Colonial Dispossession: Maori opinion of police plummets after raids,
says poll
13. Corrected links: Maori Activists: Secret police evidence posted on the
net: "Terrorists"
14. Check out Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond
15. Tasers "an option" for Hawaii County PD
16. December Events at Native Books/Na Mea Hawai`i
17. HI-HO-HO-HO Na Mea Hawaii Seasonal Store
18. SuperFerry car transport could easily transport coqui frogs!!!! and
comment
19. New announcement: Working for Social Justice as Settlers in Occupied
Lands
20. Iraq now a colony
21. LIve the Legacy : Wednesday, December 5, 2007 6pm to 8pm
22. Hawaii Land: Institutional Investors Moving In - comment
23. Correction: Defend TukwilaTeachers/Change of email addresses
24. A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind
25. Race Relations: Patu! Historic NZ Docu Screening
26. Merry Christmas, Hawaii ^V and Bombs Away!
27. Tasers for all...
28. Amnesty International: A Taser victim's penalty 'should not be death'
29. 2008 APA Community Leadership Pgm - Deadline extended to 12/5!
30. holiday art events
31. NZ Gubbament dumps crap meat to the Islands
32. Free Hawai`i TV - "Superferry Action Alert"
33. Peruvian Sound Shaman Tito La Rosa w/Special Violinist, Th. Nov 29,
8:30pm Studio Maui
34. Ten Lessons from the Criminalization of Dissent
35. The New Pacific Wall
36. OHA Pilikia - The kakio's are showing... and comment
37. Kaniakapupu Cleanup
38. Disappeared News - 1 new article
39. taste of Tuhoe Medicine
40. Aloha RainbowBridge Art & Healing Center OPENING Sat. 12/8.
41. Statehood Commission revealed
42. Apoliona, Namu`o and Bernardino Control OHA
43. Iwi (Maori) Sign International Treaty on Indigenous Rights
44. Army man charged with UH dorm break-in
45. Holiday Specials!
46. SuperFerry car transport could easily transport coqui frogs!!!! -
more comment
47. Happening at Revolution Books
48. OHA Pilikia - The kakio's are showing.. - more comment
1. Kamakakuokalani Craft Fair 2007 >>>>THIS WEEKEND! :)
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:41:53 -1000
From: Dhira DiBiase <dhira.hkm06@gmail.com>
Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies is having there annual craft
fair this Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 1st and 2nd) in Halau o Haumea from
9am to 4pm.
Please come and do some early Xmas shopping! :) I will be selling my
newest paintings, custom cards, lauhala/ribbons bracelets and other edible
goodies along with Mom and Gram (MANGO Bread!!!) hmmm... :) I am trying to
raise money to attend an upcoming conference to Rekohu, Chatham Islands in
Feb. 2008, your support is appreciated :)
Please spread the news to your friends and family.
Hope to see you this weekend.
Malama pono, Lufi :)
________________________________________________________________________________
2. Globalnesia: Chuukese in Hawaii
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:28:25 -1000
From: mike reitz <mreitz@pacbell.net>
Posted on: Monday, November 26, 2007
Chuukese pastor helps newcomers in Hawaii
The marriage of Pastor Akendo Onamwar's parents had been arranged, but he
bucked tradition by choosing his own wife. Hear him talk about learning to
love at his church, the First Chuukese Church of Hawaii.
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser
Akendo Onamwar, pastor of the First Chuukese Church of Honolulu, is a
leader in his community and a help to many.
Photos by JOAQUIN SIOPACK | The Honolulu Advertiser
Pastor Onamwar distributes financial aid after a recent Sunday service at
the Church of the Crossroads, where his congregation meets.
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser
Myanne Akento, 2, peers over the shoulder of her mom, Restlyn Akento,
during a service, which is as much a community gathering as a religious
rite.
COFA BACKGROUND
The Compact of Free Association between the United States, the Federated
States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, signed in
1982 and ratified in 1986, allows Micronesians relatively free movement
into the United States.
In legal terms, they are not immigrants, but are "qualified
nonimmigrants," or what some call permanent aliens.
Micronesians often come to Hawai'i for healthcare and education, experts
say. Once those needs have been fulfilled, people from the Federated
States of Micronesia may hope to return home, creating what Julia
Walsh-Kroeker calls a circular migration pattern.
"It's not like they're leaving their life behind, coming here, planting
here," explained the director of Small Island Networks, a small nonprofit
liaison between Micronesians and service providers.
The compact came into being because Micronesian nations offer militarily
strategic passageways for the United States, which seized them from the
Japanese in World War II. The federated states are independent nations. In
2002, the compact was extended for another 20 years.
Also, the 1954 U.S. explosion of the Bravo H-bomb over Bikini Atoll still
has government officials and activists debating residual health effects.
Micronesian health services aren't as advanced as in the U.S.: the entire
state of Chuuk, made up of hundreds of islands, doesn't have a kidney
dialysis machine, for example.
FIND OUT MORE
Micronesian Community Network: 594-0540, ext. 248,
www.nationsofmicronesia.org.
Compact of Free Association Task Force, which is being convened by the
attorney general: 587-3050.
Micronesians United: the Rev. Sekap Esah, 537-3334 ext. 17.
Akendo Onamwar suspects he is one of the highest-paid Chuukese in Hawai'i
today.
He makes $30,000 a year.
By Western standards, Onamwar may not seem successful: He lives in public
housing. He takes care of a multitude of relatives. The money he earns
working as an employment counselor for Goodwill Industries of Hawaii
barely stretches from one payday to the next.
But Onamwar, 54, does not judge himself by those standards, and neither do
his peers.
Where he comes from, the measure of a man is different. As in Hawaiian
culture, success comes in intangibles. Taking care of extended family.
Perpetuating the culture. Having people seek you out for advice and
knowing they can rely on you for help, as Onamwar's community did when a
5-year-old Chuukese boy died in a recent house fire, and Onamwar was among
those who met with John "Rex Boy" Ceasar's father to offer aid.
Perhaps we should introduce you to Pastor Onamwar, one of the first
Chuukese students to study at Hawaii Pacific University in 1974.
"If I have the authority to compare myself with my own people, yes, I'm
satisfied with my lot," said the ever-humble Onamwar, who studied social
sciences at HPU. "I consider myself a success, even if this might not be
in the eyes of the Western world."
The opinion is not solely his own. When three parishioners among the
hundreds of people milling around First Chuukese Church of Honolulu, which
Onamwar founded in 2000, were asked to point out people he has helped,
they all looked around the courtyard and answered with the same word:
"Plenty."
Liwisa Kaspar, a 43-year-old mother, is one of Onamwar's admirers. When
she arrived here from Chuuk (formerly Truk) in 2005, she didn't know the
ins and outs of the American medical system - or how to pay for care.
"He helped me a lot with applying for insurance, how to get to hospital
and finding assistance," Kaspar said, adding that the pastor stressed how
she needed to get a job.
"He advised me not to rely (on government aid)," she said.
She took that advice: These days, she herself works in the health field,
as a medical assistant in a health center.
A DUTY TO HELP
Family in Chuuk is remarkably close. There are no words for "auntie" or
"uncle" or "cousin" - all are "mother" and "father" and "sister" and
"brother." Grandparents are "old mother" and "old father."
"It is a no-no to turn your back to your people," Onamwar said simply.
"It's our duty to help the newly arrived."
How do you serve the new transplants in a new land, yet help them hold
onto their identity? While Onamwar believes that keeping the language
alive here is imperative for keeping his culture intact, he also is
practical enough to admit Chuukese in Hawai'i must learn to navigate local
waters.
"You have to have money to live here," he advises the newly arrived. "Back
home, you have subsistence. (Here,) you must know how to use their money
wisely."
Another challenge for the employment counselor: combating "Micronesian
time," he said with a laugh.
"One o'clock means 2 o'clock or later - it's not that bad, as long as you
show up," Onamwar said. "I tell them (heeding the designated) time is very
important, especially with medical appointments."
Many in his Chuukese church came to America as part of the Compact of Free
Association, or COFA, to get medical care or take advantage of educational
opportunities. Schools here, he said, are more rigorous than back home.
First-generation arrivals like Tom Tomson, a young deacon at the church,
know it's not easy to adjust. Tomson tells of parents who bring their
school-age children to the hospital to help the parents communicate with
their doctors.
Tomson himself really learned English through his first job, at a Round
Table Pizza. Now he works for The Lunch Bunch, a school-lunch catering
company.
He sits up just a hair straighter when you ask about his education. Tomson
attended community college in Chuuk. That's quite something for a young
man who hails from the tiny island of Losap.
How small is it?
"You can stand on one side and see the people on the other side," Tomson
said.
The social scientist in Onamwar knows it's important to canvass the needs
of his countrymen who are not only coming here but coming here in greater
numbers than ever before. That's why he helped with a 2003 census of
Micronesians in Hawai'i.
Jut how many of the "COFAnesians," as Bill Wood, a professor of sociology
at the University of Hawai'i terms them, are here is a hotly debated
topic.
A 2003 census came up with 8,357. Onamwar estimates that there are 15,000
now, just from his nation of Chuuk alone. If you wanted a figure for all
COFAnesians, he'd guesstimate more than twice that. Burgeoning populations
are being found on the Big Island, in Hilo and, most recently, in Kona.
Another census is being planned for next year. It's one priority of the
Compact of Free Association task force, which has drafted a report for the
next legislative session outlining what is needed to serve this
fast-growing population.
CHURCHES HELP
Churches are often the first source of aid for the newly arrived. Sekap
Esah, president of Micronesians United, said most - 90 percent to 95
percent, he told members of the task force - of these arrivals are
Christian.
Onamwar's church is Congregationalist, like the Pohnpei group that meets
at Central Union Church on Sundays.
Micronesians seem to be equally divided between Catholics and Protestants.
"Of all the Micronesians, Chuukese are the largest group as Catholics,"
said the Rev. Lane Akiona, who works as a liaison between Micronesians and
the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.
About twice a year, a priest is sent from Chuuk to say Mass and administer
sacraments here, especially in Hilo. In Wai'anae, a Samoan-speaking
pastor, the Rev. Sebastian Chacko, attempts once a month to say Mass in
Chuukese.
Besides offering services in his native tongue, Onamwar makes sure some
customs from back home are upheld here.
After a recent service, a second offering was collected for a family
paying for a funeral in Chuuk. If someone dies elsewhere, the family wants
the body returned to Chuuk, whatever the cost.
Onamwar understands that impulse. Even after all the years he's spent in
Hawai'i, Onamwar still wants to be buried back home. "And I know they will
do it, too," he said, nodding his head to the people packing the church.
Will that change with the next generation, as they become more assimilated
into the American culture? "Eventually, that will die out," the social
scientist says.
ARRIVALS INCREASE
As a father of four and grandfather of six, Onamwar's goal is to keep his
culture alive, even as it moves and grows.
He recalls the days when he was one of just 10 Micronesian students at
HPU, working towards his bachelor's degree. "As the years went by, there
were more and more," he recalled.
Onamwar himself would travel back and forth between his home in one of the
Mortlock Islands to Hawai'i, but today his primary residence is here.
While his parents' marriage had been arranged, Onamwar bucked tradition
and chose his own wife. Two of his daughters are still in school here. And
he has his contract job with Goodwill Industries of Hawai'i and his church
keeping him rooted.
But he doesn't shy away from the emblems of his homeland.
The sermon is in Chuukese; as the music swells, Chuukese lyrics are
projected onto a screen with an overhead projector.
Women dressed in bright likoutant (mu'umu'u) wear their dark hair bundled
tight in buns and set with beautiful combs. In the main sanctuary of the
Church of the Crossroads, where the Chuukese church meets, women and
children take up the main sanctuary, while most of the men are segregated
to one side.
"They are deacons and pastors," offered Tomson, by way of an explanation.
As Onamwar looks out over the 200-plus congregants during his sermon, he
knows what his countrymen truly need: better education, medical care,
economic stability.
Life is changing for Chuukese both here and in Chuuk, where the government
is being weaned from COFA money.
"So many people have come here because of a change in mentality. ... Yes,
I understand we are struggling, trying to adapt to new ways. ... We'll
overcome barriers," he said. "It's a learning process."
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---------------------
3. Medicine for Gaza--Please Help
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:44:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Middle East Children's Alliance <meca@mecaforpeace.org>
Essential Medicine for Gaza
* The Palestinian International Campaign to End the Siege On Gaza
* Erez Crossing: Write letters of protest
Articles and Information
* Israeli Seige of Gaza Resulting in Huge Humanitarian Crisis
* Gaza's humanitarian crisis: Who's to blame for what?
* Barak insists on Gaza sanctions
* A Foundation not an Afterthought: Upholding International Law at
Annapolis
As another doomed Middle East "peace conference" begins in Annapolis,
Maryland, Palestinians' lives--especially in Gaza--grow more desperate
every day. Israel has declared the Gaza Strip "hostile territory," cutting
off electricity; preventing vital goods like fuel, medicine and sewage
treatment equipment from entering; and keeping university students and
seriously ill patents from leaving. Last week, a cancer patient died
waiting for permission to get treatment outside the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile,
the Israeli Army regularly invades the Strip, maiming and killing
civilians.
I'm writing now to ask you to please help MECA send a shipment of medicine
to Gaza.
MECA's Director of Gaza Projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, has compiled a list
of the most urgently-needed medicines and medical equipment, including
antibiotics, syringes, rubella vaccine, pain medications and other
life-saving medicine and supplies. We are working with Palestinian and
international humanitarian organizations to procure the aid; to get it
through the Israeli blockade; and to distribute it to hospitals and
clinics throughout the Gaza Strip.
I know that, unlike most of the world, you have not forgotten Gaza. Many
times MECA has come to you to help the children there and you, and
hundreds of other MECA supporters, have responded quickly and generously.
Please take a moment to make the most generous contribution you can today!
Sincerely,
Barbara Lubin
P.S. We have just learned that the medicines Dr. El-Farra requested will
cost more than MECA has available right now. And it will take at least two
months to get through Israeli authorities. So, please, make a special
contribution now so we can send as much aid as possible--and get it to the
people who desperately need it, as soon as we can. Thank you!
The Palestinian International Campaign to End the Siege On Gaza
Breaking the siege on Gaza
MECA's Director of Gaza Projects is working alongside dozens of other
activists, human rights advocates, academics, and businessmen in the Gaza
Strip to mobilize the international community and end the siege of Gaza.
Read more about the Campaign
Erez Crossing: Write letters of protest
Write letters demanding Erez Crossing be opened for patients seeking
medical treatment outside of Gaza. Read more about the situation and where
you can send your letters from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
Make a contribution to MECA today! You can send food and medicine to
Palestinian and Iraqi children, and support programs that give them a
chance to learn, grow, and envision a better future.
Middle East Children's Alliance
Email: meca@mecaforpeace.org
Web: http://www.mecaforpeace.org
Middle East Children's Alliance | 901 Parker Street | Berkeley | CA |
94710
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. PKHCC 2008 Hawaiian Moon Calendar
From: lcruz
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 10:50 PM
email pee wee ryan directly yvryan@ksbe.edu. she's keanu's aunty. in case
you want a hawaiian moon calendar...
----- Original Message ----- From: Pee Wee Ryan
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 5:26 PM
Aloha e ku`u hoa, As you may know our 2008 Hawaiian Moon Calendar as it
relates to Fishing & Farming is 'hot off the press' & starts on December
10. The sales price printed on the calendar is $ 8.95 + 5.00 postage &
handling. For many years we've offered it to civic club members at $5
each. This year however, we have increased that price to $6.00 per
calendar.
Please let either Brandy or myself know if you're interested in ordering
calendars. Of course you could save on postage & handling charges by
picking it up directly from us on Oahu.
Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Mahalo & aloha / pw
Yvonne 'PeeWee' Ryan
Prince Kuhio Hawaiian Civic Club
Facsimile: (808) 524-7013
Email: yvryan@ksbe.edu
________________________________________________________________________________
5. [Monica Benderman] What do you know of war?
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:51:43 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
http://www.counterpunch.org/benderman11262007.html
November 26, 2007
"Have You Ever Had to Kill Anyone?"
What Do You Know of War?
By MONICA BENDERMAN
The doors have opened on another holiday season. Utility workers have
spent hours hoisting holiday decorations to the tops of buildings and
attaching lights to all the telephone poles in town. It won't be long
before the entrance displays of massive armored fighting vehicles that
represent the muscle of the Rock of the Marne at Fort Stewart, Georgia are
covered with lights.
A few hundred yards down the road from the main gate of Fort Stewart, the
newly built Chapel Complex was recently christened. Red brick, with angled
lines and a pristine white steeple; looking more like a courthouse than a
place of worship, the building stands ready for the soldiers who will be
returning from their year long deployment to Iraq next spring.
Across the street, on the grounds of the PX shopping mall stands another
display of shiny pinwheels planted in the ground. The sign behind the
display reads, "These pinwheels represent the 138 cases of spousal abuse
confirmed at Fort Stewart in fiscal year 2007." In 2006 the sign read "131
cases of spousal abuse" and another read "191 cases of child abuse." What
will 2008 bring?
My husband filed a conscientious objector application in 2005. He did so
because of his firsthand experiences with this war, and with the abusive
treatment the soldiers and veterans faced as they struggled to fulfill the
oath they took to serve their country. He did so to call attention to the
threats and intimidation military personnel faced, and the lack of respect
they received for their service.
The military command refused to accept the application, choosing to find a
way to put my husband in prison as punishment for his choice instead. As
we worked to see that due process was given to my husband's choice, I had
the opportunity, one evening, to be in the same room with the command
sergeant major of my husband's battalion. I took the opportunity to ask
this senior NCO if he would mind my asking him some questions, civilian to
civilian. He said "No" so I asked.
"Have you ever had to kill anyone?"
The man put his hands behind his head, stared up at the ceiling and
responded: "Yes I have had to shoot to kill many times."
"Didn't it bother you at all to know that you had killed another man?"
With his hands still behind his head and one leg crossed over another, he
leaned back in his chair and said "You know I've got 22 years in the Army.
You learn that you don't think about what you do, you just do it. I've
never seen the results of my shooting. That's the problem with the 'boys'
they're bringing in today. I tell them and tell them in training, don't
look back just shoot 'rat-a-tat-a- tat' (holding his hand out as a weapon)
and don't look back. When we was first starting out, the soldiers I came
in with and me, we all learned in training, shoot and look away walk away
but don't look at what you've done. If I could get anything across to
these new 'boys' it's that they can't look. I see them; they shoot and
then look to see if they hit their target, if they did good, if they
followed orders. I see their eyes and there's fear, and I know right away
if there's going to be trouble with that one or the other by their face
after they see the result of the explosion. We've got to teach these boys
to shoot and look away, and they wouldn't be so bothered by what they
did."
"What do you think of the war?"
The man didn't move much. He hunched his shoulders a little, looked across
the desk and said "That's political stuff and I don't get involved in none
of that political stuff. I do my job. If I have to go back to Iraq I go,
and I take care of my soldiers. I care about my soldiers, but I don't have
no business paying attention to whether the war is good or bad, or if the
president did right. I have 22 years in, and I have to do what I'm ordered
to do so I don't ask no questions."
"What do you think about conscientious objection?"
This time he leaned forward a little, stretched and took a breath before
he re-crossed his legs and folded his hands back behind his head. "There
ain't no true conscientious objectors. I've been in a long time, and I've
seen only one or two that might have been real religious. It's been my
experience that when a soldier brings in an application, I always sit and
talk with them and ninety-nine percent of the time he's not a
conscientious objector he's just got major problems with his command.
Whenever anyone brings in one of those applications it's because there's a
bad command and we got to do something about fixing that. If we do the
soldier ain't got no more problems and he can go on doing his duty, but we
got to get him to talk and tell us what the command is doing wrong, 'cause
it's not religion, it's a bad command."
Throughout the conversation my husband was standing beside me at parade
rest, having invoked his right to not respond to any questions the
sergeant major wanted to ask him. At the time he was under investigation
by the command which claimed his conscientious objector application was
simply a protestation of the war, not worthy of their time. The command
sought to charge him with "making disloyal statements" and "disrespecting
a superior officer' for having spoken out in an effort to find help for
the soldiers in his unit being threatened and abused by his command.
My husband went to prison. The sergeant major went back to Iraq.
Now, suicide rates are increasing among military personnel. Spousal abuse
is becoming more of a problem and no doubt more children are afraid of the
empty look they see in their returning parents' eyes.
We tell the soldiers to do what they can to get out of the military to
avoid returning to Iraq. It will not solve the problem.
Building a multi-million dollar chapel complex on one military
installation is not going to fix what has been broken inside a man or a
woman who has been to war.
The anger and rage of those who have been in combat will not go away
simply because we tell them to get out while they can, to "walk a
different road" without showing them where that road will lead.
Going to prison to speak out about what is happening to our military
personnel is not going to make things right, not unless we, those of us
who claim to care about our "troops" find a way to work together to do our
part.
We can't think that simply taking someone out of the war also takes them
out of combat. In war, the rage makes sense and the killing of an enemy
can be easily justified. War doesn't end when the soldier comes home, and
the nightmare of combat only grows darker when the battle waged is waged
inside; intended to protect a place and loved ones that once meant peace
from the anger of an experience that cannot be left behind.
When these men and women return home and face those they love, that anger
can become a seed inside which feeds and grows off of memories of the
horrors, the nightmares and the need for release but at home there's no
battlefield on which to let go, there are only children, a spouse, or
themselves when they come to fear the damage they could do if left
uncontrolled, and when "help" is only a word, too many will lose the
battle.
People say they understand trust me you don't; not if you haven't felt it
inside, or stood helpless wondering what more can be done to simply bring
peace to the heart of the person you want so much to heal.
Holiday lights are far from bright enough to light the path of those who
need the peace this holiday is meant to honor.
The pristine steeple on Fort Stewart's new chapel complex may see the day
when every seat in the building is occupied. Experience tells me that
those in attendance may find sanctuary but they will not find peace, even
if the room is full.
Men and women volunteered to put their lives on the line to defend the
peace our laws were meant to give. Their service has been abused by
everyone who has stood and watched this travesty of war unfold; offering
words of help only to turn and look in another direction when more than
words were needed.
People will write and say, "They volunteered. They got what they
deserved."
The war is coming home and if Americans are not willing to stand together
to fix what we are all responsible for breaking, they will know firsthand
what it means to "get what is deserved."
It's time to stare into the eyes of what we have allowed to happen.
Peace is not simply a word, and war does not go away when you look in a
different direction.
What do you know of war?
----------
Monica Benderman is the wife of Sgt. Kevin Benderman, a ten-year Army
veteran who served a combat tour in Iraq and a year in prison for his
public protest of war and the destruction it causes to civilians and
to American military personnel. Please visit their website,
www.BendermanDefense.org to learn more.
Monica and Kevin may be reached at mdawnb@coastalnow.net
=====----------------------------------------------------------------
6. Superferry delayed, Restart date shifts to Dec. 6 because of damage to
a barge
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:22:18 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
http://starbulletin.com/2007/11/27/news/story02.html
Ferry delayed
Restart date shifts to Dec. 6 because of damage to a barge
STORY SUMMARY »
WAILUKU »
The Hawaii Superferry has pushed back its start-up date to Dec. 6 from
Saturday because of minor damage from wave surges to a barge at Kahului
Harbor.
Superferry spokesman Lori Abe said some time is needed to align the barge
used to help in the loading and unloading of vehicles from the Superferry.
Maui Tomorrow Executive Director Irene Bowie said a 2005 report noted
there was a problem of swells 3 feet and higher in the harbor during
winter.
"If this is an example of how they've been doing their homework, I'm not
getting a comfortable feeling from this," said Bowie, whose group
challenged the Superferry because an environmental study had not been done
for the harbor improvements.
The Superferry is notifying passengers that they can get refunds or
reschedule their travel booked between Saturday and Dec. 5.
Starting Dec. 6, Hawaii Superferry will offer a daily round-trip voyage
between Oahu and Maui leaving Honolulu at 6:30 a.m. and arriving in
Kahului at 10:15 a.m., departing from Kahului at 11:15 a.m. and arriving
in Honolulu at 2:15 p.m.
Superferry President John Garibaldi said he appreciated the efforts of
state transportation officials to prepare the port facility.
Meanwhile, Maui police met with citizens yesterday to talk about laws
governing protests.
FULL STORY »
By Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com WAILUKU » Minor damage from wave surges to a
barge at Kahului Harbor has pushed back the start-up date for the Hawaii
Superferry between Oahu and Maui to Dec. 6 from Saturday.
Superferry spokesman Lori Abe said while repairs to the barge are expected
to be finished by Friday, additional time is needed to make adjustments.
The barge is used to help in the loading and unloading of vehicles from
the Superferry.
The Superferry Alakai is expected to be on Maui next week before service
starts to make sure the alignment is correct with the pier and barge.
Passengers who have booked travel between Saturday and Dec. 5 are being
contacted for refunds or accommodated for travel beginning Dec. 6,
Superferry officials said.
Starting Dec. 6, Hawaii Superferry will offer a daily round-trip voyage
between Oahu and Maui, leaving Honolulu at 6:30 a.m. and arriving in
Kahului at 10:15 a.m., then departing from Kahului at 11:15 a.m. and
arriving in Honolulu at 2:15 p.m.
Superferry President John Garibaldi said he appreciated the efforts of
state transportation officials to prepare the port facility.
Garibaldi said Hawaii Superferry was working to make sure it is in
compliance with new regulations and is providing additional staff
training.
Meanwhile, Maui police met with citizens including the group Maui Tomorrow
yesterday to talk about laws governing protest.
Maui Tomorrow Executive Director Irene Bowie said her group, along with
the Sierra Club and the Pacific Whale Foundation, wants to have a protest
rally at the harbor but has not set a date.
Bowie said she wanted to know what would be allowed at the harbor and
where demonstrators could hold the rally.
Deputy Police Chief Gary Yabuta said the police were trying to work with
citizens who want to express their opinions.
"We're here to protect their right to do so. ... We want to work with the
community to make sure everything they do and we do is legal," Yabuta
said.
Harbor officials received a report of minor damage to the pier and the
barge from wave surges in mid-November.
Harbormaster Steve Pfister said rubber fenders were damaged and needed to
be replaced.
Pfister said while some chains snapped, other mooring lines held and the
barge never broke free.
He said a tugboat was called in to hold the barge in place during the
period of wave surges.
Bowie said an Army Corps of Engineers report noted in 2005 that there was
a problem of swells 3 feet and higher occurring in the harbor during
winter months.
"It's no surprise," she said. "If this is an example of how they've been
doing their homework, I'm not getting a comfortable feeling from this."
=====----------------------------------------------------------------
7. New NT deputy chief to push Rudd on intervention (Australia)
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 19:53:11 +0000
From: Ana <uriohau@yahoo.com.au>
New NT deputy leader Marion Scrymgour makes a heartfelt plea for the
stolen generation at a news conference in Darwin yesterday.
Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin
November 28, 2007
MARION Scrymgour says she has never pulled her punches and isnot about to
start now she has become the highest-ranked Aboriginalleader of any
Australian government.
"We are kidding ourselves if we said there is a child sleepingout there
who is safe tonight ^× that is not the case," said MsScrymgour, speaking
about the intervention in the NorthernTerritory's remote indigenous
communities that has the support ofLabor Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd.
Ms Scrymgour, who was elected the territory's deputy leader onMonday, told
journalists yesterday that six months after the HowardGovernment started
spending hundreds of millions of dollars on theintervention there was
still "social devastation" in thecommunities.
"We have seen Aboriginal people leave their communities en masseand they
have come into our suburbs because of the confusion, theanger and the
anxiety that is out there," she said.
Ms Scrymgour, a feisty and controversial mother of three whowill take
charge of indigenous affairs after a reshuffle of the NTGovernment's
cabinet this week, has put Mr Rudd on notice she willpush for changes to
key elements of the intervention ^× whichthe Howard government described
as an emergency response to protectvulnerable indigenous children.
"I've always said quite clearly the acquisition of land and theremoval of
permits does not go to the protection of children," MsScrymgour said.
Ms Scrymgour, 47, whose father was a member of the so-called"stolen
generation", made clear she intends to take the lead in"putting a new
plan" to the Rudd Government to tackle indigenousdisadvantage.
She said she supported some aspects of the intervention,including extra
police and money to build schools and houses.
But she added: "We need to put forward a plan that will bestrategic in
areas of real need."
The NT's new Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, who replaced ClareMartin
after she stepped aside on Monday, is seeking a meeting withMr Rudd to
discuss the plan as hundreds of people working for theintervention
taskforce in 73 prescribed communities wonder abouttheir future.
Ms Scrymgour lashed out yesterday at the impact 99-year leaseshad had on
indigenous people on the Tiwi islands, north of Darwin,where her mother
was born and which she represents in the NTParliament.
"It's clear people didn't understand the concept of what washappening,"
she said.
"They are not happy ^Å they didn't know what they weregetting themselves
into."
Mr Rudd and whomever he appoints to be his indigenous affairsminister will
find Ms Scrymgour a formidable Aboriginaladvocate.
She created splits in Labor when she last month described theintervention
as the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious newMcCarthyism" before she was
forced to concede her comments were "abit over the top".
One of six Aboriginal MPs in the NT government, Ms Scrymgouroften clashed
in private with Ms Martin.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/new-nt-deputy-to-push-rudd-on-intervention/2007/11/27/1196036892903.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. US Army Reports Rising Desertion Rates
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:13:24 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
Companion piece:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07329/836618-85.stm
Sunday, November 25, 2007
By Wade Malcolm, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Iraq vets' troubles appear long after return
>>Soldiers discharged for misconduct lose their disability benefits
even though "that behavior was a sign or a symptom of their
underlying mental health issue," Dr. Xenakis said.
Sgt. Johnson said he's received encouragement to appeal the Army's
initial decision to discharge him for misconduct. He may try to fight
for his disability benefits, but he has no interest in preserving his
military career.
"I don't have any fight left in me when it comes to the Army," he
said. "Besides, if I fought to stay in, I would just get sent to Iraq
again anyway."<<
=========
>>Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates^Òs senior
military assistant, Peter Chiarelli, asserted that the military must be
better structured for open-ended occupation. According to a piece by Art
Pine in the National Journal November 12, Chiarelli wrote, ^ÓLike it or
not, until further notice the US government has decided that the military
largely owns the job of nation-building.... We need to accept this reality
instead of resisting it.^Ô
The National Journal cited Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst at Boston
University, who advocated the institution of a ^Ósmall-scale draft,
supplementing the current all-volunteer force with a small cadre of
conscripts. One possibility,^Ô the Journal specified, ^Ómaking military
service an option in a broader program in which young people would be
required to do a stint in some kind of ^Ñnational service.^Ò <<
----------
http://www.countercurrents.org/spencer271107.htm
US Army Reports Rising Desertion Rates
By Naomi Spencer
27 November, 2007
WSWS.org
After a decline in desertion rates following an initial exodus before the
preemptive strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq, the military is recording a
rise in the number of soldiers who abandon their posts. The Associated
Press reported November 16 that desertions this year stand 80 percent
higher than in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq.
According to the US Army, 4,698 soldiers^×about 9 in every 1,000^×
deserted in the fiscal year ending September 2007. Over the same period,
the Department of Defense reported 1,163 total US deaths and 8,190
wounded. Overall, desertion is the largest cause of personnel
attrition^×over fatalities and injuries^×serious enough to result in
military discharge.
A deserter is an active duty service member away from his or her unit
without permission for more than 30 days. The Army reports that more than
three quarters of its deserters are soldiers in their first term of
enlistment.
Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources with the Army, told the
Associated Press that soldiers generally exit the military in one of four
ways: They are determined unable to meet fitness requirements; they are
found to be ^Óunable to adapt to the military^Ô; they violate the
so-called ^Ódon^Òt ask, don^Òt tell^Ô policy prohibiting someone who is
gay from revealing their orientation; or they simply go absent without
leave and do not report for duty.
For the Army, the desertion rate for 2007 is 42 percent higher than that
of the previous year, when 3,301 deserted. In 2005, 2,011 Army soldiers
deserted, representing the lowest annual rate of the war period. In 2001
and 2002, the number of desertions was similar to the most recent figures
for the Army (4,597 and 4,483, respectively) before they began to
decline.
Historically, the military has not actively pursued deserters. Troops who
leave their posts are denied veterans benefits and their names are
permanently added to a national database of fugitives. If they are picked
up by civilian law enforcement, they are handed over to military police
for court martial.
However, Army prosecutions of desertions and other unauthorized absences
have greatly increased over the past four years in an attempt to deter
other would-be deserters, according to Army lawyers in interviews with the
New York Times earlier this year. In a report published April 9, the Times
noted that from 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army
prosecutions for desertion was triple the preceding five-year period, and
prosecutions of similar absences have doubled. This increase in
disciplinary action is an unmistakable acknowledgment by the chain of
command that the rise in desertions represents not a fluke but a sign of
things to come.
Pointing to the far higher Vietnam-era desertion rates, which rose as high
as 5 percent, the military has insisted the current rise in desertion
rates has nothing to do either with the so-called war on terror or with
mass antiwar sentiments.
According to the Army, lower rates in 2003-2005 were the result of
successful efforts to identify soldiers likely to desert during basic
training, before they were assigned to their posts.
The current higher desertion rates, the Army insists, are too small an
increase to attribute to any factors other than personal or familial
stress. As Army planning director Wallace put it for the Associated Press,
^ÓWe^Òre asking a lot of soldiers these days. They^Òre humans. They have
all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I^Òm sure it
has to do with the stress of being a soldier.^Ô
What the military will not acknowledge is the obvious connection between
^Óissues back home^Ô and military culture and the war itself. Above all,
the open-ended and brutal nature of colonial-style occupation has taken a
psychological toll on the soldiers charged with carrying it out on the
ground, as well as on their families and friends in the United States.
Consequently, morale among active duty troops is low and stress is very
high.
The military has encouraged a dehumanizing attitude in its ranks toward
the Iraqi population, which is understandably hostile to the occupying
force. A survey conducted a year ago by the Pentagon of soldiers stationed
in Iraq found that more than a third thought torture of captured Iraqis
was acceptable. The survey also found that destruction of civilian
property, assault and abuse of civilians by troops were utterly routine.
The same survey, conducted by the military^Òs Mental Health Advisory Team,
found that 40 percent of Iraq-deployed soldiers were concerned about
uncertain redeployment dates and extended tours. Lengthened tours of duty
exacerbate exhaustion and stress, as well as domestic difficulties. Last
year, a quarter of soldiers reported marital problems, and 20 percent were
in the process of divorce.
When soldiers return home, there is no guarantee they will not be
redeployed even when diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or other
psychiatric disorders. Nearly 40 percent of Army and half of National
Guard personnel who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been
diagnosed with some form of mental illness.
Senior brass readily admit that the military is stretched to the breaking
point, even as preparations are drawn up for an expansion of the war into
Iran. Yet how to resolve the numbers crisis poses a major policy problem
for the current administration and the Democrats, who recognize that a
re-institution of the draft would have a devastating effect on public
acquiescence of the war.
The great majority of deserters during the Vietnam-era had been
conscripted; by comparison, the ^Óall-volunteer^Ô composition of the
current military^×drawn almost entirely from the poorest layers of the
working class and secured with enticements of signing bonuses and college
tuition^×has undoubtedly acted as a suppressant upon desertion rates.
Since 2003, the Army has greatly relaxed recruitment and enlistment
standards in order to wage the two wars and increase numbers for future
occupations. Over the past few years, the proportion of Army recruits
without high school diplomas has risen from fewer than 10 percent to 24
percent. About 20 percent of current recruits would not have been accepted
before the Iraq invasion, including a higher percentage of recruits issued
^Ómoral waivers^Ô for criminal records. The Army has also increased
monetary inducements for officers, including bonuses of up to $35,000 to
retain sergeants and other mid- level commanders.
Coinciding with the troop surge early this year, the Bush administration
called for an additional 65,000 Army troops and 27,000 Marines over the
next five years, putting pressure on the military to find volunteers. An
analysis by the Congressional Budget Office in April suggested the
addition would cost $65 billion, not including the expense of extra
training facilities and likely hospital care.
Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates^Òs senior military
assistant, Peter Chiarelli, asserted that the military must be better
structured for open-ended occupation. According to a piece by Art Pine in
the National Journal November 12, Chiarelli wrote, ^ÓLike it or not, until
further notice the US government has decided that the military largely
owns the job of nation-building.... We need to accept this reality instead
of resisting it.^Ô
The National Journal cited Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst at Boston
University, who advocated the institution of a ^Ósmall-scale draft,
supplementing the current all-volunteer force with a small cadre of
conscripts. One possibility,^Ô the Journal specified, ^Ómaking military
service an option in a broader program in which young people would be
required to do a stint in some kind of ^Ñnational service.^Ò ^Ô
This proposal has been high on the Democratic Party platform since the
2006 congressional elections. Bacevich told the Journal, ^ÓA draft would
involve a broader spectrum of Americans with the military and would serve
as a constraint for policy makers.... But there^Òs a need to begin
debating the issue because the heavy lifting for future Iraqs is going to
be done by the Army.^Ô
===== --------------------------------------------------------------------
9. Tonga: US Military Harvesting In The Pasifik
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:23:19 -1000
From: mike reitz <mreitz@pacbell.net>
US - Tonga Defence Cooperation Program Continues With Even More
Opportunities
27/11/2007 3:02:47 p.m.
[IMAGE]The US Defence Attaché for Tonga, Lt. Col. Patrick Reardon
(pictured left, in the middle) is in the Kingdom for the annual defence
talk between the two countries.
Lt. Col. Kuli Fakalolo of the Tonga Defence Services said that this
meeting was for the upcoming 2008/2009 year. The last meeting was supposed
to be held last year but due to a busy work program, the meeting was
pushed forward to this year in January.
Col Reardon said that this round of talks involved, as usual, discussions
on training and on the security cooperation arrangement between Tonga and
the United States.
Col Reardon said that the relationship between the US and Tonga has been
ongoing for a long time now and since he was appointed to the attaché
post, he has visited the Kingdom more than ten times making it a point to
visit once every quarter, sometimes more if the need arises.
Col. Reardon added that today the meeting was addressing the issue of
annual international military education and training, amongst other
things.
"The annual international military education and training program is where
we send officers and enlisted soldiers from the Kingdom to the US for a
variety of training; whether it's military related skills or
administrative type of skills...even computer skills. We send them over
there for a wide range of courses," Col. Reardon said.
According to the Colonel, these annual talks are also of the same nature
that the TDS carries out with Australia and New Zealand.
"TDS would put in a course bid as to the type of course they want for the
upcoming year. They would ask us what courses they can get and then we use
that request, we go back and contact our Training Manager and we see what
we can get for the country," added Col. Reardon.
Col. Reardon said that this past year (2007) has been a very successful
one for Tonga because it was the first time in the security cooperation
arrangement between the two countries that they were able to send an
officer to the Army & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
in the United States - the first time ever in their history.
"Also this past year, we were able to get a cadet to the military academy.
He is the first ever in our history to get to go to one of the military
academies," added Col. Reardon.
The TDS officer, Latu Vaha'i from Popua, is in his first semester at the
Westpoint Academy in New York. According to Lt. Col. [IMAGE]Kuli Fakalolo
(pictured right) of the TDS, Vaha'i is at the academy for 4-years during
which he will pursue an undergraduate degree as well as undergo military
training.
Col. Reardon is also in the Kingdom to interview 3 potential candidates
from the TDS for military academies in the US.
"They could go to any of the academies - the military academy in
Westpoint, New York; or the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; or to
the Airforce Academy in Colorado Springs, in Colorado," said Col. Reardon.
Col. Reardon says that one of the 3 potential candidates that he will be
interviewing will end up in the Airforce, or navy or army academy
depending on what the TDS Commander sees as a priority area. However, Col.
Reardon said that it would more likely be in the naval academy as they had
already sent someone to Westpoint.
Col. Reardon says that the relationship between the US and Tonga is
growing stronger everyday and more so since Tonga's decision to join the
US in Iraq.
"Certainly that's not an easy thing for a small nation like Tonga to do,
but it had decided to do that and Washington has really taken notice of
that," said Col. Reardon.
[IMAGE]He added that because of this the upcoming year should see more
opportunity for more training in the US.
Col. Reardon said that it was always a pleasure coming to the Kingdom as
the people were very friendly and it was "just like home" and that he
looked forward to returning every time.
Col. Reardon returns tomorrow but a team of 2 officers and 1 civilian will
arrive in the Kingdom tomorrow morning to evaluate and discuss Tonga's
next deployment to Iraq - the 196th Infantry Brigade - who is to leave in
the first quarter next year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. The Peace Center trees-join us
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:28:50 -1000
From: MarshaRose <mrjoy@hawaii.rr.com>
Join Us!
At
The Justice and Reconciliation Center
19 N. Pauahi Street
Honolulu's Chinatown 96817
Happy Holidays
[IMAGE][IMAGE]We, The Pacific Justice and Reconciliation Center, are
selling Locally Grown Bug Free Trees as a fund raiser. Please order your
tax deducible tree today. mrjoy@hawaii.rr.com
Reservations are necessary because the tree will be cut just for you.
They will be cut December 7th, the day of delivery for First Friday and
delivered to the Peace Center 19 N. Pauahi Street, Honolulu's Chinatown.
Trees 5 feet and under are $40.00. Hand made wreaths are $35.00
You say you do not celebrate Christmas. The majority of people in Hawaii
celebrate some other tradition. However, trees and lights are a part of
many traditions.
We, The Peace Center, honor and respect the more than 30 Religious,
Spiritual, and Secular Traditions Celebrated in Hawai'i during the month
of December from the Day of Advent to Zoroastrian.
There is so much more richness and splendor, depth and intensity to
December than just the commercialism of Christmas.
Hawaii is undeniably the most religiously diverse state in the nation.
According to figures published in the 2000 State of Hawaii Data Book, only
29% of Hawaii residents belong to any of the Christian sects. The Buddhist
sects account for approximately 100,000 residents or about 8%, while the
Jewish population is estimated to be around 10,000 or less than 1%.
These numbers leave 62% or 751,000 residents outside the religious
mainstream. These residents are Baha'i, Hindus, Jain's, Muslims,
Scientologists, Shintoists, Sikhs, Taoists, Tenrikyoists, Zoroastrians,
atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and those indifferent to religion.
The plethora of non- Christian people has wielded great influence on the
culture and language of Hawai'i. And their special traditional December
celebrations must be acknowledged just as we venerate Christmas.
Recognizing these holy days not only brings awareness of the diversity
within the population, but also instills pride in people who celebrate
them. Some people may be embarrassed or shy to acknowledge these practices
or holy days, which are not yet a part of the greater culture. A major
benefit of living in such an open and multi-cultural region as Hawaii is
that people of all backgrounds and cultures can share and enjoy each
other's similarities as well as differences.
It is clear that such a rich and diverse history of traditions in our
state must be shared among all our children so that our mission, to bring
a culture of Peace and Non-violence to the Children of the World, can be
fulfilled.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Hawaii Land: Institutional Investors Moving In
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:40:45 -1000
From: mike reitz <mreitz@pacbell.net>
Big Spenders
Global investors shake up Hawaii's list of wealthiest landowners
Hawaii Business, 11/07 By Cathy S. Cruz-George
Last July, The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX), a New York-based private
equity firm, announced its $26 billion acquisition of Hilton Hotels Corp.
Deemed one of the largest buyouts in hotel history, the deal combined
Hilton, operator of 2,800 hotels worldwide, with Blackstone, manager of
$92 billion in assets. The transaction is scheduled to close before the
end of this year.
As a result of the Hilton buyout, Blackstone for the first time becomes
one of the most powerful landowners in Hawaii, ranking No. 3, right behind
No. 2 landowner Queen Liliuokalani Trust, according to this year's list of
Wealthiest Landowners.
Hilton owns half-a-dozen hotels in Waikiki, on Kauai and on Maui plus the
Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa on Oahu and the Hilton Waikoloa
Village on the Big Island. Prior to the acquisition, Blackstone already
owned two Marriott properties on the Big Island and on Maui. The combined
portfolio gives Blackstone 240 acres of land and buildings valued at more
than $1.2 billion.
When Hawaii Business first introduced its "Wealthiest Landowners" feature
in 2001, the annual list read like a who's who of Japanese conglomerates,
legacy lands and kamaaina families. The usual suspects, if you will. But
as large institutional investors, hotel chains and brokers from the U.S.
Mainland began buying property in the Islands, new names appeared on the
list, such as Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc. (NYSE:GGP),
Massachusetts-based HRPT Properties (NYSE:HRP) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:
MS), whose global headquarters is in New York.
That's no surprise to Mike Hamasu, director of consulting and research for
Colliers Monroe Friedlander, whose firm keeps track of real estate
investments in Hawaii. He says that in 2001, the commercial sector saw a
total of $850 million in retail, hotel and industrial transactions. By the
end of 2005, that amount quadrupled to $4.3 billion. The reasons were
simple: high hotel occupancy, solid visitor arrivals, low interest rates
and a strong demand for office space.
This infusion of global capital isn't surprising to Joseph Toy of
Hospitality Advisors, which publishes reports on Hawaii visitor trends.
This recent surge of investments is the third cycle, he says. First, the
Japanese came and bought land in the 1980s and early 1990s. A few years
later, U.S. investors purchased the Japan-owned properties at distressed
prices. After repositioning their assets, the same U.S. investors in the
mid-2000s sold them to other U.S. investors at much higher prices. We now
are in that cycle. "What's good is that a lot of the landowners have a
more methodical approach to understanding the value of their assets," Toy
says. "At one time, they might have been more risk-averse, but now their
fiduciary duties are to continue to move their assets along with the
rising tide of values."
Says Hamasu, "We now have all of this institutional money that can afford
to buy $200 million to $300 million in properties, and that has funneled a
lot of these people to Hawaii in terms of interest."
NEW SOPHISTICATION
One of those interested parties, Morgan Stanley Real Estate, also appears
for the first time on this year's list of Wealthiest Landowners. Morgan
Stanley, which ranks No. 11, owns 10,819 acres of Hawaii land and
buildings valued at $870 million. The company does not have a local office
but operates from San Francisco and partners with local investors. Its
primary focus is industrial and office real estate on Oahu, and resort-
and second-home communities on the Neighbor Islands. Hawaii, in
particular, the resort market, is strategically important for Morgan
Stanley. "In the next five to 10 years, Hawaii will benefit from strong
demand from Asian markets, particularly China and Japan," says Amy Price,
executive director of Morgan Stanley in San Francisco. "We think the
luxury resorts as a whole will benefit from baby-boomer growth, and that
the weak U.S. dollar benefits U.S. hotels and resort communities in large
markets." Last year, Morgan Stanley acquired $36.1 billion in global
assets, and in the past 20 months bought and sold the following in Hawaii:
* In February 2007, Morgan Stanley, in a partnership with local
investor Everett Dowling, bought the Makena Resort on Maui for $575
million, from Japan-based Seibu Holdings Inc. The purchase included
two golf courses and the Maui Prince Hotel. Morgan Stanley was the
majority equity investor in the deal.
* In August 2006, the company sold the Pearl Highlands Center to Boston
company AEW Capital Management for more than $130 million, just 18
months after it purchased the shopping center from Chicago-based La
Salle Investment Management Inc.
* In September 2007, it purchased four office properties worth $98
million from Arroyo Realty Partners. The deal included the Haseko
Center and Ocean View Center in downtown Honolulu, the Airport Center
and the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center.
* In March 2005, Morgan Stanley, in a partnership with local investor
Jeff Stone, acquired the Princeville Resort on Maui for more than
$161 million. The 9,000-acre property includes a golf course and
shopping centers. Morgan Stanley was the majority equity investor in
the deal.
* In April 2007, the company purchased Florida-based CNL Hotels &
Resorts Inc. for $6 billion, which included the Grand Wailea Resort
Hotel & Spa on Maui.
What's interesting about the Grand Wailea is that both its landowner,
Morgan Stanley, and management company, Blackstone Group, are among
Hawaii's wealthiest landowners. In February 2006, Hilton Corp. acquired
the Grand Wailea's management contract and added the resort to Hilton's
elite Waldorf-Astoria Collection. "We don't think the purchase of Hilton
by Blackstone will have an effect on our day-to-day operations," says
Matthew M. Bailey, managing director of the Grand Wailea. "Since [the
Waldorf's rebranding], we've rebuilt the management team and retrained
them to raise service levels." The Wailea's efforts to bring Waldorf-
Astoria to Hawaii is symbolic of the investment surge. When buyers
reposition their newly acquired properties, millions of new dollars Ð and
an added level of sophistication Ð pour into the Islands. "Clearly,
Hawaii's product is strengthening," Toy says. "Hawaii's market is also
looking at different types of products like fractionals, timeshares and
resort towns. The sophisticated investors are doing that."
ASIAN CAPITAL
As U.S. investors join the ranks of Hawaii's wealthiest landowners, you
can't help but wonder: What about the Japanese?
They're definitely still on the list. Kokusai Kogyo Co. Ltd. ranks No. 10
this year, with $941 million in assets. It owns Sheraton properties in
Hawaii and operates taxi and bus services in Japan. The other Japanese
landowner, Seibu Railway Co. Ltd., ranks No. 19, with land and buildings
valued at $344 million. Seibu owns Prince hotels in Hawaii, minus the Maui
Prince, which it sold last February to Morgan Stanley and Dowling.
About three years ago, Seibu and Kokusai Kogyo had financial problems in
Japan. Both companies were bailed out by Cerberus Group, a New York-based
private-equity company known for taking over distressed portfolios.
Cerberus (named after the mythical, three-headed guard dog that protects
the gates of Hades) now owns a 65 percent interest in Kokusai Kogyo and a
30 percent interest in Seibu.
"Seibu and Kokusai Kogyo were huge, iconic organizations," says Steve
Somberero, President of Chaney Brooks, a Honolulu based commercial real
estate firm that does business in Hawaii, Asia and the Pacific. "Dynastic
families such as theTsutsumi's of the Seibu group, the Osano's of the
Kokusai Kogyo Group and the Nakauchi's of the Daiei Group were considered
sacred "untouchables" that can do no wrong. However, these companies
overextended themselves and were caught in the major crashes that took
place in Japan. They ended up holding notes that were nonperforming." His
company, Chaney Brooks, last September oversaw the $45 million purchase of
land on Kaheka Street by Japan-based Don Quijote (Don Quijote took over
Daiei stores in Hawaii). Sombrero believes that given time, the dynastic
families may once again come out of the ashes to buy back the notes from
Cerberus as soon as the portfolios are cleaned up and made whole again.
Japanese companies have plenty of room to grow in Hawaii, despite what
happened to Seibu and Kokusai Kogyo, Sombrero says. The key difference
this time around is in the type of investor. Unlike the huge, iconic
conglomerates of the past, the new Japanese buyer made its wealth in
highly specialized industries, and not necessarily in real estate. For
example, Japan-based Sasada International LLC, which bought the Park Shore
Waikiki from Blackstone last July for $57 million, has its roots in
apartment rentals, telephone marketing and sports clubs. The Hilo Hawaiian
Hotel's new owner, Hilo Hawaiian Associates, is affiliated with
Tokyo-based Capital Medica Co. Ltd., which invests in the healthcare
market.
It may not be too long before Hawaii properties are bought by "J-REITS,"
or Japanese Real Estate Investment Trusts. This year, the Japanese
government lifted regulations to allow J-REITS to invest in foreign
property for the first time as early as next year. J-REITS are relatively
new and were created in 2001 by the Japanese government to jumpstart the
country's lagging economy. Since then, the number of J-REITS has climbed
to 40, with a market cap of more than $45 billion.
Some Hawaii-based analysts say Japanese buyers paved the way for other
wealthy Asian investors, including South Koreans and Chinese. "When you
want to protect your next eggs, you diversify [investments] out of your
country," Sombero says.
Last June, Seoul-based Sam House Development and SamKoo Development
purchased $42 billion worth of land along Kapiolani Boulevard for
commercial and residential use. Others say it's only a matter of time
before governments lift red tape and approve visa waivers to allow more
business between the U.S. and other Asian investors.
Non-local investors get high marks from Kirk Belsby, vice president of
endowment of Kamehameha Schools. "It's healthy to still have investments
coming from Asia, as well as the Mainland," says the trust's chief
investment officer. "It wouldn't surprise me to see more capital coming
from [places such as] Europe. From a capital perspective, it's good to be
diversified."
STILL THE TOPS
Belsby is familiar with diversification. Since joining Kamehameha Schools
from Arthur Anderson in 2003, the trust added more people to manage its
new portfolio, comprised of hedge funds, international equities and
venture capital. Since Belsby joined the trust, real estate holdings have
gone from 30 percent to less than 27 percent. Kamehameha Schoools still
remains No. 1 on the Wealthiest Landowners list, with land and buildings
valued at nearly $4 billion. On Oahu, Kamehameha Schools owns major
parcels in Moiliili, Kakaako, the North Shore and Kapalama.
Recently, the trust invested $115 million to renovate its most valuable
piece of property, the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in Waikiki. The
exterior of the building is scheduled to be finished before the end of
this year, and new tenants will be announced throughout 2008.
Belsby and his team are not caught up in being the largest landowner in
Hawaii, and they don't worry about who might replace Kamehameha School's
No. 1 spot in the future. What concerns them, however, is the way in which
land in Hawaii is used. "Are these landowners committed to the community?"
Belsby asks. "[We hope] they share a common set of values and look at
lands in relation to the broader community. If they're just looking to
mine economic opportunities, that's unfortunate."
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~--------------------
12. Colonial Dispossession: Maori opinion of police plummets after raids,
says poll
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:38:11 +1300
From: karaka <tepaatu@gmail.com>
------ Forwarded Message
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10478759
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10478759>
5:00AM Wednesday November 28, 2007 By Simon Collins
Anti-terror raids
* Police raids evidence posted online * Papers sent 'please explain' by
Solicitor General
Nineteen years of painstaking police work to build links with Maoridom
have been dashed by the recent treatment of Tuhoe in the search for
"terrorists", a new poll says.
Wellington law researcher Moana Jackson has repeated a poll he did of 2000
Maori people in 1988 which found that Maori ranked the police 20th out of
20 occupations, and found that earlier this year the police had climbed to
11th out of 20.
But he went back to this year's sample again 10 days ago - after the
police search for terrorism suspects in the Ruatoki area - and found that
police were back down to 20th out of 20 again.
"What that shows is the fragility of the relationship between Maori people
and the institutions charged with justice in this country," he said.
Mr Jackson, an outspoken critic of the police arrests of 17 people
including Maori sovereignty campaigners on terrorism and other charges,
was invited to give a keynote speech at a youth offending conference in
Wellington yesterday.
His 1988 report for the Ministry of Justice was disowned by the Government
at the time because it advocated a separate Maori justice system.
He told the conference that very little had changed for Maori in the
intervening 19 years.
For an updated report, due to be published next June, researchers had
retraced 1347 of the original 2000 Maori people polled in 1988.
The other 653 had died, left the country or could not be traced for other
reasons.
A new sample of a further 2000 Maori people had also been interviewed.
Both groups were asked to rank police, lawyers and judges in a list of 20
occupations, where they were allowed to choose which other occupations to
include.
In the initial re-run earlier this year, police were ranked 11th, lawyers
18th, real estate agents 19th and "a new group identified by our people,
of television celebrities", who were ranked 20th.
"The shift in the police position is a result of work done by a large
number of people culminating in the establishment of a Responsiveness to
Maori initiative within the police," Mr Jackson said.
But those gains were lost after the Ruatoki exercise.
Mr Jackson restated his 1988 analysis that high Maori crime rates could
not be blamed solely on immediate factors such as poverty or dysfunctional
families, but could be traced back to 167 years of dispossession and
marginalisation.
"If you are dispossessed, if your land is taken, if your power is denied,
if your right to say things in your own way and to make sense of the world
in ways that are unique to you and your history are taken away," he said,
"then you are oppressed."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
13. Corrected links: Maori Activists: Secret police evidence posted on the
net: "Terrorists"
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:53:42 +1300
From: karaka <tepaatu@gmail.com>
Try these:
http://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5_10
http://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5_11&zenid=5eede
7ae968751d39719552145cc2b0a
http://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5_11&zenid=5eede
7ae968751d39719552145cc2b0a
http://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index
on 11/27/07 11:31 PM, you wrote:
Kia Ora Cuz
those bug & spyware links arent working
-=----
Secret police evidence posted on the net 2 hours ago
NZPA | Tuesday, 27 November 2007t
Secret evidence in a 156-page police affidavit used to carry out raids on
Maori and other activists last month has been posted on a United
States-based website.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4290099a12855...
Quite clearly we need to become informed about what is available out there
to protect us against unscrupulous perverts who want to plant bugs in our
homes and intercept our texts, phone calls etc (Note the use of infrared
surveillance and directional microphones) It would be interesting to see
just how many of us are being monitored by the SIS and the police.
Here's the bullshit that poaka tried to hang on the activists. Its a huge
file, about 150-160 pages. I found it through surfing but the info is
most probably `legally' suppressed. Understand that pigs perjure
themselves all the time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
14. Check out Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:56:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Milogic@aol.com
Click here: Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112607J.shtml
________________________________________________________________________________
15. Tasers "an option" for Hawaii County PD
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:32:04 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
>>County Council Chairman Pete Hoffmann, Kohala, said he agrees with
keeping the reports, even without naming officers involved, out of
the public eye.
^ÓWhat would I do with the knowledge or information,^Ô Hoffmann said.
^ÓI don^Òt have an authorization to take action based on those reports.^Ô<<
>>Going back to Councilmember Hoffman:
He said he doesn^Òt see the value of the reports being available,
either to him as an elected official or to the general public.
^ÓThe real situation is, unless you know what the information means
and what it does ^Å it^Òs not practical or useful,^Ô Hoffmann said.
Officials in other states seem to disagree, however. In the last
year, law enforcement agencies have made public reports regarding
specific uses of Tasers in at least four states.
Hoffman ^Ódoesn^Òt see the value^Ô in disclosing, much less in
examining, the use of force by the police. Shocking.<<
OUTRAGEOUS!
=============
http://poinography.com/?p=5188
11/26/2007
Tasers ^Óan option^Ô for Hawaii County PD
Filed under: HI State Politics, Honolulu Politics, Neighbor Islands ^×
Doug @ 8:05 pm
With the topic still somewhat fresh in my mind from a recent post at
Disappeared News, I was interested to read the stories from Hawaii County
about the Police Department^Òs new tasers. (The West Hawaii Today version
is slightly different from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald version)
A few interesting paragraphs:
The wording of the policy regarding Tasers hasn^Òt been added to the
general orders book at the Kealakehe Police Station, nor is the use of
force policy available on the Police Department^Òs Web site, though other
orders are. In general, according to the use of force policy, officers may
use ^Óless than lethal force^Ô to protect themselves or other people from
physical harm, to restrain or subdue a person who is resisting arrest or
to ^Óbring an unlawful situation safely and effectively under control.^Ô
[Deputy Chief] Kubojiri offered a summary of the policy, which he said was
not a continuum of force, as some departments follow, but a description of
^Óforce options.^Ô Other nonlethal force options include Oleoresin
Capiscum, or pepper spray, and batons.
The deputy chief said use of force reports, which all officers must submit
following the use of a Taser, firearm, pepper spray or other type of
force, are not available for public review.
County Council Chairman Pete Hoffmann, Kohala, said he agrees with keeping
the reports, even without naming officers involved, out of the public eye.
^ÓWhat would I do with the knowledge or information,^Ô Hoffmann said.
^ÓI don^Òt have an authorization to take action based on those reports.^Ô
Wha?! Evidently Hoffman is unfamiliar with the concept of civilian control
and oversight of those authorized to use force on behalf of the
government. His lack of curiosity is disturbing. As for the use of force
reports being withheld from public review, I think it would be worth
filing an open records law request to see just how tightly the HPD wants
to hold on to those data.
A bit of Google searching turned up a letter from 2004 from the ACLU
suggesting that the Honolulu Police Department not allow Taser use except
as a substitute for lethal force. This led me to wonder if the Honolulu PD
use of force policy was in fact subsequently amended, but I can^Òt find
the policy online. However, I did find the 2004 and 2005 Police Commission
Annual Reports which did not show any ^Ósustained^Ô complaints regarding
Taser use (not even for the instances described by the ACLU, which may be
among the 2 complaints ^Ónot sustained^Ô in 2004). One complaint for
^Óunnecessary use of force^Ô was sustained by the Police Commission in
2005. I don^Òt know if use of force lawsuits against the HPD are reflected
in these annual reports, or if the reports are limited only to formal
complaints filed with the Commission.
Going back to Councilmember Hoffman:
He said he doesn^Òt see the value of the reports being available, either
to him as an elected official or to the general public.
^ÓThe real situation is, unless you know what the information means and
what it does ^Å it^Òs not practical or useful,^Ô Hoffmann said.
Officials in other states seem to disagree, however. In the last year, law
enforcement agencies have made public reports regarding specific uses of
Tasers in at least four states.
Hoffman ^Ódoesn^Òt see the value^Ô in disclosing, much less in examining,
the use of force by the police. Shocking.
=====------------------------------------------------------------------
16. December Events at Native Books/Na Mea Hawai`i
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:33:36 -1000
From: Amanda Rang <amanda@nativebookshawaii.com>
Kekemapa · December · 2007
Events at Native Books/Na Mea Hawaii
For more information Native Books/Na Mea Hawai`i events, please call us at
596-8885.
Book Signing - "Hawaii - A State of Being" with Heather Titus
Sunday, December 2, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Meet author, Heather Titus, and have your book signed. A beautiful gift
for the holidays, or for your own inspiration. This is Heather's second
book, and it features exquisite photographs of nature and hula along with
selected quotes and mana`o from Kahuna Abraham Kawai`i and his wife,
Ho`okahi Kawai`i.
Book Launch - "Sun & Rain" with Stephanie Feeney
Thursday, December 6, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Come celebrate the publication of Stephanie Feeney's newest book, "Sun &
Rain - Exploring Seasons in Hawai`i." Come enjoy pupu's and a first look
at this long-awaited book for children by the author of "A is for Aloha,"
"Hawai`i is a Rainbow" and "Sand to Sea." Meet Dr. Feeney and the
photographers, have your copy signed, and check off the keiki and teacher
on your holiday shopping list!
The book includes color photography by David and Sue Boynton, Ron
Dahlquist, Moku Kaaloa, Melissa Kim Mosher, Jeff Reese, and others.
Book Signing - "Kula and the Old `Ukulele" with Lance Wheeler Saturday,
December 8, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm Meet the author, Lance Wheeler, and have
your copy signed. This children's book teaches important lessons about
humility and generosity in a colorful, keiki-friendly format. Young
readers will learn that the best gifts are the ones that allow you to give
to others.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
17. HI-HO-HO-HO Na Mea Hawaii Seasonal Store
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:52:48 -1000
From: Amanda Rang <amanda@nativebookshawaii.com>
HI-HOHOHO, now you see it, soon you won't!
Na Mea Hawai'i and The Friends of Hawai'i State Art Museum are pleased to
offer a silly seasonal store named HI-HOHOHO during the month of December,
and HI - A HUI HOU for the month of January. The store will feature only
Hawai'i-made fine art, gifts and goodies and will open Monday the 19th of
November in the Lobby of the Hawai'i State Art Museum at the corner of
Richards and Hotel Streets. HI-HOHOHO will be open Monday through
Saturdays, 11am to 3pm. You can also bang on the door and if Suzy
Thompson, the store elf is there and you make a funny face, she'll let you
in!
HI-HOHOHO has an enormous window in the lobby of the Hawai'i
State Art Museum and that space will be a rotating exhibit called The
Window. Artists will have a week to showcase their work in The Window,
and use the space as a creative outlet. The Window changes every Monday
with a new artist, and will stay up through Saturday before changing again
on Monday. On Thursdays from 11:30am to 1:30pm the artist will be at
HI-HOHOHO and has the option of being in The Window during this time.
The Window schedule includes Solomon Enos, Jodi Endicott, Phillip and
Mieko Markwart, Jerry Vasconcellos, Mark Chai, Peggy Chun, Carl Pao, Scott
Manley, Harinane Orme, David Smith and artists from The Balcony Gallery.
HI-HOHOHO is a venue for products with more of an artistic and
whimsical nature-paintings of clouds in round by Bill Braden, mermaids
from Sheila Buffet, dangles from a variety of jewelers, xmas ornaments and
one-of-a-kind cards, men's shirts from Nake'u Awai, boutique, estate grown
Kona coffees, fun and funny stuff from the folks at Wabisabi, and great
art from lots of great artists!
HI-HOHOHO is an opportunity to have some fun, be creative, and support
local artists in the process" says Maile Meyer, from Na Mea Hawai'i. "We
had a store on Merchant Street and we loved being downtown-we're thrilled
to be back for how ever long and in whatever form!" The store was
conceptualized and set up in under two weeks. "We couldn't of said yes
without the help of lots of generous people, Mike Wo and the gang at
Homeworld lent us store fixtures, the Board of HiSam was willing to give
us a whirl, we found painter Suzy Thompson to run the store, my smart tita
sista Moana Meyer painted window treatments and Nake'u Awai added his
designer's flair. When things come together so quickly, it that tells me
they were meant to be."
HI-HOHOHO and HI -A Hui Hou
---------------------------------------------------------------------
18. SuperFerry car transport could easily transport coqui frogs!!!! and
comment
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:13:28 -0500
From: KahiwaL@cs.com
Big Island Invasive Species Committee
In response to a report of hearing coqui frogs on Saddle Road - this email
is very important. Also to those arguing against the SuperFerry.
How are they going to keep all coqui frogs from traveling to all of the
other islands?
ku
____
>> Not a good report, but not surprising. It is true, coqui can survive
>> over-winter in higher elevations of the island. They don't like it
>> here much, but they get here by hitch-hiking on vehicles. For anyone
>> who is not from Hawaii island, and interested in keeping coqui from
>> spreading ....
>>
>> COQUI MOVE AROUND ON VEHICLES - and this is the most common way they
>> move about the island. Hilo airport grounds are FULL OF FROGS. Park
>> your car there over night or over a few, and you will likely bring a
>> frog or two home when you return.
>>
>> COQUI LIVE & BREED IN DEAD VEHICLES - and it's one of the most
>> difficult treatment challenges. Try getting citric acid inside the
>> vehicle behind fire walls and headlights.... 200 gallons is sometimes
>> not enough to do the trick. We have treated many dead vehicles for
>> frogs here in Volcano, and we actually SEE THEM BAILING and catch them
>> trying to run away. We only hope the juice got everywhere eggs could
>> be hiding.
>>
>> For Kauai - you probably won't get frogs up at Alaka`i unless you take
>> a vehicle that's been sitting in a contaminated area. Definition of
>> contaminated: You hear some frogs any time of day, you see frogs any
>> time of day, frogs are living in or on buildings, sometimes coming in
>> the house.
>>
>> Good luck! Kim
------
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:40:44 -1000
From: mia <kaimi@lava.net>
Couldn't they get into the airplane wheel wells now? What about all the
vehicles shipped by Young Brothers? I think everyone should be concerned
right now...I swear I heard one in Mililani the other night--my daughter
said it was a cricket, but I have never heard a cricket "sing" so loud
before! Hilo Airport is inundated with them!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
19. New announcement: Working for Social Justice as Settlers in Occupied
Lands
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:02:29 +0000
From: Unsettle Hawai'i Forums <info@unsettlehawaii.org>
Kyle Kajihiro sent me this email last Wednesday but I only read it today.
I am sorry. We missed the radio show but I thought to post this to give
us some added inspiration. I don't know who Katy Rose is.
*******************************
Date: 11/21/2007 10:35:54 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
From: klrose@earthlink.net
Aloha kakou
Jimmy Trujillo and I are hosting our regular bi-weekly spot on KKCR (90.9,
91.9, 92.7) this Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, from 4 to 5:30. If you are
not busy with family, friends or football games, we invite you to listen
in and participate in the discussion we are planning. To listen via
internet:
http://rabbit.he.net/~kkcr/index.htm
The theme of Thursday's show will be "Working for Social Justice as
Settlers in Occupied Lands." (Naturally, we are not excluding Native
people from this discussion - just trying to really explore an important
aspect of social justice activism.) The beginning portion of our show
will feature the words of John Trudell and a short reading about the
lesser-known history of Thanksgiving.
Our discussion also hopes to explore some nuts-and-bolts ideas about
resistance to the Superferry - so if you have ideas, this would be a great
way to network. Think about calling together groups in your town and
inviting people to join you to talk about various aspects of resistance.
We'd love to hear people calling in and extending invitations, giving out
contact information, or anything else to move our discussions off of the
radio and the internet and into live spaces with face-to-face contact.
(Not to say that it shouldn't be on radio and internet, too!) The number
to call in is 826-7771, or 1-866-275-1112.
This Thanksgiving, let's let our gratitude speak by moving forward to
social justice!
Also, check this out:
http://www.alternet.org/story/28584/
Best wishes,
Katy
---------------------------------------------------------------------
20. Iraq now a colony
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:48:52 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2217581,00.html
Bush commits troops to Iraq for the long term
· Deal to provide mandate for military beyond 2008
· US oil companies likely to benefit from proposals
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday November 27, 2007
The Guardian
The Bush administration formally committed America yesterday to a
long-term military presence in Iraq, pledging to protect the government in
Baghdad from internal coup plots and foreign enemies.
The cooperation pact, endorsed by George Bush and the Iraqi prime
minister, Nouri al-Maliki, during a video conference yesterday morning,
will set the agenda for a future American relationship with Iraq, the
administration's adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan, General Douglas Lute,
told reporters at the White House.
"The two negotiating teams, Iraq and the United States, now have a common
sheet of music with which to begin the negotiations," Lute said.
The military, economic and diplomatic agreement would commit US forces to
defending the government of Iraq from internal and external threats as
well as fighting al-Qaida and "all other outlaw groups regardless of
affiliation", according to the declaration of principles released by the
White House yesterday.
In return, Iraq pledged itself to "encouraging the flow of foreign
investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the
reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq". The promise was immediately seen
as a potential bonanza for American oil companies.
Lute offered few details on the scale of future US troop levels in Iraq or
permanent US bases. He noted that the agreement, because it was not a
treaty, would not be subject to oversight by Congress. "What US troops
are doing, how many troops are required to do that, are bases required,
which partners will join them - all these things are on the table," he
said.
Yesterday's agreement was announced as Maliki indicated he intended to
seek the renewal of the UN security council mandate for Iraq for one more
year when it expires in December. The agreement has been in the works
since last August, when the Maliki government officially requested the
long-term strategic relationship with Washington.
The public unveiling of the proposed arrangement yesterday arrived at a
time when the administration has been trying to showcase recent
improvements in security in Iraq following the deployment of an additional
30,000 US troops at the beginning of the year.
Some of those forces are scheduled to begin leaving Iraq by the end of
this year following the drop in violence. The rest are due to be withdrawn
by the summer of 2008, although there has been little sign of the
political reconciliation which was the main objective of the surge
strategy.
Instead, the administration yesterday appeared to be urging Americans to
look to American and Iraqi negotiators' hopes of producing a broader
agreement on their partnership next summer.
The timetable for negotiations indicated by Lute would see the state
department open negotiations early next year. That all but ensures that
Iraq will dominate next year's US presidential elections.
===== -------------------------------------------------------------------
21. LIve the Legacy : Wednesday, December 5, 2007 6pm to 8pm
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:48:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Terri Kekoolani <napua4u@yahoo.com>
Remind - FYI
event announcement!
Live the Legacy: Continuing traditions of activism in Hawai'i
What's going on today and how YOU can get involved!
on WEDNESDAY
DECEMBER 5, 2007
6PM - 8PM
Please Note Date CHANGE!!
(some earlier fliers said 12/6,
correct date is 12/5)
Church of the Crossroads
1212 University Avenue
For more information, call 808-524-8220 or email laakea@kahea.org.
Parking: There are two parking lots nearby. One is behind the old Varsity
Theater (pay parking), the other lot is at a nearby preschool called The
Early School (free parking).
[More information to be posted soon!]
________________________________________________________________________________
22. Hawaii Land: Institutional Investors Moving In - comment
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:46:57 -1000
From: William Steiner <steiner@hawaii.edu>
This is very interesting! I hope they are all prepared to take a bath in
losses when the bottom drops out of the tourist market as petroleum
continues to climb above $100/barrel!
Aloha
Bill
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
23. Correction: Defend TukwilaTeachers/Change of email addresses
From: LRN1212@aol.com
Date: November 26, 2007 8:16:29 PM EST
(Note: email addresses to principal & superintendent corrected)
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!
*Urgent Call for Solidarity*
Defend Teachers Threatened With Termination for Antiwar
Student Walkout BRIEF BACKGROUND: On November 16th, over 1,000
students in Washington State walked out to protest the war in Iraq and the
presence of military recruiters in public schools. Students at Foster High
School in Tukwila, Washington organized and 150 walked out, saying ^ÓMoney
for Schools, Not War.^Ô
Foster students rallied at the school flagpole, marched down to the I-5
overpass, and then marched to the Tukwila City Hall. The march and rally
were student generated and entirely peaceful. In reaction the Tukwila
School District has done the following:
· Suspended one Social Studies teacher, Brett Rogers, who supported his
students in a student generated democratic movement
· Threatened administrative action against five other teachers
· Threatened to discipline students for exercising their First
AmendmentRight to free speech
When Brett Rogers was asked if he had a personal stake in the war, he
said: ^ÓIt^Òs an illegal war and my cousin is deploying December 4th, and
I^Òm not happy about it.^Ô Please call and email the Principal and
Superintendent now!
Tell them they need to:
1. Reinstate the teacher Brett Rogers who has been put on
administrative leave!
2. Drop the disciplinary hearings against all six teachers
who face investigations!
3. Support the initiative and moral fortitude of students
who took a stand against the effects caused by this war
to their communities!
4. Take no disciplinary action against students who
participated in the walkout!
We request that you flood the school administration with
phone calls and emails. Tell them to halt all disciplinary
action against students and the Tukwila Six!
CONTACT:
Foster HS Principal George Ilgenfritz: (206) 901-7905
ilgenfritzg@tukwila.wednet.edu
And Interim Superintendent Ethelda Burke: (206) 901-8000,
(206) 901-8006,
burkee@tukwila.wednet.edu
Please send a copy of protest emails to us at
tukwila.teachers.solidarity@hotmail.com so we can count how
many protest emails have been sent in.
If they refuse to answer your call, call Foster HS Assistant
Principal Daryl Wright (206) 901-7902 and Foster HS Office
Manager Darlene Aguiluz(206) 901-7915.
--------
MORE BACKGROUND INFO: On Friday, November 16th, more than a 1,000
students in Washington Stateparticipated in a nation-wide student walkout
to protest the war and military recruiters in schools. This included
around 150 students at Foster High School, just south of Seattle. Foster
is part of the Tukwila School District, of which 71% of the student body
is low-income and eligible for the free and reduced-cost school meals.
Since the beginning of the Iraq War, the U.S. military has been assigning
ever greater numbers of recruiters to lure young people into signing up
for this bloody, costly and illegal quagmire in Iraq, especially in
marginalized schools like Foster High School.
Student made signs, walked out, marched to an I-5 overpass and the
TukwilaCity Hall for a civic and peaceful assembly. Now the principal and
school district superintendent have begun a witch-hunt against students
and at least six of their teachers and threatened to suspend students who
walked out. The students took a bold stand against the war and these
teachers have stood up for their students, some of the most
disenfranchised in the state, both inside and outside the classroom.
Students who walked out are threatened with truancy, and their teachers^Ò
jobs are on the line.
Now, who will stand up for these students and teachers? One teacher was
put on administrative leave on Monday, November 19th. On Tuesday, November
20th, at least five more were delivered memos notifying them that the
Tukwila school district was ^Óinvestigating reports of possible misconduct
relating to you in connection with the student walk-out.^Ô These teachers
were further notified that they were not to discuss ^Óthis matter with any
District students or staff^Ô under threat of being terminated. Several of
these teachers were completely unconnected with the walkout, but because
they have been previously marked out as individuals that speak their
minds, they are being lumped into the teacher hunt.
^ÓInvestigative interviews^Ô are to begin this Tuesday.
· With a ^ÓNo Child Left Behind^Ô Act of 2001 provision forcing
principals to give up the private contact information of young people to
military recruiters, students and teachers have the natural right to
protest.
· With a bloody and illegal war, where the soldiers that are killed
and maimed are disproportionately minorities and victims of the ^Ópoverty
draft,^Ô students and teachers of Tukwila have the natural right to
protest.
· With more than $500 billion dollars and the lives of more than a
million Iraqis having been utterly wasted on a failed war, with schools in
marginalized areas falling apart, we should all be protesting with the
slogan: ^ÓMoney for Schools^×Not For War!"
· With 75% of the American people polling against the war according
to the latest Washington Post poll, and a Democratic Congress still making
excuses for why it can^Òt cut off funding to bring the troops home, we
must support the young people who speak out against their future being
bombed away.
· And we MUST support their teachers whose only misconduct was
making their lesson plans truly relevant to the lives of their students.
If this Principal gets away with this attack on these workers and
students, it will embolden more bosses to try to further undermine
workers^Ò rights, wages, and benefits, and it will intimidate more people
from speaking out against injustice^×this is an attack on all students and
workers. These teachers are union members of the Tukwila Education
Association, and there are measures being taken to try to ensure their
defense through this channel, BUT A STRONG COMMUNITY AND NATION-WIDE
RESPONSE IS CRITICAL!!!
How can we give thanks to those on the REAL frontlines of freedom in
America? Call and email the school officials above! And please
forward this alert to supportive organizations and individuals!
------------------------------------------------
YET MORE BACKGROUND INFO:
The memo from Interim Superintendent to at least 6 teachers essentially
says:
1. In the next couple days, we will summon you to a meeting
because we are^Óinvestigating reports of possible
misconduct relating to you in connection with the student
walk-out.^Ô There could be disciplinary consequences
pending completion of this investigation.
1. You are not to discuss ^Óthis matter with any District
students or staff,^Ô or else you could be terminated.
1. You have the right to have a union representative present
with you during the investigative interview in case you
feel your rights might be violated.
The administration is clearly trying to isolate the teachers and students
from one another to try to divide them and weaken them. They are trying
to use the tactic of divide and rule. They are also blatantly violating
the teachers^Ò right to free speech.
The teachers have been careful to abide by the Interim Superintendent^Òs
directive not to talk with any District students or staff about these
matters. But nothing in the Superintendent^Òs letter said teachers could
not talk with their union representatives or community supporters. In
fact, the letter explicitly says they could talk with the union. Some
teachers who received letters were simply on their lesson planning hour
and therefore were not scheduled to teach class when the student walkout
happened. These teachers went outside just to see what was going on when
the students walked out, but they did not walk out or promote the
walkout. So the school has no evidence against some teachers who received
the threatening letters.
It appears the administration is targeting these teachers in a political
with-hunt because they have spoken their minds in the past over other
issues. For example, two of these teachers were banned in the past from
sending out school-wide emails because they spoke their minds in
school-wide emails that the administrators did not like.
Iraq Veteran
The husband of one of the teachers who received the threatening letters is
an Iraqveteran. He went to Foster High School on November 16th and spoke
to the students from first-hand experience about the truth of the Iraq War
that the government and corporate media are actively hiding from the
American people, and he walked out with the students. As the Iraq
veteran left the building, he was confronted by a security guard who
identified himself as a police officer/veteran/federal marshall who said:
^ÓDon't even start with me, I'm a veteran.^Ô
The school administration is disciplining a teacher whose husband is a
veteran whose life was put at serious risk in Iraq and who has now turned
against the war. This is very disrespectful to the veteran, his family,
and the working-class students who are being forced to shoulder the
burdens of this war.
The school administrators are more concerned with trying to having power
over teachers and students than letting the communities who have been hit
the hardest by the war speak out against the war and the predatory
military recruiters in their schools. This^×after the American people
voted the Democrats into Congress to end the war, but the Democrats are
still making excuses about why they cannot cut off funds for the war and
direct those funds toward education and other desperately needed social
services. When the leaders of our country will not end this unjust war,
then it becomes up to ordinary workers, parents, students, and soldiers to
end the war.
The attendance secretary at the school also refused to excuse the absences
of students who had permission slips signed by their parents to miss
school, which is a flagrant violation of parent and student rights.
Principal George Ilgenfritz also told one student that she didn^Òt know
anything about war. (Ironically, the student is from an immigrant Somali
family who still has family in the war-torn country of Somalia.)
On the Tukwila School District^Òs website, the following message has
been posted byInterim Superintendent Ethelda Burke: ^ÓWe believe in the
historic mission of public education within our democracy^Å Our schools
are expected to encourage and prepare students to be productive
citizens. We believe the challenge is to transform every child ^Ö to
give every student a chance to become an autonomous, thinking person and a
self-governing citizen. We are all here to work together to provide the
best education for the most prized commodity of our fine city ^Ö the
students of theTukwila School District.^Ô Yet when the students
participate in an act of peaceful civil disobedience in the best
traditions of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement who
challenged unjust segregation laws, now the Superintendent is
hypocritically trying to discourage students from being ^Óself-governing
citizens^Ô and standing up for what is right.
We need to match the determination of these courageous teachers, students
and theIraq veteran with all the support we can! Please take a few
minutes now to call and email the Principal and Superintendent at the
numbers and emails at the top of this email!
YouTube video of Foster High School student rally for
peace:www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOuLz3kKExI Report on Washington State Nov.
16th student walkouts against the war: http://yawr.org/nov16/seattle.html
Articles on Youth Against War and Racism student victories against
military recruiters in schools: http://yawr.org/victory/victory.htm#tacoma
http://yawr.org/victory/victory.htm#kennedy
http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article13.php?id=611
Please forward this email widely to supportive organizations and
individuals who might be able to help! For more info, contact the Tukwila
Teachers and Students Solidarity Committee: foster_nfo@hotmail.com (253)
573-9252
Please leave a brief message and we^Òll get back to you as soon as we can.
________________________________________________________________________________
24. A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:57:59 +0000
From: Ana <uriohau@yahoo.com.au>
A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering
in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention
Rebecca Stringer
University of Otago
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/stringer_intervention.htm
This essay provides a critical discussion of the Howard government's 2007
intervention into 73 Aboriginal communities in Australia's Northern
Territory. Contending that the official purpose of the intervention
differs from its actual purpose, the paper argues that the federal
government has mobilised issues of violence, abuse and neglect in these
communities as a pretext for advancing an unrelated agenda. The paper
characterises the intervention as neocolonial and its actual agenda as one
of assimilatory neoliberation. It encompasses discussion of the
privatising of Indigenous lands, the corporatising of Indigenous
governance, the disciplining of Indigenous labour, and the violations of
land, sovereignty and human rights the intervention entails.
We have a long way to go before human conditions will be obtained by this
highly gifted race. The facts are at present that they are being willed to
death. The majority of Australians are still poisoned with a strong
anti-native bias - the criminal cannot forgive the victim he has wronged
... Nobody could be more cruel, greedy, dishonourable and unjust in their
dealings with native races than the British Australian.
^×Mary Montgomery Bennett 1936, cited in Paisley, 2006: 222.
John Laws: But if you do that, Mal, you're going to be accused of
discrimination against Aboriginals.
Mal Brough: Yes, John, I don't care. I mean, I really don't care.
^×Mal Brough, 2006: 2.
Leviathan Now
1. On 21 June 2007 John Howard's federal government initiated an
intervention into 73 Aboriginal communities in Australia's Northern
Territory. The intervention mobilises military force and involves a set of
power moves granting the government direct control of the targeted
communities, for a period of five years. In media reports the intervention
has been described as a "revolution" and "takeover", but also a
"crackdown" and "rescue plan." [1] The stated primary purpose of the
intervention is to address the problem of "intra-racial child sexual
abuse" in these communities, as attested by the report of a recent
Northern Territory government inquiry into this issue, Ampa Akelyernemane
Meke Mekarle, 'Little Children Are Sacred' (AAMMR, 2007: 234). The Prime
Minister asked Australians to understand the problem of sexual abuse in
Aboriginal communities as a "national emergency" akin to Hurricane Katrina
(2007a: 2-3): a disaster situation in which a particular population of
victims require urgent rescue and protection by a government strong and
responsible enough to "grab control" and "stabilise the situation" (2007c:
2). As this image of abject suffering ameliorated by heroic government
suggests, the intervention configures the relationship between morality
and power in a very particular manner. Morality appears to lead power,
with the suffering of Aboriginal children positioned as an immoral reality
that directly compels the federal government to gather, enhance and deploy
its various powers of intervention into the lives, communities and lands
of Aboriginal Territorians in general. At the heart of the intervention
lies a transaction by which the federal government extracts from
disempowered children the power to act unilaterally upon and within their
communities. The Prime Minister calls this transaction "exceptional
measures to deal with an exceptionally tragic situation" (Howard 2007a:
12). Written as the early stages of the intervention unfold, this article
provides a critical discussion of these exceptional measures as well as
the government's representation of the exceptionally tragic situation it
purports to address.
2. Howard's Northern Territory intervention is made possible by two legal
manoeuvres: the exercise of certain constitutional powers, and
contravention of Australia's obligations under international law. The
intervention exercises the constitutional power conferred on federal
governments to usurp the sovereignty of territory governments by
overriding or remaking their law (known as the territories power,
Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act [CACA], Section 122). In this
case, the constitution enables the federal government to override the
authority of the Northern Territory government, initially to place
occupying forces in control of the targeted communities and subsequently
to introduce new laws. The Howard government has invoked the territories
power on two previous occasions: in 1997 to override the Northern
Territory's euthanasia law and in 2006 to override the Australian Capital
Territory's same-sex marriage law. What distinguishes the government's use
of this power on this occasion is that it affords a greater scope and
array of powers and extends to military occupation. The intervention
involves a historically significant domestic deployment of the Australian
Army, combined with weakening of the permit system by which Aboriginal
communities can restrict entry to their land, a programme to conduct
medical inspection of Aboriginal children under the age of sixteen, the
imposition and enforcement of bans on alcohol and pornography, blanket
'quarantining' of welfare payments, and a wide range of land tenure,
governance and labour-related changes instituted through follow-up
emergency legislation. Howard described the intervention as "radical,
comprehensive and highly interventionist" (2007a: 2). He also stated, "We
can do something about the Northern Territory because we have the power
and that's why we're doing it" (2007c: 2).
3. The follow-up emergency legislation is racially discriminative -- it
targets Indigenous Australians specifically. Secondly, then, the
government is using the so-called races power (CACA, Section 51 xxvi),
which permits the making of racially discriminative law. Yet the emergency
legislation's discriminatory character exists in tension with the
Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (RDA), which protects
fundamental human rights and implements Australia's international
obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (ICERD). In a bid to resolve this tension, the emergency
legislation excludes the operation of the RDA as well as the Northern
Territory's Anti-Discrimination Act, while also casting the measures taken
in the emergency response as 'special measures' permissible under the RDA.
The RDA permits measures that can be said to advance the interests of a
targeted group, such as affirmative action or other forms of positive
discrimination, if those measures are taken under certain specified
conditions. Hence Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough claims, "I
have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in a positive sense" (2007f:
2). However, as we will see, the emergency measures do not constitute
positive discrimination and fail to conform to the conditions specified
under the RDA pertaining to consultation and consent. As such the
emergency legislation violates fundamental human rights, contravening the
Australian government's obligations under international law.
4. Howard's positioning of the suffering of Aboriginal children as an
exceptional circumstance mandating exceptional measures is an effort to
justify these legal manoeuvres, and also to delimit public discussion of
the intervention. The government's stated intention to "stamp out sexual
and other abuse of defenceless Aboriginal children" (Howard, 2007b: 1)
confers virtue, giving purchase on an apparently morally unassailable
position that is outside of politics and beyond the reach of criticism.
After all, who would block or delay rescue of a suffering child? With the
official discursive terrain set out in this way, criticism of the
intervention is morally questionable before it is voiced, and when it is
voiced, can be evaded through accusations of callous disregard or
insufficient cognisance of the realities of sexual abuse. Accordingly,
Howard cast critics of the intervention as inappropriately politicising an
issue on which "there is not a political argument", offering an
all-purpose response in the form of a rhetorical question: "I'd simply say
to all of my critics, what is more important, protecting vulnerable
children or debating political theory?" (Howard, 2007c: 3). Similarly,
Brough met criticism with graphic descriptions of sexual abuse, vowing to
disregard criticism by taking it "on the chin, because hopefully this
[intervention] will stop some child in the future from being so terribly,
terribly damaged" (Brough, 2007a: 2). Thus the discursive terrain set
around the intervention enabled both politicians to identify not just with
but as victims -- victims of politicising critics, insensitive cynics, and
morally questionable souls. As the government mustered troops, crafted an
inter-state police force, committed $130 million to building new police
stations, and began making arrests, it simultaneously conferred upon
itself dual status as heroic protector and defiant victim.
5. This prohibitive packaging has not, however, succeeded in deterring
critical discussion of the intervention. [2] In the wake of Howard's
announcement two lines of criticism began to develop. The first centres on
the idea that the intervention's paternalistic, militaristic and punitive
character ensures its inadequacy as a response to the complex problem of
child sexual abuse. Although Howard and Brough claim to be acting on
AAMMR, the authors of that report, Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC, have
publicly criticised the intervention in this way. Anderson said she felt
"Betrayed, disappointed, hurt, appalled, angry, all at the same time"
(2007: 1) as the intervention unfolded in a manner completely at odds with
the report's 97 carefully wrought recommendations (see also Wild, 2007).
The measures the intervention does take are not recommended in the report,
while measures the report does recommend have been ignored, particularly
those stressing the need for government to consult and work in consensual
partnership with Aboriginal communities -- that is, measures that respect
Aboriginal sovereignty and reflect the established framework of human
rights. [3]
6. Meanwhile, a second line of criticism began to crystallise around the
idea that the government is using the issue of child sexual abuse as
legitimating cover in order to advance unrelated and less publicly salient
agendas. The first of these agendas is electoral success. A federal
election is due later in the year, and critics have observed that the
intervention vividly recalls the Tampa affair, by which the Howard
government galvanised the popular vote in the lead up to the 2001
election. As Jennifer Martiniello writes, "The focus on the sexual abuse
of children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and
therefore command attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa
situation" (2007: 3). In the Tampa affair the government claimed that, in
an un-Australian violation of family values, a large group of mostly
Afghan asylum seekers stranded off Australia's north coast had thrown
their children overboard, justifying the government's staunch refusal to
permit them onto Australian soil. The claim was later proven to be
manifestly false, but for electoral purposes it conferred a mantle of bold
guardianship upon the government and effectively dog-whistled the racist
anxieties of white Australia. That a replay of Tampa forms part of the
Northern Territory intervention goes some way toward explaining the
complicit response of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in opposition. [4]
Rather than be drawn into wedge politics and risk appearing less
militaristically staunch, the ALP offered 'in principle support' for the
intervention and subsequently passed, where it could have contested, the
intervention's complement of racially discriminative legislation. As one
report observed, "Labor also knew that on an extremely emotional issue
such as this, even qualified criticism might have been attacked by the
government as endorsement of the shocking abuse many children have
endured" (Coorey, et al, 2007: 3).
7. The second agenda linked with the Northern Territory intervention, and
the one that most concerns me here, is considerably more serious. It is
put succinctly by Pat Turner, former head of the now disestablished
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission: "We believe that this
government is using child sexual abuse as the Trojan horse to resume total
control of our lands" (2007: 1). Let us pause here and consider Turner's
comment. In his piece 'When Was 'the Post-Colonial'?' Stuart Hall observes
that some would deny the term postcolonial to white settler colonies
because 'post' takes us too far away from capturing the character of
ongoing struggles between Indigenous peoples and white settler governments
(1996: 246). If Turner's Trojan horse thesis is even halfway right, and
even if we are to understand the 'post' in postcolonial as signalling a
reverberative aftermath of colonisation rather than a period somehow
beyond colonialism's historical conclusion, then the term postcolonial is
inadequate for Howard's intervention. If Turner is even halfway right --
and, as we will see, there is abundant reason to consider that she is
fully correct -- the intervention must be regarded as a neocolonial
moment, a moment in which the objectives, relations and effects of the
colonial syndrome do not merely reverberate but resurge. Indeed, in his
address to the Sydney Institute, Howard explicitly framed the intervention
as a renewal of colonialism's civilising mission. Although averse to
debating political theory, he invoked a classic text of English political
philosophy, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, and superimposed upon Aboriginal
communities a revised version of Hobbes' conjectural description of human
insecurity in the state of nature:
Tonight, in our rich and beautiful country, there are children living out
a Hobbesian nightmare of violence, abuse and neglect. Many are in remote
communities in the Northern Territory. To recognise this is not racist.
It's simply an empirical fact. (Howard, 2007a: 1)
Implying that Dreamtime has resolved itself into a nightmarish conclusion,
Howard casts remote communities as heretofore insufficiently colonised
zones to which the sovereign's rule of law must now finally be extended.
The sovereign in this case is Hobbesian also. As Howard puts it, to force
a transition from "extreme social breakdown" to "social order enforced by
legitimate authority" the federal government must undertake "a sweeping
assumption of power" (2007a: 2-4).
8. Turner's Trojan horse thesis indicates what is at stake in this
intervention, while also pinpointing its main weakness. That is, the
counterintuitive link its architects make between addressing child sexual
abuse and relitigating Indigenous land tenure and governance arrangements
in a manner that undermines Aboriginal sovereignty and further opens
Aboriginal lands to private interests among the mining, nuclear power,
tourism, property development and labour brokerage industries. In the
following section I will show that the intervention's mobilisation of
child sexual abuse as a pretext for an unrelated agenda is evident from
the fact that the intervention strengthens and advances an already
existing effort to privatise Indigenous lands, corporatise Indigenous
governance, and discipline Indigenous labour. In short, this neocolonial
intervention accelerates and secures an already established programme of
assimilatory neoliberation -- assimilatory in the sense given that term by
earlier Australian governments, as described with a tone of irony by
Murray Goot and Tim Rowse: "The task of assimilation was to endow
Aborigines with the capacities that would make it no longer necessary to
discriminate against them. That much was agreed" (2007: 30). While the
link between the intervention's stated purpose and actual aim is
counterintuitive in a practical sense, it is highly intuitive in a
political sense. Following my discussion of the programme of assimilatory
neoliberation the intervention brings to fruition, I will indicate the
human rights violations the intervention entails. It is in view of these
violations that the government's need for moral cover can be most clearly
discerned -- not just any moral cover, but one capable of rendering as
urgently needed the non-recognition of rights that are in fact
inalienable.
Neoliberating the Northern Territory
9. In his address to the Sydney Institute Howard himself implied that his
government's sweeping assumption of power is Hobbesian in character. But
in that same part of the speech Howard characterised his government's
assumption of absolute sovereignty as a departure from "laissez-faire
liberalism" and "light-touch government", as though militarization and the
supplanting of democratic principles with coercive authority were somehow
at odds with the politics of neoliberalism (Howard, 2007a: 2). Despite the
Prime Minister's representation of it, this intervention sees the federal
government assume absolute sovereignty in order to advance neoliberalism,
rather than temporarily desist in its practice and promotion. The
intervention provides a stark example of one of neoliberalism's salient
contradictions:
Neoliberalism lauds individualism, personal freedom and the free market,
but in practice it relies heavily on state regulation and control to
ensure conditions which are conducive to business ... from the
manipulation of interest rates by reserve banks, to influencing family
behaviour through welfare benefit policies". (McMartin, 2007: 1-2)
Through a dizzying array of inadequately debated legislative and policy
changes, the bulk of which well predate the release of AAMMR, the
intervention advances an effort to assimilate Indigenous Australians
within what Brough calls "the real economy" (2007d: 5). All of these
changes directly target Indigenous ways of life and notions of land
tenure, and serve either to diminish or eclipse the land rights and
negotiating powers of Indigenous organisations, transferring these rights
and powers to government through a systematic bolstering of ministerial
power. As I noted above, the programme of assimilatory neoliberation
underpinning the intervention consists of three interrelated strands. I
will address these in turn, with primary attention to the first.
Privatising Indigenous lands
10. 'Privatise' in this context refers to two processes. The first is a
process of replacing communal land ownership in Indigenous communities
with private free-market land tenure arrangements, facilitated by
successive amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory)
Act 1976 (ALRA). The second process is one of easing the path of certain
private interests wanting to do business on Indigenous land, through
amendment of the ALRA but also the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste
Management Act (CRWMA). Both processes precede and are further advanced by
the emergency legislation the government has passed as part of the
intervention. The ALRA is historic legislation that was drafted by the
Whitlam government and passed under the Fraser government, after decades
of struggle that succeeded finally through the leadership of Vincent
Lingiari. It returned approximately 50 per cent of the land area of the
Northern Territory to its traditional owners, instituting a form of
freehold title that enables communal land ownership and expressly rejects
the concept of private property ownership. The Howard government's first
amendment of this legislation in 2006 came 30 years after it was passed
and 218 years after the lands were taken. Despite the history and
significance of the ALRA, the government did not consult with Indigenous
people about its proposed amendments, and allowed only 39 days for
submissions to the Senate Committee Inquiry overseeing the amendments. Not
surprisingly, only 4 submissions from Indigenous organisations were
received (Calma, 2007: 4).
11. The task of Howard and Brough's Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern
Territory) Amendment Act 2006 (ALRAA) is neatly summed up in the
explanatory memorandum: "The principal objectives of this Bill are to
improve access to Aboriginal land for development, especially mining." In
addition to 'streamlining' the process of procuring mining and exploration
agreements by restricting the grounds on which they may be refused, the
amendment takes an existing feature of the ALRA -- the provision for
traditional owners to grant a 99-year lease over a township to a
particular body -- and elevates it to the status of prescribed model for
future township development. The dominant and preferred practice to date
has been for Aboriginal Land Councils to grant individual subleases over
portions of land within townships, maintaining communal ownership while
allowing some room for private commercial activity. The ALRAA seeks not
only to replace this practice with the 99-year whole-township lease
scheme, but replaces Aboriginal Land Councils with a government authority
as the maker and manager of lease agreements, removing the statutory
guarantee of minimum funding for Land Councils. The government did not
indicate why traditional owners and Land Councils would not retain control
of leasing arrangements and the private property development they will
oversee, and failed to specify what form this government authority would
take. The government authority was then specified a year later in
follow-up legislation, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory)
Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. This further amendment establishes
the position and office of an Executive Director of Township Leasing who
will "enter into and administer township leases on Aboriginal land in the
Northern Territory." Although their salary is to be paid by Aboriginal
people with money taken from the Aboriginal Benefit Account, the Executive
Director is to be appointed by the Queen of England's Australian
representative, the Governor General.
12. To the extent that the government's ALRA reforms are designed to
generalise a private property system of land ownership and commercial
development within Aboriginal townships, they perfectly contradict the
system of communal land ownership instituted through the ALRA and
maintained by Land Councils for thirty years. As Shadow Minister for
Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin observed, the reforms "fundamentally ...
alter the principle of communal landownership which is at the heart of the
land rights regime" (2007: 2). It is curious, then, that the government
has presented its reforms as serving the best interests of Aboriginal
people because they open opportunities for the same kind of private home
and business ownership found in "normal suburbs" (Brough, 2007c: 7). As
the Law Council of Australia observed,
Support for the amendments is based upon an assumption by government and
others that Indigenous peoples naturally desire the lifestyle and value
changes which go with economic development, including opportunities to own
homes in Aboriginal communities ... Concepts such as 'mortgage,'
'leasehold interest' or even the process by which a house or land is
bought and sold, have no role to play in traditional Indigenous
communities ... Unless changes of the type contemplated are positively
sought by Aboriginal people, the risk is that the traditional culture of
these communities will not be able to adapt to accommodate the changes,
with potentially devastating effects on the continuation of that culture.
(LCA, 2006: 5)
LCA here underestimate the proven capacity of Aboriginal communities to
cope with changes wrought by colonising processes, but they are right to
suggest the ALRA reforms pose serious risks. They pose in particular the
risk of displacement and dispossession. The ALRA reforms are coupled with
the Home Ownership on Indigenous Land Scheme (HOILS), which constitutes
the government's effort to address the chronic problem of overcrowded and
inadequate housing in many Northern Territory Indigenous communities.
Although the government represents the 99-year lease scheme as voluntary,
access to the $107.2 million allocated to HOILS in the 2006 budget is
predicated upon agreement to a 99-year lease. Thus traditional owners are
faced with a choice between retaining their land rights and accessing
their right to adequate housing. Even if traditional owners were to agree
to such a lease, their capacity to buy into housing developments on their
land is far from certain, given that average individual incomes for
Indigenous Territorians range between $8,632 and $13,460 per annum (LCA,
2006: 11). As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Commissioner Tom Calma observes,
Basic economic modelling demonstrates that the Australian Government's
expanded home ownership scheme will be out of reach of the majority of
remote Indigenous households ... Clearly, the benefits of the government's
strategy are directed primarily to individuals and communities that are
already advantaged or to the non Indigenous business and investment
sector. (2007: 7)
By replacing traditional ownership with free market competition, HOILS and
the ALRA reforms create a context in which traditional owners, upon
forfeiting their townships, may or may not be sufficiently economically
competitive to buy back individual portions of their own land. The 99-year
lease scheme is designed to provide certainty of tenure, but for whom?
13. Among the primary reasons why housing and other basic resources and
services in Indigenous communities are inadequate is that they have been
consistently under-funded by government. In 2006 the Australian Medical
Association observed that in recent years the annual funding shortfall for
Indigenous primary health care services has blown out to $460 million,
leading them to call for a Royal Commission into government under-funding
of Indigenous resources and services across the board (Briskman, 2007:
233). Consistent under-funding of basic services creates needs that the
government can then propose to meet on the condition of land tenure
reform. This form of coercion also is present in the system of Shared
Responsibility Agreements, and extends to the use of Indigenous lands for
dumping radioactive waste. [5] At the same time as the government was
amending the ALRA, it amended the CRWMA to remove the consent procedures
enabling traditional owners to nominate where radioactive waste can be
dumped on their land. An amendment to the third section of the Act
"provides that no person is entitled to procedural fairness in relation to
a Minister's approval of nominated land as a site" while an amendment to
the seventh section of the Act "provides an absolute ministerial
discretion to declare in writing that one (or a specified part of one) of
the sites is selected as the site for a facility and for related
acquisition or extinguishment of rights and interests." With ministerial
power thus bolstered, the government approached the Ngapa people on
Muckaty Station in Central Australia with a $12 million dollar package for
education, health and infrastructure, offered in exchange for agreement to
provide the nuclear power industry with a waste dump on their land. The
position of the dump will be decided by company surveyors who, like the
Minister, are no longer required to respect sacred ground.
14. The forms of power and authority the federal government has been
taking from Indigenous communities and conferring upon itself are
strengthened and expanded by the raft of emergency legislation rushed
through parliament as part of the intervention.[6] Consider the array of
new government powers over Aboriginal land Brough outlined in his speech
to parliament on the legislation, even as he insisted "this is no land
grab" (2007c: 6):
This bill provides for the Australian government to acquire five year
leases over townships in Land Rights Act land, community living areas and
over certain other areas ... Provision will be made for early termination
of the lease, such as when a 99 year township lease is granted ... The
leases will give the government unconditional access to land and assets
... The bill also provides an option for the government to make a long
term investment beyond the period of the emergency response in improving
town camps and, if necessary, the Commonwealth can acquire freehold title
over town camps ... The bill also provides for regulations to remove
listed town camp land. (Brough, 2007c: 5-7)
... The permit system for people entering Aboriginal land will be retained
but permits will no longer be needed to access common areas in the main
townships and the road corridors, barge landings and airstrips connected
with them ... [the Bill] provides that Land Councils and traditional
owners cannot revoke permits issued by another party. (Brough, 2007d: 4-6)
Note 99-year township leases feature as the alternative to government
control over townships, and that in these passages, as in all the others,
rights and processes of appeal are perfectly absent. Because the
government gave parliament less than a day to read the 500 pages of
emergency legislation, it has been passed without proper scrutiny and
debate, and as with the legislative manoeuvres preceding it, consultation
with Indigenous communities is completely lacking. Openly adopting the
politics of assimilation and the de-realisation of Aboriginality it
entails, the legislation proposes to transform "failed societies" in which
there is "no natural social order of production" into "normal suburbs"
(Brough, 2007c: 1-2). Rather than assume responsibility for the effects of
consistent under-funding, the government attributes socio-economic malaise
in these communities to Aboriginality in general and Aboriginal land
rights in particular. Accordingly, in his speech Brough cast Aboriginal
land rights and the permit system through which they are secured as
"artificial barriers preventing change for the better" (2007c: 3).
15. Just as the ALRAA supports the welfare of the mining industry and the
CRWMA accords government assistance to the nuclear power industry, so too
the emergency legislation will provide aid to the tourism industry. As
Brough explains, "tourists have been discouraged" by the permit system
(2007d: 5), and weakening that system will promote "free flow of visitors
and tourists" through Aboriginal lands (2007c: 3). Had he consulted with
Indigenous communities in his capacity as Minister of their affairs, he
may have reached a different view on what constitutes change for the
better:
The permit system is important because we want to protect the environment,
the rock art and our ceremony ground. Someone who walks into our country
has to have approval. We ask them to respect our wishes. Balanda (white
people) don't know which is ceremonial ground or burial ground, they just
walk anywhere; that's why we have to have this system. (Gumurdul,
Mikginmikginj and Nayinggul, 2006: 2) [7]
That weakening the permit system has more to do with strengthening
government control and advancing private interests than with addressing
the social problems targeted in the intervention is clear from the fact
that the permit system is the key instrument through which dry Aboriginal
communities restrict illicit sale of alcohol and, in Mutitjulu's case,
exclude suspected sexual abusers of children. As Mutitjulu community
leaders stated in response to the intervention, "We have thrown suspected
paedophiles out of our community using the permit system which the
government now seeks to take away from us." They also observed,
"We have tried to put forward projects to make our community economically
sustainable ... but the government refuses to even consider them ... The
fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no
doctor and no government support is a miracle". (Randall and Randall 2007:
1)
Corporatising Indigenous Governance
16. The government amended the ALRA in 2006 but the year before it
replaced the ALRA's companion legislation, the Aboriginal Councils and
Associations Act 1976, with legislation called the Corporations
(Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 (CATSI). Just as the ALRA
reforms advance private property land tenure arrangements in assimilatory
mode, so too CATSI serves to constitute existing and future Indigenous
organisations (councils, associations and existing corporations) as
corporations which operate to the "same standards of corporate governance"
as the rest of corporate Australia (ORATSIC, 2006a: 5). In effect, CATSI
brings the Corporations Act to Indigenous communities, which are to
operate in accord with "modern corporate governance laws" in land title
holdings and the provision of federally funded programmes and services
(ORATSIC, 2006b: 5). CATSI was passed in October 2006 and came into effect
on 1 July 2007, just after the intervention began. The concern raised by
CATSI is not just that corporate governance may be inappropriate as a
prescribed model for Indigenous organisations, but that CATSI will operate
as a further instrument of government control by making Indigenous
communities newly vulnerable to blame-shifting claims of corporate failure
in the management of programmes that are inadequately funded in the first
instance.
17. In 2005, prior to the introduction and passing of CATSI, the Registrar
of Aboriginal Councils conducted 'examinations' of 64 Aboriginal
communities across Australia, most of which resulted in the issue of
notices regarding inadequate governance and the appointment of outside
administrators to assume control of organisations' affairs. The Mutitjulu
Community Aboriginal Corporation (MCAC) was one of these. The people at
Mutitjulu are the traditional owners of Uluru, which is among the most
lucrative of Australia's tourist attractions, and their community was at
the centre of the first media frenzy over sexual abuse in Indigenous
communities in April and May 2006. As Martiniello documents, when the
ABC's Lateline programme profiled Mutitjulu,
one of Senator Mal Brough's personal staffers was the so-called ex-youth
worker interviewed on that programme, and the content of that interview
was laden with myths and mistruths. The staffer in question failed to
appear when summoned before a Senate inquiry to explain (2007: 4).
In July 2006 Perth-based Brian McMaster of the company Kordamentha was
appointed to administer MCAC's affairs. MCAC were given one day to make a
case to the Registrar as to why they should not be placed under
administration, and upon the administrator's appointment their government
funding was frozen, leaving them unable to pay staff and provide services.
McMaster's appointment proved disastrous:
since [his appointment] we have been without a doctor, we have fewer
health workers, our council has been sacked, and all our youth and health
programmes have been cut ... if there is an emergency, why won't Mal
Brough fast-track our kidney dialysis machine? (Randall and Randall, 2007:
1). [8]
18. In what one community member described as "fascism at its best"
(Guiseppe, 2006: 1), the government had used a vague claim of corporate
mismanagement to usurp community leadership and freeze funding. I
characterise the claim as vague on account of the subsequent Federal Court
ruling. MCAC applied to the Federal Court to review the Registrar's
decision to appoint an administrator. The decision initially was upheld,
then overturned on appeal: "There was no evidence of any particular
threatened unlawful or imprudent transaction on the part of the
Corporation ... Even if there were, the Registrar had adequate powers to
step in without the appointment of an administrator" (Justices Gyles,
Edmonds and Buchanan, 2007: 1). The Federal Court's decision was an
important victory for MCAC, and took place six days before the
intervention was announced. It is significant then, that recourse to the
Federal Court has effectively been blocked by the intervention's emergency
legislation. Unlike the rest of corporate Australia, the affairs of the
targeted Indigenous communities are to be overseen by Government Business
Managers for the next five years:
This bill contributes significantly to improving the way communities are
governed, by providing appropriate powers to support the appointment of
Government Business Managers, who will manage government activities and
assets in the selected communities ... powers introduced to support their
role include powers to terminate or vary Commonwealth funding agreements
... [and] to place certain bodies in external administration for failures
relating to the provision of government-funded services ... [the powers
will be exercised] where community organisations are unable, or unwilling,
to make the changes that are needed. (Brough, 2007c: 7-8)
Rather than improve governance by providing adequate funding and support,
these measures usurp community self-government, bolstering federal
government power yet again. The measures seemingly are based on an
assumption that Indigenous communities will fail to effectively become the
corporations CATSI has constituted them as. So far, CATSI's blanket
corporatisation of Indigenous organisations does not appear to be directed
toward genuine corporate mainstreaming, but rather to providing a context
for casting unsubstantiated palls of suspicion over the capacity of
Indigenous organisations to manage their own affairs.
Disciplining Indigenous Labour
19. In December 2006 a Senate Committee report called Unfinished Business:
Indigenous Stolen Wages (ISWR) was released, with the Committee calling
upon the federal government to respond to the issues it raises as a matter
of urgent priority. The report proves there was extensive systematic
withholding and mismanagement of Indigenous wages and welfare entitlements
on the part of Australian governments between the 1890s and 1960s, in some
cases until the 1980s, under the 'Protection Acts' regime. The report
details government regulation and control of the labour of Indigenous
children and adults under this regime, providing substantial evidence of
underpayment and non-payment of indentured and non-indentured labour
(ISWR, 2006: 7-28). It details restrictions on access to Commonwealth
entitlements, from child endowment and maternity allowances through to old
age and war veteran pensions (ISWR, 2006: 29-40). Such entitlements
initially were withheld from Indigenous people, and when entitlements were
granted they tended to be conditional upon "character, standard of
intelligence and development" (ISWR, 2006: 38), with provision for
'indirect' payment to a third party, such as a government authority or
mission. There is evidence that third parties withheld payment, made
partial 'pocket money' payment, and used threats to withhold payment as an
instrument of work-discipline. Highlighting the status of the report as a
window onto consequential poverty, sponsor of the inquiry Senator Andrew
Bartlett pointed out that successive decades of misappropriating the wages
and entitlements of Indigenous people "is the foundation for the poverty
and lack of opportunity that many Indigenous Australians face today ... it
is no great surprise that if you take away people's earnings they stay in
poverty" (2006: 1-2). In terms of the Howard government's response to this
report, what is most disturbing is not that they situated AAMMR instead as
the spur for emergency action, but that they appear to have used the
Stolen Wages Report as an instruction manual.
20. The emergency legislation brings to fruition a process that began in
2005: the disestablishment of the Community Development and Employment
Project (CDEP) scheme. This workfare scheme was introduced under Fraser in
1977 and provides bulk grants to urban and remote Indigenous communities
for community development, income support and employment creation (Altman,
2007a and 2007b, Sanders, 2007). CDEP is the primary employer of
Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. [9] Key features of the
scheme include flexible working arrangements to allow for ceremony and
remuneration for work not supported in the mainstream labour market, such
as art making, land and sea ranging, and wildlife harvesting (Altman,
2007b: 2-3). CDEP also sponsors and staffs a large network of community
shelters and programmes for Aboriginal women, children and young people,
as well as community night patrols. When ATSIC was established in 1990 it
took over CDEP, and when ATSIC was disestablished in 2005 CDEP passed to
the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR).
Notwithstanding consistent under-funding, CDEP is highly successful, as
confessed in the title of DEWR's first document to initiate reform,
Building on Success: CDEP-Future Directions . That CDEP would not have a
future became clear the following year. In March 2006 DEWR introduced a
twelve-month cap on employment within the scheme and a requirement that
CDEP employees register with an outside Job Network Member. In November
2006 they closed CDEPs in centres with "strong labour markets" and
introduced a rival "brokerage service" scheme called Structured Training
and Employment Projects (STEP) (Sanders, 2007: 2). STEP is a mainstream
training and work-for-the-dole scheme focussed on "meeting employer demand
through tailored assistance to employ Indigenous job seekers" (DEWR, 2006,
cited in Sanders, 2007: 2). [10] As part of the emergency legislation
accompanying the intervention, CDEP will be phased out in the Northern
Territory and wholly replaced with STEP (Brough, 2007e: 8-11).
21. Given that STEP aims to broker Indigenous labour to non-Indigenous
employers (Government Business Managers initially and private employers
subsequently) on a compulsory basis, it is powerfully reminiscent of the
indentured labour schemes instituted under the Protection Acts regime.
CDEP participation was voluntary, and as Jon Altman points out, with the
transition to STEP "participants are being forced from voluntary workfare
to compulsory work for welfare, considered in some quarters an
infringement of human rights and tantamount to slavery" (2007b: 4). STEP
also shares with the Protection Acts regime a belief that Indigenous ways
of life are antithetical to the development of a work ethic, and that this
is a problem that needs to be fixed through disciplinary erasure of
Indigenous ways of life. This belief underpins the key assumption of STEP,
which is that "CDEP positions" are not "real jobs" (Brough, 2007e: 10).
Judging from the following statement, the government has made clear its
position that capitalist business necessarily eclipses Indigenous
business:
[Minister Tony] Abbott has told central Australian Aborigines in
Pitjantjatjara land that spending months on ceremony doesn't work in
today's Western culture. He told an Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara
meeting that "if you're going to develop a working culture, you can't have
a three month ceremony season and you can't take six weeks off because
your cousin has died. I wouldn't imagine that long before white man came a
death would have stopped hunting." He is wrong. Our ceremony is part of
our work. That is why we call it "business". In our country, in Arnhem
Land, ceremony has continued uninterrupted for a very long time.
(Gumurdul, Mikginmikginj and Nayinggul, 2006: 2)
Among the stated aims of the intervention is to tackle 'passive welfare'
by creating 'real jobs' for Indigenous Territorians. CDEP workfare clearly
is not passive welfare, but is included by the government in that
category. In the transition from CDEP to STEP, previous CDEP employees
will come to be registered as unemployed welfare beneficiaries (losing
their entitlement to superannuation in the process). Altman identifies the
terrible irony of this: the Territory's Indigenous unemployment rate will
soar from 15.7% to at least 50%, making this an instance of "government
policy that creates unemployment through institutional destruction"
(2007b: 3). However the government's intensification of the problem it
purports to remedy serves another aspect of the intervention, also
strongly reminiscent of the Protection Acts regime. Reviving that regime's
infantilising constitution of Indigenous adults as 'assisted persons,' the
intervention introduces a blanket regime of 'income management' for
Indigenous welfare beneficiaries in the targeted communities. It is only
by disestablishing CDEP that 7500 previously wage-earning CDEP employees
can be included among those subject to the benefit income management
regime. As Brough himself admits, "Moving CDEP participants on to income
support will allow a single system of income management to apply to
welfare payments" (2007e: 11).
22. Where STEP enables disciplining of Indigenous wage labour, the income
management regime enables disciplining of Indigenous domestic labour. In
order to bring the domestic arrangements of Indigenous families into line
with "normal community standards and parenting behaviours" (Brough, 2007e:
2), the income management regime positions the government, by way of
Centrelink, as micro-manager of individual budgeting and expenditure. As a
blanket measure, and one that does not include any right of appeal,
non-parents as well as parents will be subject to income management:
Fifty per cent of the welfare payments of all individuals in the affected
communities will be income managed for an initial period of 12 months
during the stabilisation phase ... The new arrangements may follow an
individual even if they move out of the prescribed community to ensure
they cannot easily avoid the income management regime ... It is important
to acknowledge that this bill will not take one cent of welfare from
individuals ... but simply limits the discretion that individuals exercise
over a portion of their welfare and prevents them from using welfare in
socially irresponsible ways. (Brough, 2007e: 8-9)
The quarantined money will be set aside for a voucher system of
expenditure on items such as groceries and clothing, with the remaining
money rendered as "discretionary cash" -- pocket money -- that cannot
however "be used to purchase excluded items: alcohol, tobacco, gambling
and pornography" (Brough, 2007e: 3). Needless to say, measures to
discipline mining workers involved in pornography swapping and the illicit
sale of alcohol are nowhere mentioned in Brough's plans.
23. Brough's social security emergency legislation does, however, contain
a plan to extend its disciplinary measures beyond the targeted
communities. The income management regime will apply to beneficiary
parents nationwide who do not enrol their children at school, fail to
ensure sufficient school attendance, or are the subject of notification of
child neglect. This is probably an effort to capture Indigenous
beneficiaries residing in areas immune to the government's territories
power, and to target a category of person also much-maligned under this
government: solo mothers (Summers, 2003: 253-4). The impetus for the
income management regime comes from Noel Pearson's Cape York Welfare
Reform Project. But Pearson's project only applies to families subject to
notification of child neglect, within communities that volunteer to
participate in the scheme after a process of consultation with community
elders (ANTAR, 2007: 2-3). Moreover, Pearson's scheme is in its trial
phase and its effectiveness is completely unproven. The other authority
Brough calls upon to justify income management is the Australian Institute
of Health and Welfare (AIHW). But the very AIHW report he draws on
observes that "low incomes and financial stress" are cardinal factors in
child neglect--factors his income management regime is poised to intensify
rather than remedy (AIHW, 2006: 31).
Violating Human Rights
24. Taken together, the three strands of the programme of assimilatory
neoliberation I have discussed suggest that Turner's Trojan horse thesis
actually understates the breadth of this intervention. Not content to
resume control of Aboriginal lands, the intervention marshals a
breathtaking array of techniques -- usurpation, occupation, coercion,
disciplinary normalisation, media mendacity, and double-speak -- to reach
into and attempt to reshape almost every aspect of the lives of Aboriginal
Territorians within the targeted communities. Accordingly, the
intervention commits just as breathtaking an array of human rights
violations, including rights to equality before the law, to freedom from
discrimination, to self-determination, and to not be arbitrarily deprived
of property, all of which are recognised and upheld by the RDA. That the
intervention does not constitute 'positive discrimination,' fails to
qualify as a 'special measure' for purposes of the RDA, and does therefore
contravene Australia's obligations under international law, is clear from
three features of the intervention highlighted in my discussion: the
government's consistent neglect of consultation with the communities it is
targeting; the powers over Aboriginal land the government has assumed; and
the variety of respects in which the intervention is poised to intensify
the problems it purports to address.
25. With regard to the first of these, as the Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission (HREOC) explains, a special measure is one that is
taken "following effective consultation with the intended beneficiaries
and generally with their consent" (HREOC, 2007: 3). Despite Brough's claim
that the measures outlined in his emergency legislation "come from
Aboriginal women" (Brough, 2007b: 3), these measures were not developed
though adequate consultation with parliament much less the 40,000
Indigenous Australians directly subject to them, whose consent cannot have
been granted because it was not sought. [11] Secondly, the RDA
specifically "excludes from the 'special measures' exemption laws that
authorise management of property without the consent of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people or prevent them from terminating management
by another of land owned by them" (HREOC, 2007: 4). In other words, the
consent of Aboriginal landowners must be sought and granted in order for
measures such as five-year government leases and the installation of
Government Business Managers to be lawful. Hence a fundamental feature of
the intervention -- the government's 'takeover' of 73 communities -- is
unlawful. Thirdly, to the extent that the emergency measures carry
evidently negative consequences, they cannot be said to constitute
positive discrimination. Of the variety of negative consequences
identified in my preceding discussion, those attending the
disestablishment of CDEP -- in particular the intensification of
unemployment and closure of shelters and programmes for Aboriginal women,
children and young people -- as well as the baldly illiberal income
management regime, are among the most immediately pressing (see also
HREOC, 2007: 5-8).
26. In view of the Howard government's willingness to violate the human
rights of Aboriginal people in order to undermine the few rights to land
and sovereignty Aboriginal people have managed to win from the Australian
state, it is not surprising that Australia was not among the 143 countries
to vote in favour of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples on 29 June, five days after the intervention began.
[12] Although Article 22.2 of the Declaration endorses measures that
ensure "indigenous women and children enjoy the full protection and
guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination", the
Declaration contains 14 Articles, pertaining to land tenure, sovereignty
and assimilation, that in principle would render the Northern Territory
intervention as a contravention of internationally agreed norms. [13]
Salient among these is Article 19:
States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous
peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order
to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and
implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.
Politics of Suffering
27. Among the most disturbing aspects of the Howard government has been
its refusal to recognise the historical sufferings of Indigenous
Australians -- in particular children of the stolen generations -- and its
impugning of those who do as sentimental exaggerators bent on
manufacturing 'Black Armband' history (Macintyre and Clark, 2003). For
purposes of this intervention, however, Howard appears to break with his
reluctance to recognise suffering, expressing sentiments he has previously
maligned: "I thought the report [AAMMR] was just horrific. This is very
genuine. I am distressed. It is terrible. Little children. Don't
underestimate the personal interest and commitment to this" (Howard quoted
in Corey, Hartcher and Peatling, 2007: 1). Yet the particular form of
suffering Howard has selected for recognition, and his particular manner
of recognising this suffering, is entirely consistent with his
government's unfailingly pernicious attitude to Indigenous Australians.
The intervention's source of official legitimacy consists in what Howard
refers to as an "empirical fact" one can recognise without being "racist":
the fact that there are higher reported rates of child abuse and neglect
in Indigenous communities (Howard, 2007a: 1). But two racisms are
operative in the government's manner of recognising this fact.
28. In her book Dislocating Cultures Uma Narayan discusses how colonialist
representations of violence against women play a key role in the
construction of contrasts between Western and non-Western contexts. She
observes, for example, that dowry murders in India are rendered in Western
national contexts as a cultural phenomenon, a form of "death by culture",
while analogous forms of violence in Western contexts, such as domestic
violence murders, are not (Narayan, 1997: 42-80). The rendering of
analogous forms of violence in contrasting ways is part of a broader
tendency to regard non-Western contexts as temporally 'behind' and in need
of Westernisation. A form of representation closely akin to the one
Narayan describes structures the government's intra-national
representation of child abuse and neglect in Indigenous communities. In
truth, the official legitimacy of the intervention does not rely on the
empirical fact that child abuse and neglect takes place in these
communities, but on the contrast that is drawn within this statement of
fact. As Brough elaborates:
It has become clear that we are facing two very different situations in
Australia. For most of the country, the parental behaviour the government
is concerned about occurs relatively infrequently and is limited to a
relatively small number of families ... The second situation involves some
remote Indigenous communities where normal community standards and
parenting behaviours have broken down. (2007e: 2)
Brough is right to imply the rate of reported child abuse and neglect is
higher for Indigenous Australians. [14] However his application of the
neutralising terms "infrequent" and "small" to "most of the country" is
obfuscating. Judging from these terms one would not imagine that between
2005 and 2006 there was a general total of 28,809 substantiated cases of
child abuse and neglect in Howard's home state of New South Wales,
compared with a general total of 480 substantiated cases in the Northern
Territory (AIHW, 2006: 60). Of the NSW cases, 3,451 involved sexual abuse,
compared with 27 in the Northern Territory (AIHW, 2006: 60). The first
racism, then, is operative in the government's emphasis on rate figures
rather than aggregate figures, enabling child abuse and neglect to be
framed as a problem specific to Indigenous Australians, while other
Australians are rendered morally clean, their land tenure arrangements
left undisturbed.
29. Secondly, Howard has chosen to recognise contemporary rather than
historical suffering, and forms of suffering Aboriginal people inflict
upon one another, rather than sufferings inflicted upon Aboriginal people
by Australian governments and justice systems. Yet the very report that
caused him such distress not only refuses to separate these sufferings; it
links contemporary 'intra-racial' sufferings with the historical
sufferings his government has notoriously refused to recognise. Mobilising
the concept of inter-generational trauma in its explanation of child abuse
and neglect, AAMMR emphasises the generative role played by "previous
government policies of assimilation, as well as Indigenous peoples'
experience of racism, dispossession and marginalisation" (AAMMR, 2007:
223). AAMMR expressly rejects the model of individual pathology driving
law-and-order responses to child abuse and neglect, arguing that "blurring
the boundaries between individual, family and community ... allows for the
inclusion of child abuse and neglect as a result of past and present
social policies, racism and disadvantage" (AAMMR, 2007: 222). Howard and
Brough omit this aspect of the report in their own explanation of child
abuse and neglect, preferring instead a homespun theory that attributes
these to land rights and Aboriginal sovereignty. [15] The second racism,
then, consists in a tailored telling of 'intra-racial' suffering, one in
which Aboriginal children are mobilised as symbols of an urgent need to
deprive Aboriginal people of land, sovereignty and human rights. In
combination, the rendering of child abuse and neglect as specific to
Aboriginal communities and as a justification of rights violations furnish
the intervention with a much needed moral cover, but one that is bound to
wear thin.
Conclusion
30. I have argued here that Howard's Northern Territory intervention
consists of two parts: an underlying economic agenda geared to
assimilatory neoliberation, and a moral cover geared to converting the
issues of violence, abuse and neglect into bottomless sources of official
legitimacy for that agenda. As an effort to expel the land rights regime,
the intervention is indeed a land grab, but it is also much more than
this. Given its resumption of the politics of assimilation, revival of key
aspects of the Protection Acts regime, systematic undermining of
Indigenous authority, and blatant violation of fundamental human rights,
the intervention is nothing less than a neocolonial endeavour. Some joke
that Howard's social conservatism has him 'looking forward to the 1950s.'
But this intervention, which he may well regard as a final flourish in the
dying days of his reign, has him looking forward to the earliest days of
Australian colonial administration.
Rebecca Stringer lectures in Gender Studies at the University of Otago.
Her research area combines political theory and feminist theory, and her
key research interests lie with concepts of victimisation and how they are
mobilised across the political spectrum. She has written on the
victim/agent dichotomy, Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment , the concept
of foetal rights, the gender pay gap in New Zealand and, with Heather
Brook, the government of drug use. Email:
rebecca.stringer@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Acknowledgements
While the views expressed here are my own, I would like to thank the
editors, Vijay Devadas and Chris Prentice, for their patience and support,
Vijay for providing useful material and valuable discussion, the anonymous
reviewers for their astute suggestions, Barry Hindess for his insightful
comments on an earlier draft, Brian Roper for sustaining me as I worked,
and Brook Andrew, who emailed in the nick of time.
Notes
[1] These terms were used in the following news stories: 'revolution' and
'takeover' in Coorey, Hartcher and Peatling (2007), 'crackdown' in AAP
(2007) and 'rescue plan' in Murdoch and Westermen (2007).
[2] An anthology of discussions and evaluations of the intervention has
recently been published (Altman and Hinkson, 2007).
[3] See also Ian Anderson's comparison of the intervention with AAMMR's
recommendations (Anderson, 2007). The line of criticism discussed here is
shared among Aboriginal women's groups and groups such as Rape Crisis
(see, for example, Kapululangu Aboriginal Women's Association, 2007 and
Willis and Burke, 2007).
[4] In terms of electoral strategy, the intervention also provides the
federal government with occasion to impugn the Labor-led Northern
Territory government as irresponsible and incompetent, enabling it to
imply that similar problems would plague a federal Labor government.
[5] With Shared Responsibility Agreements government funding and basic
services become conditional upon behavioural changes and other
commitments. For example, in exchange for 200 air conditioners, Murdi
Paaki communities in New South Wales have to demonstrate a reduced rate of
domestic violence (See Briskman, 2007).
[6] The key pieces of emergency legislation are: the Northern Territory
National Emergency Act 2007, the Families, Community Services and
Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Northern Territory
National Emergency Response and Other Measures) Act 2007 and the Social
Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act
2007. On 7 August 2007 the legislation entered parliament at the second
reading stage, spent a brief period under committee, and came into effect
on 18 August 2007.
[7] Brough's claim that the permit system prevents tourism also ignores
the existence of Aboriginal operated tourism ventures such as the
Titjikala community's highly successful Gunya Tourism. Because this and
numerous other ventures are supported by the Community Development and
Employment Projects scheme, Brough's legislation, which disestablishes
that scheme, threatens their demise.
[8] Given the purported aim of Howard and Brough's intervention, it is
significant that when the Wirrimanu Aboriginal Corporation was placed
under administration in 2003, the direct result was to deprive the
Kapululangu Aboriginal Women's Association of funding and support,
preventing achievement of one of their key aims: to provide a shelter for
women and girls (see Kapululangu Aboriginal Women's Association, 2007:
6-8).
[9] Of the 15300 Indigenous people employed in the Northern Territory 7500
are employed through the Territory's 50 CDEP organisations (Altman, 2007b:
2).
[10] At this time DEWR also opened CDEP service provision up to the
mainstream market by introducing a contested contract model for selecting
service providers, resulting in the exclusion of 33 long-term CDEP
organisations (Sanders 2007: 2).
[11] As HREOC observe, "Measures taken with neither consultation nor
consent cannot meaningfully be said to be for the 'advancement' of a group
of people, as is required by the definition of special measures. To take
another approach contemplates a paternalism that considers the views of a
group as to their wellbeing irrelevant. Such an approach in the context of
Indigenous people is contrary to their right to self-determination as well
as undermining their dignity" (HREOC, 2007: 4).
[12] For discussion of the intervention in relation to the Declaration and
human rights more broadly see Davis, 2007. For discussion of the Howard
government, the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, and the United Nations see
Robbins, 2007.
[13] On my reading of the Declaration, the Articles that would render the
intervention as out of step with established norms are: 8, 10, 11, 14, 17,
18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 32.
[14] With regard to rate figures, AIHW record that the majority of
notifications of child abuse and neglect in the Northern Territory in the
year between 2005-2006, 356 involving Indigenous children, have as their
source of notification police (28 per cent), health care workers (15 per
cent) and school staff (11 per cent) (AIHW, 2006: 30). In others words,
these figures also are a record of interaction between predominantly white
Australian institutions and Indigenous Territorians, with the latter
forming part of the most intensely policed group of people in the country:
Indigenous Australians are 2.4 per cent of the total population and 22 per
cent of the total prison population (Krieg, 2006: 534). However child
protection service providers have no mechanism for assessing whether
notifying parties are more likely to report concerns regarding Indigenous
families than non-Indigenous families. Hence we have no way of knowing to
what extent greater notification of child abuse and neglect in Indigenous
families actually reflects greater incidence compared with non-Indigenous
families: one group is racially marked and intensely policed, the other is
not. It would take a government capable of acknowledging the existence of
racism to find this out.
[15] As Brough puts it, "sit down money with Gough Whitlam and land rights
under the Fraser government ... did more to harm indigenous culture and
destroy it than any two other legislative instruments ever put through
parliament" (2007f: 6).
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
25. Race Relations: Patu! Historic NZ Docu Screening
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:29:53 +1300 (NZDT)
From: Marakita Mehmet <maraki_tanga@yahoo.co.nz>
Patu! Historic Nz Doco Screening
Wednesday, 28 November 2007, 10:46 am
Press Release: CutCutCut
CutCutCut press release
Patu! Historic Nz Doco Screening!
PATU! 8:30pm, Friday 30th, Paramount Theatre, Wellington
PATU! (NZ 1983) "A major documentary of our time" 8:30pm, Fri most
controversial, and the most contested, event in recent New Zealand history
was the 1981 South African rugby tour. Half the country was opposed to the
tour, the establishment was determined the tour would go ahead, and the
result was a country divided against itself almost to the point of civil
war. This incredible documentary shows what happened. The actual filming
was both dangerous and difficult and attempts to have the negative
confiscated...[Merata Mita's] achievement is as impressive technically as
it is effective emotionally. A major documentary of our time." - London
Film Festival. This one off screening of the 1983 documentary PATU! has
been organised to raise awareness about the recent raids on activists
across the country. PATU! documents the anti-apartheid protests in 1981
and has particular relevance in terms of the recent police raids and the
Terrorism Suppression Act as John Minto recently pointed out. "The
proposed new law would have meant many of the civil disobedience protests
from 1981 could have been classed as "terrorist activities". Actions such
as the 40 people sitting on Rotorua airport runway, the invasion of the
pitch in Hamilton and the blocking of the Auckland harbour bridge could
all easily qualify. These anti-terror laws are George Bush's laws. They
were never designed for New Zealand." At the time of the tour John Minto
was the national organiser of Halt All Racist Tours (HART). PATU! Produced
by Merata Mita Year: 1983 Prod Co: Awatea Films Country: New Zealand Film
info and video
cliphttp://data.filmarchive.org.nz/search/details_film.php?ref_no=F3794&result_no=11
*** *** *** ***
Race Relations: Patu! Historic NZ Doco Screening - PATU! (NZ 1983) "A
major documentary of our time" 8:30pm, Fri. Patu tracks the most
controversial, and the most contested, event in recent New Zealand history
- the 1981 South African rugby tour. More
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0711/S00462.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
26. Merry Christmas, Hawaii ^V and Bombs Away!
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:33:03 -1000
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner@gmail.com>
A superb piece, only too true!
A million thanks and a big hug, Cathy, for caring about us....
Viviane
==========
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_25559.shtml
Merry Christmas, Hawaii ^Ö and Bombs Away!
By Cathy Garger
Nov 27, 2007, 17:47
It^Òs the end of the world as we know it. The US Military has officially
run out of foreign lands to bomb. Apparently out of desperation to find a
place to publicly ejaculate their huge, heavy loads, the US Air Force has
chosen the Big Island of Hawaii as its bulls-eye target.
Unfortunately for Hawaiian paradise, however, this time it^Òs going to
take far more than a super size box of Kleenex to tidy up this particular
wad containing Uncle Sam^Òs latest hot, dirty, and unquestionably most
slimy mess.
According to a recent Associated Press article, ^ÓB-2 Stealth Bombers Hit
US Targets^Ô, the United States government is using both Hawaii and Alaska
to expand its war games and better train pilots to unload mega-size
Uranium bombs on ^Ö shhhh ^Ö unsuspecting North Koreans. Meanwhile, Uncle
Sam, convincingly playing the part of one mighty sick, twisted Santa, is
apparently reneging on his promise to make nice and remove North Korea
from his Naughty [State Sponsors of Terrorism] List.
How considerate of Uncle Sam to give such a generous warning, months in
advance, of his impending blitzkrieg on one more unsuspecting Asian
nation! But, for some strange reason, the citizens of Hawaii received no
such courtesy prior to being ^Ócursed^Ô with monthly bloody bombings, not
even the benefit of predictability enjoyed by women visited every month by
their ^ÓAuntie Flo.^Ô
What harm would it do, if you really think about it, for the US government
to run a small ad in Hawaii^Òs federal mouthpiece, The Honolulu
Advertiser, in which they could announce for Hawaiians the dates during
which they should attempt to locate suitable bomb shelters on ^Óthat^Ô day
of the month? Well, at least it would be a mighty thoughtful touch!
One seriously wonders what horrible things Hawaiians have done to become
such bad little boys and girls that their very own authoritarian Uncle
Sammy ^Ö who they have, after all, permitted for over one hundred years to
play soldier upon their land and in their sea - would sadistically
^Órepay^Ô them for their warm Aloha-spirit hospitality by dropping bombs
from stealth Air Force B-2 bombers on them^Å ^Ñround Christmastime, no
less!
No matter what the offense, no matter how bad Hawaiians have been to merit
domestic air raids by their own, one certainly suspects that dumping many
thousands of pounds of coal atop the Hawaiian Isle would be a far more
suitable punishment (not to mention an infinitely better eco-friendly
gesture) than being forced into being sitting ducks for bombing practice
from the heavens above!
But times they certainly are a ^Ñchanging! Why, once upon a time in an era
many US War Presidents ago, it used to be that attacks on Hawaii were
staged by other nations ^Ö Japan, for example. Now, in this modern
post-9/11 age, any nation is fair game for attack ^Å even when the people
on the island you^Òre bombing happen to wave the very same red, white, and
blue flag as the other forty nine states!
No, this is no parody you^Òre reading. This news is so priceless I could
not make this stuff up! The United States Air Force has actually started
bombing its own country, in order to conduct what they claim is necessary
bombing practice for North Korea ^Ö or whoever^Òs up for the next US
^Óhit!^Ô
Courtesy of the AP article, released as a gift to America on Thanksgiving
Day (when we were too busy wolfing down turkey and stuffing to notice or
even care), we now learn, quite after the fact, that US B-2 ^ÓSpirit^Ô
Stealth Bombers have started routinely bombing the US state of Hawaii.
According to the US Air Force website, the domestic bombing began this
year on October 23. Reportedly, the first Bombs Away event, being called
Hawaii^Òs ^ÓOctober Surprise,^Ô was part of an exercise called ^ÓKoa
Lightning,^Ô in which B-2s flew from Guam to Hawaii, dropping the bombs on
the Big Island^Òs Pohakuloa Training Area.
At least one dozen of these mega-bombs were dropped the first month, at
$1.2 million US Dollars a pop. Called ^Óinert^Ô and ^Ódummy^Ô because they
reportedly do not explode, the Air Force tells us, as if from an ad for
homemade jam, bombings are conducted, ^Óthe old fashioned way too. No
laser designating the target and no joint direct attack munitions with
global positioning system guidance. It was just the aviators, their
instruments, a deadly airframe and some Airmen on the mock battlefield
calling in the coordinates.^Ô
As these are not your Air Force standard, computer-guided, ^Óbuilt in,
state of the art targeting system^Ô drops, the aviators and their uh,
instruments, work on a ^Ódeadly timeframe,^Ô relying on nothing but
gravity ^Å and the capricious whim of Mother Nature^Òs tropical winds.
So don those hard hats and heads up, Hawaii, ^Ñcause where those
^Óold-fashioned ^Ñdumb bombs^Ò without precision guidance^Ô land next is
anybody^Òs guess! And a 2,000 lb. bomb ^Ö make that a 2,000 lb. anything^Å
released from a point higher than the mountaintops that goes even a wee
bit off course is definitely going to cause some poor Hawaiian one mighty
colossal headache!
According to the AP article, the Air Force has ^Óonly started dropping
inert bombs on the Big Island's Pohakuloa Training Area [PTA] last
month.^Ô One can not help wondering if this bombing that ^Óonly^Ô started
last month is not possibly payback for the work of outspoken activists who
recently opposed the permanent stationing of the 2/25th Stryker Brigade
Combat Team at PTA? Coincidentally [or maybe not?] Pohakuloa is the same
live-fire test training area where mega-bombs are now getting dropped out
of B-2 jets onto grounds where Depleted Uranium was discovered in August.
With regard to the ^ÓKoa Lightning^Ô bombing of Hawaii exercises, one of
the B-2 pilots, Major Tim Hale, stated, ^ÓThis particular mission covers
the full spectrum of what we can do.^Ô With a nation so desperate to
practice dropping bombs that it chooses as its Ground Zero the sacred,
culturally rich, pristine paradise of Hawaii, there is no question that
the full spectrum of what we can do has indeed been achieved ^Å at the
very lowest, bottom-of-the-barrel end of the spectrum, that is.
With the bombing of Hawaii a jolly old ho (ho, ho) hum affair, not just
the United States but the international community, too, now gets to
witness the utter depths of just how low the United States will go in
order to wage its aggressive wars. For to depraved Uncle Sam in the role
of Santa-Gone-Bad this holiday season, not even Hawaii ^Ö considered by
many to be the world^Òs favorite tropical vacation spot ^Ö is sacred.
On its own website, the US Air Force reminds us that the capability of the
B-2 bombers (apparently considered the pinnacle of Air Force prowess) must
not be underestimated. "Strategic bombers in and of themselves are huge
force multipliers," according to Tech. Sgt. Richard Setlock, a JTAC from
the 25th Air Support Operations Squadron. Furthermore, according to Sgt.
Setlock, "Fighter attack aircraft can stay on station for 45-minutes and
provide six to eight bombs. We can have a bomber overhead for two to four
hours and provide four times the firepower that a fighter attack aircraft
could."
The military^Òs orgiastic thrills and chills of ^Óforce multiplier^Ô
capabilities aside, one wonders how the local Hawaiian school children are
coping? What must it be like for these precious young ones, learning their
A, B, C^Òs, numbers, and colors, too, with not merely jets overhead, but
stealth bombers that provide four times the firepower of fighter attack
aircraft?
Distant memories of 1960s bomb drills hiding underneath kindergarten desks
suddenly come to mind. One wonders how Hawaiian teachers go about
explaining to tiny tots that the bombs, each weighing about as much as
four classroom pianos... are being dropped by their own country, that is
[gulp] by the ^Ógood guys^Ô.
In correspondence with Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award winner and
weapons expert of The San Francisco Bay View, Nichols wrote of the B-2
bombs,, "It is just a matter of time till the 376,000 lb heavy bombers hit
a school playground or someone's house with the equivalent of a small car
at 160 mph and kill no telling how many people. Just chalk it up to the
annual required human sacrifice to keep the big Military payroll in
Hawaii. The city fathers made a bad deal with the devil for a few dollars
more."
The devil may have made them do it, but do the local officials even know?
According to Mayor of the County of Hawaii, Harry Kim, this is apparently
not the case. "I was not aware that they were dropping bombs up there."
Mayor Kim also added that the public has a right to know about what^Òs
going on ^Ö and when Hawaiians can expect the 2,000 pound drops gracing
them from up above. "They really need to be proactive about informing us
so we can inform the public," he said. "The public needs to know when
these types of exercises are going on, especially those who drive Saddle
Road."
Yes, there^Òs no doubt about it. These bombs are a threat to Hawaii, and
when even the local government^Òs top official is not made aware of the
mortal danger his citizens face on a regular basis, one suspects that
Uncle Sam does a mighty lousy job as Federal Duck-and-Cover Communicator
for the oblivious residing in Pacific paradise.
As explained by the Air Force on its website, ^ÓThe global reach and long
loiter time over a target is a unique capability of America's bomber
force. This makes the B-2 especially lethal to America's enemies.^Ô
Furthermore, as Col. Damian McCarthy, 36th Operations Group commander,
elaborates, "Having the ability to stay over a target for extended
periods, especially in a stealth airframe, gives the combatant commander
the option to strike the bad guys at a time and place of their choosing."
What none of these military load-dropping, macho-types explain, however,
is just whose bright idea it was to use the Big Island of Hawaii for their
bombing target practice fun. The island of Hawaii is, after all, a place
where 160,000 citizens live and work, and 1.5 million tourists from around
the globe come each year to sun, fun, and play.
Can someone please tell me exactly when did the gentle, peace-loving
people from the Aloha state get placed on the list as America^Òs declared
^Óenemies^Ô and ^Óbad guys^Ô in order to merit humongous, lethal bomb
drops by B2 stealth bombers?
One can understand why Hawaiians are a tad more than concerned about the
very real possibility of stray, off-course bombs being dropped on their
heads. What is even more disturbing, however, is the fact that these bombs
^Ö weighing roughly the same as a Honda CRX model car - are being dropped
from altitudes 18,000 feet above the mountains ^Å onto grounds
contaminated with deadly toxic and radioactive Depleted Uranium from years
of live-fire training.
Can you just imagine how 2,000 pounds of concentrated dead weight, dropped
from the skies, will rustle up and render airborne the Depleted Uranium in
the soils on the Pohakuloa Training Area? And just how safe can this be,
in terms of air quality, with lethal Depleted Uranium being re-suspended
in the air by these bomb drops ^Å particularly for those living in nearby
towns?
According to the Army^Òs 2000 health fact sheet on Depleted Uranium, ^ÓDU
can also be inhaled when DU particles in the environment are resuspended
into the atmosphere by wind or other disturbances.^Ô Is there any question
in anyone^Òs mind that such a heavy bomb, dropped from the heavens and
landing in radioactive soils, creates one hell of a ^Ódisturbance?^Ô
Jim Albertini, of the Malu ^ÑAina Center for Non-Violent Education &
Action says of the bombings, ^ÓThis, along with other training at PTA, is
an outrage given the presence of Depleted Uranium (DU) confirmed at PTA.
The full extent of the contamination is not yet known but the military is
taking action that risks spreading the stuff around. It shows the complete
disregard for the health and safety of Hawaii residents and the military
people who train on the ground there.^Ô
Wouldn^Òt it make sense to remediate the contaminated soils at Pohakuloa,
as is required by Army Regulation 700-48 before even thinking about
dropping mega-bombs there? Is the Army in such a hurry to ^Ópractice^Ô
bombing the hell out of North Korea that it simply cannot wait another few
months till it cleans up the mess it created in Hawaii by playing around
there with its nuke weapons (and God-only-knows-what-other Uranium
munitions)?
Has this grand US imperial Empire, in its zealous myopic dream of waging
wars at any cost, decided to totally waste the once pristine, lush, exotic
Hawaiian island - and its very own citizens to boot? Does anyone know
precisely when our nation made the decision to condemn Hawaii for billions
of years as a radioactive ^Ónational sacrifice zone,^Ô the ^Ópayoff^Ô
being the ability to wage continuous wars against innocent civilians ^Å in
both Hawaii as well as in far-off lands?
Perhaps in lieu of being greeted in the future with flowered leis, future
visitors to Hawaii^Òs airport should, by all rights, be appropriately
welcomed with Army-issued gas masks and radioactive MOPP gear suits
instead. While the Hawaiian tourist industry admittedly may tank once
photos get out depicting the rather, um, encumbered manner in which
Hawaiian tourists will now be outfitted, on the plus side, US troops would
then be able to invade, occupy, and take as their own private playground
vacant Hawaiian hotels and resorts where tourists and vacationers, fearing
radioactive contamination, will no longer venture.
So say goodbye, all ye citizens of the world, to the former tropical
paradise of the Aloha state! Please know you have been forewarned and
travel to Hawaii now at your own risk.
Vacation now on the Big Island and prepare to be greeted with the US
military^Òs own uniquely gracious brand of hospitality ^Å the invisible
^Ógift^Ô of inhaled Uranium aerosol blowing in the warm tropical winds,
bestowed upon unsuspecting residents and tourists alike, for all eternity.
To learn more and find out what you can do to help keep Hawaii safe from
domestic bombing and further radioactive contamination, visit the folks at
Protect Hawaii and say Aloha to them for me.
Cathy Garger is a freelance writer, public speaker, activist, and a
certified personal coach who specializes in Uranium weapons. Living in the
shadow of the national District of Crime, Cathy is constantly nauseated by
the stench emanating from the nation's capital during the Washington, DC,
federal work week. Cathy may be contacted at savorsuccesslady3@yahoo.com .
=====-----------------------------------------------------------------
27. Tasers for all...
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:41:44 -1000
From: mike reitz <mreitz@pacbell.net>
...was on a flight recently and cruised thru the biz mag I found in the
seatback pocket (Forbes: "The Capitalist's Tool") when I came across a
full-page ad (lead line "When I can't be there...) from TASER for a TASER
C2 of your very own (available in these designer colors; Electric Blue,
Titanium Silver, Black Pearl and, of course, for your kick-ass little
woman, Metallic Pink). This isn't just a military, Homeland Security or
local police issue, but potentially your neighbors or anyone you meet on
the street who doesn't like the way you look at them...
...and available at these fine "sporting" arms dealers; Academy Sports,
Cabela's and Gander Mtn., and other leading stores, or buy online at
www.iTASER.com ....
m
PS: thank goodness it was on an airplane so the barf-bag was handy when I
read the body copy:
"Protection. It is more than personal-it is a duty to care for the ones we
love. But we cannot always be there. In an imperfect world, we need to
protect our families regardless of our personal schedules. With the TASER
C2 you can have police proven, effective protection that is convenient to
carry and easy to use. Over 270,000 law enforcement professionals have
come to rely on TASER devices to protect life. Protect your life and those
you love with professional grade technology starting at only $299.95."
________________________________________________________________________________
28. Amnesty International: A Taser victim's penalty 'should not be death'
From: viviane lerner
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 6:08 PM
A MUST-READ, MUST-WATCH! [10-mn. video]
====
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Amnesty_International_Taser_victims_penalty_should_1126.html
Amnesty International: A Taser victim's penalty 'should not be death'
11/26/2007 @ 11:09 am
Filed by David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Police use of Tasers to subdue suspects can rise to the level of torture,
according to Amnesty International USA's executive director, Larry Cox,
whose organization is calling for a moratorium on the electroshock
devices.
Advertisement
Cox appeared on CBS's Early Show to discuss a dramatic spike in
Taser-related deaths -- a total of six people died after being Tasered in
separate incidents last week in the US and Canada -- and to urge the
continued study of potential dangers he says are inherent to law
enforcement reliance on Tasers.
"You have people who are often in custody, and when they are in custody
and it's being used repeatedly on them, it's hard to describe it as
anything else but torture," said Cox. Amnesty International USA first
raised concerns that some Taser practices amounted to torture in 2006.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture voiced a similar opinion
about Tasers last Friday, commenting that one stun gun model "constituted
a form of torture" by inflicting considerable pain.
Asked about the UN statements, Cox said that the panel's characterization
of some Tasering as torture carried significant weight.
"It means that it's a very serious thing because the UN does not lightly
use the word torture," he said. " These are people that have seen torture
around the world, they've seen the worst kinds of torture...And because we
know from our own experience that electroshock often is used as a form of
torture deliberately. You're shooting 50,000 volts of electricity into
people; it's extremely painful."
Taser International, the manufacturer of the TaserX26, the specific stun
gun cited by the UN, denies that its device has ever been directly
responsible for a death. Cox said that although there was not yet
definitive proof, more study of the incidents was needed.
"Nobody really knows exactly why these people are dying, we only know that
people are dying after they are Tasered," said Cox. "When we started doing
our first study, 70 people had died in the United States. Now it's nearly
300 people who have died in the United States. They're Tasered and then
they die. We're calling for a study to find out exactly why."
Although he acknowledges that other circumstances may contribute to Taser
deaths, the Tasers themselves were undeniably a contributing factor.
"It may be because they have a heart condition, it may be because they're
on drugs, it may be because of some other factor that we don't know
about," he added. "The important thing is they are dying after they they
are Tasered. That cannot be denied, no matter how you spin the language."
Cox said that one reason for the pervasive use of Tasers by police forces
was the perception that the device was not particularly dangerous.
"It's been billed as something safe and easy," he continued. "So it's
natural that police who are in very difficult situations -- and are
worried for their own lives -- may tend to use it too easily."
Answering claims made by some police authorities that a ban on Tasers
would force officers to resort to potentially more dangerous weapons such
as batons and pepper spray, Cox stressed that whatever the method employed
by authorities, it should be fundamentally safe.
"We also want there to be a safe way to subdue people. I think that's very
good," he concluded. "But we have to study this and find out that this is
really safe. The penalty for resisting arrest should not be death."
An Amnesty International report on Taser-related deaths can be read here.
This video is from CBS's Early Show, broadcast on November 26, 2007.
=====--------------------------------------------------------------------
29. 2008 APA Community Leadership Pgm - Deadline extended to 12/5!
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:51:57 -0800 (PST)
From: Ramona Gupta <ramonagupta@yahoo.com>
Dear friends,
Due to technical problems with our email account, we are extending the
application deadline for the 2008 Community Leadership Program to
Wednesday, December 5, 2007.
Phone interviews will be conducted Dec. 6-30, and applicants will be
notified of their acceptance by Jan. 4, 2008.
If you already submitted your application but did not receive a
confirmation email, please resend the application to Ramona Gupta at
ramonagupta@gmail.com. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have
caused you.
We are very excited about this year^Òs program and hope you will apply for
this one-of-a-kind opportunity!
Sincerely,
Your friends at the
Leadership Center for Asian Pacific Americans
http://www.lcapachicago.org
--
The Leadership Center for Asian Pacific Americans (LCAPA)
announces the 2008 Community Leadership Program: Defying Gravity:
Rising Above the Ordinary
LCAPA is looking for people who aspire to^Å
* Learn about APA current events and issues
* Increase their involvement in Chicago ^Òs APA community
* Build leadership skills
* Network with APA peers
If this sounds like you then^Å
Apply NOW for the 2008 Community Leadership Program!
Since 2001, LCAPA has annually presented CLP, a 5-month comprehensive
leadership institute that aims to increase the capacity of its
participants to further their work as advocates and leaders in Chicago ^Òs
APA community.
** Organizations and businesses are encouraged to sponsor their staff's
participation in this program. **
Program runs January - May 2008. Application deadline extended to
Wednesday, December 5, 2007.
For further information, visit http://www.lcapachicago.org or email
ramonagupta@gmail.com.
We hope to hear from you!
________________________________________________________________________________
30. holiday art events
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:29:05 -1000
From: Tim Bostock Productions <tbp@artsatmarks.com>
Dear Friends
It's a busy weekend coming up, and the Christmas parties are rolling
along! ARTafterDark at the Academy of Arts is on Friday Nov 30, and
features live dance music from Thick Tubes. See and be seen!
The Very Best of Christmas Talk Story from Honolulu Theatre for Youth this
year includes the most popular stories from the last decade, performed to
live music. The family favorite opens at Tenney Theatre this Friday Nov 30
at 7:30 p.m., then plays Saturdays through Dec 22 at 1.30pm & 4.30pm.
Tickets are $8 for children and $16 for adults; discounts for students,
seniors and military. Call the HTY box office at 839-9885 or use
www.htyweb.org.
Anna Bannana's hosts a Third Degree Reunion on Friday night featuring
singer/guitarist Chris Planas from The Pagan Babies, and most recently of
Lost Legends from the Bay Area. Five years after Third Degree closed its
act as Honolulu's hottest R& B band, this show with special "Pagan" guests
will bring Anna Bannana's to its feet- band plays from 9pm, tickets at
door.
Hope Mayo plays at rRed Elephant, Friday Nov 30 at 7pm, while Hawaii's
superb acoustic guitar trio, KOHALA (with GRAMMY award-wining Charles
Michael Brotman, Charlie Recaido and Rupert Tripp, Jr) play live at rRed
Elephant, Saturday Dec 1 at 7.30pm and Sunday Dec 2, at 4pm. TICKETS:
Honolulu Box Office: 550-8457, www.honoluluboxoffice.com
Ecstatic poetry, exquisite musicians, and powerful dramatic rendering will
entertain a full house (I predict) at Honolulu Academy of Arts Doris Duke
Theatre on Saturday, Dec 1. Flute-playing wizard Steven Rosenthal and
percussionist Reggae McGowan team up with the basso profundo sufic bard
Dan Furst to create An Evening with Rumi - a journey into sacred words,
music and the ecstatic turning of the dervishes, and the heart and soul of
the world's most God-intoxicated poet Jalaluddin Rumi. With Dervish
Turning by Valerie Noor Karima. Tickets $15 and $12 for Students/
Seniors. Box office 532 - 8374, or www.honoluluacademy.org.
"Road Trip" opens this Saturday, Dec 1 at 8pm at The ARTS at Marks Garage.
The multi-talented Garrick Paikai will create a full cast of characters
and musical numbers, fueled by audience suggestions, in a one-man improv
comedy tribute to the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road" movies of the 40's.
Tickets are $10 general and $8 students, Honolulu Box Office at 550-8457
or www.honoluluboxoffice.com.
The Hawaii Youth Symphony Winter Concert Series kicks off on Sunday, Dec 2
at 4pm, then again Sunday Dec 9 at 4pm, with concerts at Pearl City
Cultural Center. Tickets are $10 general admission and $5 for students /
seniors; available through the HYS office at 941-9706 or at the box office
beginning 3pm both days.
NEXT WEEK
Pullitzer prize winning poet C.K Williams will be reading at the Luke
Lecture Hall at Punahou School, Thursday Dec 6 from 7pm to 8pm. A very
fine poet, multi-award winner and Princeton Professor, Williams deals
expertly and gently with themes of human pain, forgiveness and repair.
Absolutely free - see www.punahou.edu/media for more detail.
Friday Dec 7 sees the converging of two world class artists from Hawaii
and Peru at The Art Zone (3245 Pali Highway). The imagery of Carolyn Quan
combines with the joyful and mystical sounds of the Andean mountains with
Peruvian National Treasure, Tito La Rosa in concert. Begins at 7pm,
parking at International Baptist Church, 20 Dowsett Ave, $22 at the door.
More about Tito and advance tickets here:
http://www.ailishschutz.com/Aerie/
Friday December 7 is First Friday downtown - great Christmas Shopping
opportunities mixed with the best arty street scene in the state. Cherry
Blossom Cabaret play at Next Door 7pm - 9pm; Hawai`i Craftsmen's Gallery
Sale is excellent and open at The ARTS at Marks Garage, and HiSAM features
a new "silly seasonal store" in collaboration with Na Mea Hawaii named
HI-HOHOHO with only Hawai'i-made fine art, gifts and goodies...
HI-HOHOHO has an enormous Window which will be a rotating exhibit -
artists will have a week to showcase their work in The Window, and use the
space as a creative outlet. On Thursdays from 11.30am to 1.30pm the
artist will be at HI-HOHOHO and has the option of being in The Window
during this time. The Window schedule includes Solomon Enos, Jodi
Endicott, Phillip and Mieko Markwart, Jerry Vasconcellos, Mark Chai, Peggy
Chun, Carl Pao, Scott Manley, Harinane Orme, David Smith and artists from
The Balcony Gallery. Go check it out on Thursday lunchtime, enjoy
excellent food from Downtown and gaze at a real live artist in the window!
Finally, since we're in the "shopping as culture theme" (hey, it's
Christmas!) Nordstrom will open its first full-line store in Hawaii at
Ala Moana Center in March, and to celebrate the store will host a
spectacular evening gala and fashion show on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. The
fete will benefit Bishop Museum, Hawaii Theatre and HUGS. Guests will
enjoy lavish pupus, cocktails and buffets, live entertainment and a
full-scale runway fashion show. Tickets for the opening gala are $150 per
person, and go on sale today. To grasp yours call the Hawaii Theatre at
723-1879.
Find time in the Holiday Season to support the arts in Honolulu!
With Aloha
Tim
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
31. NZ Gubbament dumps crap meat to the Islands
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:06:33 +0000
From: Ana <uriohau@yahoo.com.au>
TONGA PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIAL DISMAYED AT NEW ZEALAND STANCE ON FATTY MEATS
EXPORT
Posted at 02:42 on 28 November, 2007 UTC
A toppublic health official in Tonga says he's dismayed by New
Zealand'sdecision not to ban exports of fatty meat to the Pacific region.
New Zealand's Health Minister, David Cunliffe, has rejected
arecommendation from a parliamentary health select committee to phaseout
or ban the exports for the good of people's health.
It's thought the consumption of cheap, high-fat mutton flaps fromNew
Zealand have contributed to a sharp rise in obesity and diabetes inthe
Pacific Islands.
Tonga's Chief Medical Officer for Public Health, Dr Malakai Ake,says the
decision is disappointing and reveals a double standard.
"Obviously you guys in NZdon't consume it. Maybe you give it
to other Pacific Islanders who arethere, or even feed them to
your d ogs. But that's the real fact. Theyare dumping it to
us because they know the health consequences ofpeople
consuming this high fat-content meat which is detrimental to
thehealth of the people in the Pacific."
Dr Malakai Ake says Tonga will ask New Zealand to reconsider the decision.
He says banning imports on Tonga's side could contravene free trade
agreements.
http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=36703
------------------------------------------------------------------------
32. Free Hawai`i TV - "Superferry Action Alert"
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:57:44 -0800
From: Free Hawai`i <freehawaii@earthlink.net>
FREEHAWAII.INFO PRESENTS
FREE HAWAI`I TV
THE FREE HAWAI`I BROADCASTING NETWORK
TODAY'S VIDEO COMMENTARY -
"ACTION ALERT! SUPERFERRY RETURNS"
Can The Superferry Be Stopped?
Watch & Find Out What The People Of Kaua`i Are Doing & How You Can Help!
To View Visit http://FreeHawaiiTV.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
33. Peruvian Sound Shaman Tito La Rosa w/Special Violinist, Th. Nov 29,
8:30pm Studio Maui
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:55:48 -1000
From: Global Media Productions <info@globalmediaproductions.com>
Peruvian Sound Shaman Tito La Rosa & Special Guest Violinist Pauchi Sasak
in Concert at the Studio Maui in Haiku
Thursday, November 29th from 8:30-10pm
Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door
Tito La Rosa returns to Hawaii November 2007 This November and December,
beloved Peruvian National Treasure and Sound Healer, Tito La Rosa will
share his healing music with us on his popular Viaje de Curaçion (Healing
Journey) tour. Tito will perform in concerts and offer Sound Healing
Flower Blessings and Private Sound Healing Sessions in Kauai, Maui and
Oahu as well as California and Oregon to benefit Ayni Projects, a 501(c)3
non-profit organization. Tito will play with Peruvian Violinist, Pauchi
Sasaki. Proceeds will benefit two schools, a hospital, and other
significant youth projects in the Quechua communities near La Rosa's
hometown of Carhuaz, Peru. For more about Tito, his tour schedule and our
community enriching projects in Peru, please read below.
About Tito La Rosa For more than a decade, La Rosa, a descendent of
Quechua Indians of the Peruvian Andes, has been recovering and preserving,
studying, and intuiting the ancestral music of Peru. La Rosa was asked by
the Peruvian Institute of Culture to play 2,000-year-old instruments from
the collection of instruments at the Museum of the Lord of Sipan. In
recreating the sounds of this culture that had disappeared into time, La
Rosa stated, "Time, like death, is a lie." La Rosa has toured and recorded
with Kitaro. About La Rosa, Kitaro says, "His attraction to the Spirit
dimension and his love of all things from the natural world allow him to
traverse musical landscapes with tranquility and deep passion." La Rosa
has also recorded with Mary Youngblood on the Silver Wave record label of
which BILLBOARD Magazine says: "La Rosa and Youngblood interweave North
and South American winds like smoke.." La Rosa's 2002 CD, "The Prophecy of
the Eagle and the Condor" was nominated for a Native American Music Award,
for Best World Music Recording. La Rosa is also a Curandero de Sonido or
Shaman of Music. Along with his music his passion is to preserve the rich
spiritual and cultural heritage of the Andes.
About Pauchi Sasaki Playing the violin since age of five, Pauchi¹s
astonishing musical range has made her one of the most well-known
violinists in Perú. Charting new pathways for the violin, she has taken
the instrument into unknown territory drawing from and blending many
cultures and styles from the Andes to the Jungle, from Hindu to Klezmer
and from classical to electronic. Her Shamanic background comes through
her music giving it a power to assist people to open and deepen beyond the
superficial into their interior experience.
To enjoy a sampling of Tito¹s music online, go to
http://cdbaby.com/cd/titorene < http://cdbaby.com/cd/titorene> ,
and to learn more about Ayni Projects in Peru, please visit
<http://www.ayniprojects.com/>
Ayni Projects is honored to partner with Tito to bring his healing sounds
back to the U.S. this November. Together our work in the Andes has
brought us much joy and hope for cross cultural reciprocity as we work to
provide opportunities for improved healthcare, education, and the
preservation of the wisdom of an important ancient culture.
The public is welcome to attend events, purchase products and promote and
donate to this worthy cause.
Current Ayni Projects in Peru: Ayni Projects sponsors two schools, The
Chaupin School, in the communities of La Merced, and Huantay. Founded and
directed by Elba Bravo, these progressive schools have drawn the attention
of the Ministry of Education of Rural Peru. Elba¹s goal is to honor and
preserve the indigenous Quechua culture and language while at the same
time preparing students for participation in the broader culture. Subject
matter is taught bilingually. By the time the students reach third grade
their reading scores are higher than the national average and their
self-esteem is strong and vibrant. As the school becomes more
self-supporting from other funding sources we are turning our attention to
assist in expanding what the school can offer to the children with
enrichment programs. We are also making plans in partnership with Chaupin
to assist the adults of the community in receiving vocational training
that will foster economic development with a focus on preserving their
culture and way of life.
In August 2005, the Ayni Hospital of Hualcan opened its doors to serve the
surrounding communities who would otherwise have had to walk two to three
hours one way to receive adequate health care. For ten years a proposed
hospital building had remained empty. Our agreement to open the hospital
for two years until the Ministry of Health could take it over has been
extended to three years to allow the hospital to mature in its goal to
become a model posta medica for rural Peru. Hospital staff seeks to
include local healers and encourages alternative means of effectively
preventing and treating illness. The staff is also involved in key
community outreach programs promoting well-baby visits and vaccination
campaigns. The community has participated in Ayni with the hospital by
donating land and cultivating medicinal plants for use in the hospital
pharmacy and by assisting in other tasks. In the summer or 2008 as
planned, the hospital will come under the leadership of the Ministry of
Health who will be fulfilling its promise to maintain it in perpetuity.
From what we have learned from our experience with the hospital we plan to
offer free education in complementary medicine practices to all of the
medical out post clinics in the Callejon de Hualyas.
Ayni Projects in partnership with Chaupin have as our most pressing
concern, the desire to assist extremely poor children and their families
in the villages that we serve. Some children for example lack shoes and
basic school supplies. Others are in urgent need of corrective eye surgery
or assessment and treatment of genetic diseases that can be addressed with
medical care, such as prosthetics or physical therapy. These services are
not available in the Andes and require a trip to Lima for treatment. For
very little money, these problems can be addressed allowing families to
change their circumstances and be able to share the basic human dignities
and rights of health and well-being.
Scholarships: The University of Huaraz located in Huaraz offers excellent
educational opportunities for the young adults of the region. Lodging,
books, transportation, and tuition for 6 days of classes each week for one
year is only $2,400 but represents a huge obstacle for potentially
promising students who do not have the financial means to attend. Our
three scholarship recipients are studying midwifery, childhood education
and computer science.
We welcome you to attend events, purchase music and participate in private
or group Tours to Peru. We accept and appreciate donations and encourage
volunteerism to promote and support these worthy causes.
TITO LA ROSA CONCERTS AND CEREMONIES AND CLASSES, NOVEMBER 2007:
--Kauai<<br>2nd, TBA, Concert Canto Shamanico (Shaman Song), Featuring
Tito La Rosa,
with special guest, Pauchi Sasaki.
3rd, 5pm Flower Ceremony, TBA
4th, Flower Ceremony #1, TBA
4th, Flower Ceremony #2, TBA
5th, Flower Ceremony, TBA
6th, 5 pm, Flower Ceremony, TBA
--Oahu<<br>7th, Concert, Canto Shamanico (Shaman Song) by Tito La Rosa
8th, Flower Ceremony, TBA
9th, 12 noon-6pm: The Healing Power of the Ancestral Instruments of
Ancient
Peru, TBA
TICKET PRICES:
Concert Tickets: $ TBA
Ceremony Tickets: $125 (maximum number of people per ceremony has lowered
to 16 participants) Class Tickets: $125 (maximum number of people per
class is 20 students)
Hawaii Contacts:
--Maui Hawaii-- Michael Saiz at 808-638-0888 or email
info@hawaiihealthguide.com
--Kauai Hawaii-- to Allison Pinto at 415-272-8517 or write,
allison@ayniprojects.com < mailto:allison@ayniprojects.com>
--Oahu Hawaii-- Katie Fisher at 808-638-0888 or email
info@hawaiihealthguide.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
31. Ten Lessons from the Criminalization of Dissent
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:26:44 +1300
From: karaka <tepaatu@gmail.com>
Ten Lessons from the Criminalization of Dissent
by Camilo Viveiros
In the aftermath of the 2000 Republican National Convention, I was charged
with multiple felonies and accused of assaulting several police officers,
including then Philadelphia Police Chief John Timoney. I approached my
case with the attitude that the only way to stop the attempts to
criminalize me and dissent in general was to organize more effectively
than the forces of the state that wanted to shove me into prison. Largely
due to successful organizing strategies and community solidarity, I was
acquitted after three-and-a-half years. Today, we face similar challenges
and must adopt similar strategies in fighting those who wish to put our
comrades behind bars and criminalize our visions.
Right now, the state is sending a message to radical environmentalists
around the country. It is using its power in an attempt to dismantle our
networks and neutralize our militancy. How will we use our power and
resources to oppose this force' How are we going to frame our message'
What alliances will we build to support our imprisoned comrades' We can't
let intimidation and fear outweigh our commitment to solidarity. We need
to challenge the armchair 'radicals' who rationalize the conviction of our
comrades as an inevitable result of state repression. Our success in
achieving social and environmental victories in this situation and all
others depends upon the ability of passionate activists to gain the
support of ordinary people.
Lesson One: Do Not Focus on Guilt or Innocence It is not legally or
politically useful to speculate about or emphasize the innocence of those
arrested. Building your support efforts around innocence is like building
a house out of a deck of cards. You don't want support to vanish if
convictions are handed down or if those being supported plead guilty.
Lesson Two: Don't Spread Fear and Paranoia Our security culture needs to
be revamped, but we cannot let fear of repression or snitches inhibit
aboveground work. Without much larger numbers of people participating in
and supporting radical solutions to environmental and social problems, we
will be easily contained and neutralized. Our own paranoia can close
doors, and it feeds into the very marginalization that the state is trying
to create.
This is not a new concern. Noted activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has said,
'I remember in the 1960s when all the terrible things started to happen,
like COINTELPRO, the movement became so shut down. Mistrust grew. People
were reluctant to let anyone in. New people didn't know how to join the
movement; they were made to feel unwelcome. We have to build it to be
stronger.'
Lesson Three: Your Support Does Matter It's easy to feel that our actions
will have no impact on the ultimate outcome of a trial, but this is not
the case. The support that I received throughout the five-year period
between my arrest and my acquittal was essential to my own psychological
wellbeing. Support groups can also aid with legal research, grassroots
investigation and evidence gathering, which all help to strengthen a
defense. Remember that the outreach we do for the defendant is crucial,
since political trials are influenced by public sentiment. The judge in my
case actually heard radio coverage of an event held by my supporters. The
awareness that my supporters created diminished the power of my
adversaries.
Lesson Four: An Injury to One is an Injury to All The charges filed
against individuals are meant to send a message to the rest of us. These
cases are attempts to impede our collective ability to wage struggles
against injustice. If we sit by and let repression build, it will weaken
our ability to resist future persecution. We must set the course of
history and prove that they can't intimidate us. Together we are powerful.
We must ask ourselves: Are we creating a culture of resistance that
romanticizes action but shirks solidarity' Those who rejoiced when Vail
burned must now defend those charged with that action and others like it.
Some environmentalists and social justice activists are OK with the feds
wanting blood from accused 'ecoterrorists,' forgetting that this blood
will be used to smear any movement that becomes a threat. The feds will
use any convictions they gain to justify increased political repression
toward the rest of us.
Lesson Five: Combating Marginalization Besides attacking radicals and
revolutionaries, repression attempts to squelch and sterilize dissent. The
state knows that it is not our actions themselves that pose a threat to
its power, but rather the possibility that non-activists will recognize
radical action as something more than unconstructive, suicidal or
impossible. Our enemies want to scare people away from participating in
radical action and supporting radical solutions.
The authorities attempt to marginalize us, and they co-opt some of our
demands to make us seem unreasonable. It is time for us to be honest: We
need a lot more power than we currently have for us to succeed in stopping
the environmental destruction and social injustice that surrounds us. We
must strive to create the conditions that the state fears. We need to
create more than radical niches and small communities of revolutionaries,
rebels and insurgents. If we want to walk our talk, it is necessary to
nurture broad-based links with diverse groups who will acknowledge
connection to us and recognize that we have interests in common.
Lesson Six: Map Our Connections When looking to build broader support, we
need to map out our personal web of connections. This includes our ethnic
and religious heritages, and the places and communities to which we are
connected. Who can we mobilize' Who can support us.
Repression can be the time to reconnect with our family and friends on our
own terms. When I was facing felony charges, I tried to remember all of
the people and organizations that I had ever been associated with. I even
contacted the folks that I had gone to high school with. We might be
surprised where solidarity comes from. This is also a great time to talk
about ourselves, who we are, what we value and why. Inadvertently, my case
turned me from a behind-the-scenes organizer into a spokesperson for the
radical movement. By showing who we really are, we can turn the negative
situation of repression into a positive outreach scenario.
Lesson Seven: Expand Our Base of Support Through Networks of Solidarity
Most people simply aren't interested in 'civil liberties' or 'the right to
dissent,' let alone the right to break unjust laws or to challenge the
assets of exploitative institutions. This does not mean that we shouldn't
work to change the interests of the majority. But we should recognize that
we can build broader support if we emphasize our tangible contributions to
the community over our particular tactics.
This was the main thrust of the defense around my case. We highlighted the
valuable contributions that I had made to the community and my ongoing
commitment to organizing. Even if people did not believe that I was
innocent, many supported me because they knew that the fight against
landlords, as well as environmental and economic injustice, would be
weakened by my absence. They knew this because I had worked with them for
years to address these issues. By illustrating why jail would deprive the
community of a valuable and constructive person, we were able to steer the
focus away from the legal questions and the terrain of the state. Instead,
we showed how the government would waste resources by imprisoning those
contributing to the social good.
Many community organizations are descended from historical movements that,
at one point, were marginalized and criminalized by authorities. The
suffrage movement, the slavery abolitionists, the labor movement, ethnic
and immigrant struggles for justice, and even those seeking religious
freedom all these movements have gone through times when they were painted
as villains and violent troublemakers. We need to reach out to members of
various organizations, and we must fight against political amnesia by
reminding them of their past.
Our support work should also include a recognition of the repression faced
by immigrants and people of color. We should build upon our common
interest in eradicating and preventing the growth of the prison industrial
complex. We should learn from the ways that restorative justice advocates
have utilized economic issues as a way to reduce the popularity of
expenditures for criminal injustice. We should highlight how more funding
would be available for housing, health care and other services if the
state were not squandering taxpayers' money to persecute and punish
activists.
One more way to bridge this gap is to emphasize the ways that repression
maintains systems of oppression and injustice. Our challenge is to foster
principled alliances with others who share a common enemy, so that when we
are under attack, others will come to our aid. Many marginalized seniors
and tenants, who never would have gone to a political prisoner event,
showed support for me because they related to the way I was criminalized
by the police. I learned that we gain a much larger base of support when
we highlight the role of repression in maintaining common systems of
oppression.
But these alliances are strongest when they are well established. The
day-to-day solidarity and organizing work that we engage in is a social
insurance that can be harvested when under attack.
Lesson Eight: Racism and Resources If we do not cite the ways that class
and color affect our ability to get justice, then we perpetuate the myth
that speaking 'truth to power' is enough. In reality, access to resources
improves one's chances of countering the significant resources of the
state.
We cannot expect to receive solidarity from oppressed communities if we
don't acknowledge and ally ourselves with their historic and ongoing
struggle against forces of criminalization. Ignoring or denying privilege
and racism will only isolate us further and play into the state's
caricature of the radical environmental movement as out of touch with the
working class and communities of color.
In my case, I made it a point to acknowledge that the support and the
resources that I received were helping me to fight injustice in a way that
many could not. I spoke about the systemic injustice of the prison
industrial complex: Many languish behind bars without support, lacking the
resources to build their case, find witnesses and gather evidence. We
should use our work against the repression of eco-activists to highlight
these dynamics rather than obscure them.
Lesson Nine: Strategic Thinking What does being strategic really mean' It
means making a plan on how to achieve goals and monitoring your success
along the way. It means learning from mistakes and thinking carefully
about how to outwit and out- organize your enemy.
Just as the forces of repression try to isolate us from our support, we
need to isolate them from their own base. In my case, we discovered that
John Timoney the cop who was charging me had worked with the British
Army's efforts against the Irish Republican Army. We publicized this to
the Irish Republican segments of the New York community including the
police to divide Timoney from one of his bases of support. Through a
combination of lobbying and disruptive tactics, we made Timoney unwelcome
at police accountability conferences. By mobilizing community groups from
multiple cities, we were even able to cost him his job as security
consultant for the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
Lesson 10: Stopping Nightmares and Fulfilling Visions In Uruguay,
organizations like the Plenary for Memory and Justice confront and expose
torturers active in the CIA-backed dirty war. When these organizations
talk about justice, they do not just mean finding out what happened to
their disappeared comrades. They are also working to fulfill their fallen
comrades' visions of freedom and justice for everyone. We need to stay
focused and continue the work of those who are under attack by the state.
Success in achieving justice for our comrades and realizing our radical
visions is dependent not only on our willingness to put our bodies on the
line in direct action, but also on our ability to acknowledge that we can
be crushed easily by the state unless we are constantly building and
expanding our base of power.
Today's nightmare for our locked-up comrades should be our wake-up call to
re-evaluate and reinvest in our strategies for bringing our visions to
fruition. By building networks of solidarity, talking about the community
work done by our comrades, making connections with the struggles of
immigrants and people of color against the prison industrial complex, and
organizing the unorganized, we will be better able to counter state
repression and create the world we are striving toward. If we do not, the
future for our comrades, ourselves and the Earth is bleak.
Camilo Viveiros is a community organizer from Fall River, Massachusetts,
who encourages radical activists to do more outreach and power analysis to
develop revolutionary approaches to community organizing and popular
education. He believes that repression can breed resistance but only if we
strategize and organize. He faced more than 100 years behind bars if
convicted of the charges waged at him by John Timoney.
This article was printed in the Earth First! Journal. Subscriptions are
encouraged and affordable. Contact them below. . .
homepage: homepage: http://www.earthfirstjournal.org
address: address: Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/2186
------------------------------------------------------------------------
35. The New Pacific Wall
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:30:45 +1300
From: karaka <tepaatu@gmail.com>
The New Pacific Wall
Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on Australia's west coast, the
Bush administration is building a base. When completed, it will control
two geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S. military
forces in Asia and the Middle East.
Most Americans know nothing about Geraldton, just as they know nothing
about other Australian sites such as the U.S. submarine communications
base at North Cape or the U.S. missile-tracking centre at Pine Gap. But
there is growing concern Down Under that Prime Minster John Howard's
conservative government is weaving a network of alliances and U.S. bases
that may one day put Australians in harm's way. According to Australian
Defense Force Academy Visiting Fellow Philip Dorling, once the Geraldton
base is up and running, it will be almost impossible for Australia to be
fully neutral or stand back from any war in which the United States was
involved.
Indeed, that may already be the case.
Canberra and Tokyo
Australia, along with Japan, India, the Philippines and South Korea,
signed on to the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system (ABM), which China
fears is aimed at neutralizing its modest fleet of 21 intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
On Mar. 12 Australia signed a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation
(JDSC) with Japan that, according to Richard Tanter, a senior research
associate at the Nautilus Institute, is an "anti-China U.S.-dominated
multilateral alliance system" that "confirms the already accelerating
tendencies for both Japan and Australia to militarize their foreign
policies."
Certainly both Australia and Japan have been flexing their muscles of
late.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put a strong nationalist spin on
Tokyo's foreign policy that has raised hackles from Seoul to Beijing.
Japan has also sent troops to Iraq and recently declared it intends to
repeal Article 9 of its post-war constitution. Article 9 renounces war and
rejects "force as a means of settling international disputes." Japan has
the fifth largest navy in the world and spends over $40 billion a year on
defense.
Australia, whose defense budget is slightly more than half of Japan's,
also has troops in Iraq as well as the Solomon Islands, East Timor, and
Tonga. Last August, Prime Minister Howard told the parliament that
Australia needs to prepare for an even greater role in monitoring and
assisting troubled nations in the Pacific region. Howard has also adopted
some of the rhetoric of the Bush administration, calling for "preemptive"
strikes against "terrorist groups" in regional neighbors. Twisting South
Pacific Arms
Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have moved forcefully to
assert their authority in the myriad island nations that make up much of
the South Pacific. Using a combination of troops, aid, and control over
transportation, the three countries dominate the politics of places like
Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Samoa.
Many of these island nations are almost totally dependent on either
international aid or money earned from renting out their land for military
bases. Some 60% of the Marshall Islands' GDP comes from U.S. aid and the
50-year Pact of Free Association that allows the U.S. to use Kwajalein
Atoll for missile tests. The United States only got the pact by
engineering a change in the Marshal Island's constitution that allows a
simple majority of legislators to okay the Association. Before this
change, Marshallese voters had rejected the pact eight different times.
When Solomon Islands' Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare accused Australia's
High Commissioner of "unwarranted interventionism" in the Republic's
affairs, Howard's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, warned ominously
that "the last thing the Solomon Islands government can afford is to get
into arguments with major donors who are helping to keep their country
afloat."
According to UNESCO cultural expert Mali Voi, the "big three" use devices
like transit visas for "effectively isolating small and poor countries of
the Pacific from each other, as well as from the rest of the world. It is
almost impossible for the citizens of most Southeast Asian nations,
including the Philippines and Indonesia, to visit their neighbors in
Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia."
The arm-twisting gets so bizarre that aid-dependent Nauru and Kiribati --
both threatened by rising sea levels due to global warming -- joined the
United States and Australia in voting against the Kyoto Protocol.
Containing China
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is elbowing its way into the
region as well. In talking about Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South
Korea, NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last November,
"We all face the same threats and it is in their interests, as well as our
own, that we come closer together." U.S. Undersecretary of State R.
Nicholas Burns was blunter: "We seek a partnership with them so that we
can train more intensively, from a military point of view."
But if there is a push to dominate and militarize the region, there are
countervailing winds as well. On the one hand, Australia is part of an ABM
system that China sees as a threat. On the other, China is Canberra's
third-largest trading partner with an insatiable appetite for Australia's
coal, uranium, gas, and oil. In 2006, energy exports earned Australia
$33.9 billion, a figure that is certain to rise steeply over the next
decade. "With the right policies," says Howard, " we have the makings of
an energy superpower."
Japan finds itself in a similar position. While there is continuing
tension between Tokyo and Beijing over Taiwan, and oil and gas fields in
the South China Seas, China will become Japan's number one trading partner
by the end of 2007. Trade between the two countries topped $200 billion
last year.
The trade potential has made Japan and the Australia careful about tying
themselves too closely to some of the bombast about "Chinese militarism"
coming out of Washington. This past April, Japan and China pledged "closer
cooperation." But when Beijing made clear its unhappiness with Australia's
hosting part of the U.S. ABM program, Australian Foreign Minister Downer
was quick to state, "We are opposed to a policy of containment of China.
We believe the best way forward is working constructively with China."
Australia and Japan are caught between "wanting to ride the Chinese
economic gravy train," writes Tanter, while at the same time trying to
"beat the drum about supposed [Chinese] military expansionism." Australia
Rethinks?
The Howard government's muscular foreign policy has touched off a debate
about what role Australia should play in the region and how closely
Canberra should be tied to U.S. designs in Asia and the Middle East.
Foreign policy, particularly the Iraq War, has become a major issue for
the upcoming general elections in October.
Polls indicate that two-thirds of Australians want to withdraw from Iraq,
and 70% think Australia should be more independent from U.S. foreign
policy. The Aussies were evenly split between what constitutes a greater
danger to the world: the United States or Islamic fundamentalism.
For now, Washington is too bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay much
attention to the Pacific. But given the importance of the region to the
U.S., that it not likely to last. Will the United States eventually move
to confront China, its rival in Asia? That may well depend on where other
nations in the region conclude their interests lie, and whether most of
them decide that butter and trade trump guns and walls.
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) columnist.
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_printable&report_id=509&language_id=1
http://www.nautilus.org/~rmit/forum-reports/0707a-tanter.html
http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=Solomons&ct=0&id=060914000667
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2006/vltchekpr1006.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
36. OHA Pilikia - The kakio's are showing..
From: kanikapu@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 5:53 PM
From the latest Ka Wai Ola, Dec. 2007-online..
The pus is oozing from the Kakio. Fear and distrust will only destroy from
within...
It^Òs a matter of trust^Å
Rowena Akana
Trustee, At-large
^ÑAno 'ai kakou^Å
It is no secret that OHA has had a staff retention crisis for the past
several years ^Ö 36 position vacancies this year alone. It seems like all
of our most experienced and capable staff have left and gone to DHHL,
Kamehameha Schools, and other greener pastures.
important and far reaching to constantly have to start over with new
staff. OHA needs to change at a fundamental level, and I say we should
start by restoring the most basic ingredient of any relationship - trust.
How do we do that? It^Òs really simple actually. The leadership needs to
rethink its current security procedures. Each OHA staff person will soon
be given individual ID cards that could potentially track them as they
enter and leave any OHA workspace. Heaven help you if you enter a
trustee^Òs office without permission!
All OHA staff have also been fingerprinted to authenticate that they are
indeed the person signing into and out of work. Everyone knows it is their
managers^Ò responsibility to make sure that their staff are reporting to
work on time. The finger printing system only proves that there has been a
failure at OHA^Òs management level.
The message that the current leadership is sending our staff is this - "We
don^Òt trust any of you, just like we don^Òt trust some of the trustees."
My question continues to be, "What could they possibly be doing to make
themselves so paranoid that they don^Òt even trust their own staff or
fellow trustees (other than 2 or 3 "inner circle" trustees)."
OHA can now be likened to a "lockdown" security compound. If you want
people to be trustworthy, you should first give them your trust. As the
administrator himself has said in the past, "we are all family." I agree
with that whole heartedly and I truly wish that this will eventually
occur. Unfortunately, the lack of trust reveals that, at present, we are a
very dysfunctional family.
Currently, all OHA staff are discouraged from speaking with a trustee
directly and all written communications must go through the administrator
first. This causes trustees to wait for up to 3-4 months to get any
requested fiscal information. All of the trustees are also beneficiaries
who should never be denied access to OHA personnel or be forced to wait so
long for an answer.
About Trust: The board leadership has passed a new policy that forces a
trustee to get the permission of all nine trustees to release or discuss
any information shared in executive session. Our old policy allowed a
majority (5) of trustees to release any confidential information if it is
appropriate.
This bylaw has served OHA without incident for the past 27 years. The
sudden change makes me wonder, "What is the current Chairperson doing that
she fears is not pono?" The new bylaw goes against basic trust law. For
example, a trustee would not be able to say anything if other trustees are
making bad decisions behind the closed doors of executive session.
Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) 554A-6 requires a dissenting trustee to
express their opposition or they would liable for any damages caused by
the co-trustees^Ò decisions. How can a trustee do that if he or she is
gagged by the new policy?
Case in point, at our last Board meeting on Lanai, the Chair^Òs agenda
listed two items to be discussed in executive session using HRS
92-5(a)(4): "Agenda Item VI., B. Legal Advisory by Board Counsel and
Deputy Administrator regarding the board^Òs responsibilities and
obligations under OHA Contract #1820 with Zell and Cox, Law, P.C. to
ensure the provision of continued legal services to OHA." and "Agenda Item
VI., C. Legal Advisory by Board Counsel and Deputy Administrator regarding
the board^Òs responsibilities and obligations under OHA Contract #1612
with Patton Boggs, LLC to ensure the provision of continued legal services
to OHA."
There was a discussion on these confidential matters, but then a motion to
renew the two contracts with "x" amount of dollars, etc. was suddenly
proposed. Trustees were not given a copy of the motion in advance and an
action item for this matter should have been included in the Trustees^Ò
folders. This should have been taken up in open session because contracts
are not confidential. But if that were done in an open session, then
beneficiaries would know how much is being spent on our lobbying efforts.
This should not be a secret.
Everyone knows the board is supporting federal recognition legislation.
This is the 4th time that this board has used the HRS 92-5(a)(4) executive
session law to keep an action secret. No materials regarding the action
are provided to trustees ahead of time and they are instead presented on a
chalkboard or in a slide show. Then the vote is called. This way, there is
no paper trail of the action and the executive session minutes are not
released to anyone.
While I recognize that certain parts of our records must remain
confidential because of privacy issues, etc., there is no need to keep our
entire discussion confidential. We should consider ideas like blackening
out the confidential information and releasing the non-confidential
portion of our documents to the public, just like the federal government
does.
Building a nation will require elected leaders to be forthright and
strong, fair and transparent. Who will have faith in a nation being built
by people hiding behind the law and afraid to tell the people the truth
about what they are doing?
I would like to stress that I am not against spending our funds to lobby
for the passage of federal recognition. At present, being federally
recognized is the best way to protect our assets and future entitlements
from lawsuits. What I do object to is the secretive process that the
leadership is using, which is neither upfront nor forthright.
As a trustee for OHA, it is my fiduciary responsibility to know exactly
how much of the trust is being spent and for what purpose. It is a
responsibility I take seriously and I will continue my inquires until I
can finally get straight answers.
In my opinion, the responsibility for this huge mess rests squarely on the
current Chairman^Òs shoulders. There is absolutely no way for a dissenting
trustee to have any impact at board meetings.
It all started five years ago when she combined the five subject matter
committees into only two, thus eliminating three committee chairmen and
leaving the remaining two committees under the control of her two most
trusted trustees, thereby consolidating her power. After gaining total
control over the board committees, she started using legal opinions to
help her enforce her will at the board table to justify her actions and
give her almost absolute control over all board discussions and stifling
any dissenting views of other trustees and even certain beneficiaries.
Some, may consider these actions clever.
But is it? Mathew 10:26 "For there is nothing covered, that shall not be
revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
-----
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:27:35 -1000
From: Leota Souza <tuwahine@hawaii.rr.com>
Sounds almost like the trust Israel has for Palestine. Twenty-five foot
concrete walls, razor wire fences and gated check points through the aina.
Ver is your papers? Badges? we don't have any dirty stinkin badges!
Can one imagine what they do to visitors??? pilipo
________________________________________________________________________________
37. Kaniakapupu Cleanup
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:46:37 -0500 (EST)
From: bchingkahoola@pol.net
Aloha kakou,
This Sunday is the first in December, Kaniakapupu day.
Last service day we had flash flood warnings, 100 scheduled volunteers and
had to cancel.
Hope to see everybody there this Sunday...
Malama pono,
Kaho`ola
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
38. Disappeared News - 1 new article
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:10:58 -0500
From: FeedBlitz <feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com>
"DISAPPEARED NEWS" - 1 NEW ARTICLE - www.disappearednews.com
1. Poinography! » Tasers â^À^Üan optionâ^À^Ý for Hawaii County PD
2.More Recent Articles
3.Search Disappeared News
Poinography! » Tasers â^À^Üan optionâ^À^Ý for Hawaii County PD
by Larry Geller Doug covered two recent Big Island articles on the use
of Tasers in Hawaii today on his Poinography blog. I won't steal his
thunder, please read his article. You won't want to miss the part about
keeping police use of Tasers a secret from the public. The wording of
the policy regarding Tasers hasnâ^À^Ùt been added to the general orders
book at the Kealakehe Police Station, nor is...
More Recent Articles
* How our government supports our troops
* Hawaii police actions, more on Tasers
* What's the chance of Lingle's "Unified Command" using excessive
force?
* Super-low ferry fares will divide community
* Good reading for today
________________________________________________________________________________
39. taste of Tuhoe Medicine
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:36:52 +1300 (NZDT)
From: Marakita Mehmet <maraki_tanga@yahoo.co.nz>
A TASTE OF TUHOE MEDICINE
Noel O'Hare in Healthwise | 7:50 am 15 November 2007
The Tuhoe people are famous not only for their fierce independent spirit
but also for their medicine. In 2001, Waikato University chemist Meto Te
Ota Leach was awarded nearly $1 million by the Health Research Council and
Foundation for Research, Science and Technology to study Maori medicine.
Dr Leach and his team were to study more than 16 species of plants used by
the Tuhoe tribe to treat diabetes, wounds, high blood pressure and broken
bones, and relax muscles.
We haven^Òt heard the result of that research but scientific scrutiny of
Maori traditional medicines is long overdue. The World Health Organisation
estimates that up to 80% of the world^Òs people rely on plants for their
primary health care. Traditional Chinese medicine is largely based on 5000
plants, and plants are used as the basis for many modern medicines
including the world^Òs most widely used drug, Aspirin, made from extracts
of the leaves and bark of the willow tree. Heart drugs such as Digitalin
and digoxin have their origin in the common garden plant foxglove, and the
Australian eucalyptus tree which grows in my back garden yields
eucalyptol, an antiseptic used in throat medicines, cough syrups and
inhalants.
For sheer medical versatility, though, you can^Òt go past New Zealand
flax. For Maori the flax had a variety of external and internal uses.
Broken limbs could be bound with splints made with the strongest part of
flax leaves; the roots warmed and applied to fresh cuts, ringworm and the
skin of young children to prevent chafing. Flax is apparently great for
blistered heels ^Ö just put leaves inside socks. Flax root juice, applied
raw or after boiling the roots, was a favourite treatment for gunshot or
bayonet wounds. A flax root poultice was said to be very good for varicose
ulcers, and there was even a commercial product marketed for a time. Taken
internally, the juice of the flax root was used to treat flatulence, to
kill worms, for toothache and was reckoned to be a good substitute for
castor oil.
Wonder plant that it is, flax is by no means the only multi-use
traditional medicine. Manuka, taken by early European settlers as a
substitute for tea, but was also used as a drink to treat kidney and
bladder complaints and reduce fevers in children.
The Kawakawa tree, which grows in coastal areas, has a variety of
medicinal uses. It can be used to relieve toothache, as a treatment for
boils and gonorrhoea, and, according to PME Williams in his book Te Rongoa
Maori, ^Ówas used by older men as an aphrodisiac to renew their youth^Ô.
Kawakawa leaves made into tea is said to be good for kidney troubles.
If you can^Òt afford Rogaine, you could always try rubbing the cut stems
of Rimu branches on your bald spot: in colonial times such a treatment was
used to restore hair. The gum from the bark of the Rimu was also used to
stop the flow of blood from wounds. Bushmen used miro and matai juice as
antiseptics and insecticides.
One of the most esteemed traditional medicines in the far north is the
boiled leaves of kumarahou or gumdigger^Òs soap. It was used for coughs,
asthma colds and bronchitis. In the 1930s kumarahou was heavily promoted
by radio personality Aunt Daisy. ^ÓOld People and young ones with
rheumatism or wheezing with asthma would come to the studio and the office
girls would hand out portions of kumarahou,^Ô said Aunt Daisy, recalling
her days on IZB.
Sports people who are having a bruising season should make straight for
the Kowhai tree. The bark (taken from the side of the tree facing the
sun), crushed and steeped in boiling water, is claimed to be a surefire
way of healing bruises. In 1924 the famous All Black George Nepia returned
from England covered in bruises and seemed unlikely to play that season. A
few kowhai baths later, he was his old self again. Koromiko or Hebe has
long been valued for beneficial effects on its diarrhoea and dysentery and
was widely used by both Maori and Pakeha. New Zealand troops in North
Africa during World War II found it effective for dysentery.
It would be wrong to get too misty eyed about traditional remedies though.
Many were ineffective, and the consistency, strength and dosage could not
be guaranteed. And consider this cure for constipation. ^ÓCrush the flax
roots and heat the juice in a paua shell^Å part of the potion is applied
to the person^Òs anus, a stalk of kakaho is then filled with the flax
potion. The end of the stalk is pushed into the person^Òs anus and the
other end is blown so that the potion spurts into the rectum^Å^Ô Little
wonder that one of the most sought after medicines by Maori was Epsom
salts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
40. Aloha RainbowBridge Art & Healing Center OPENING Sat. 12/8.
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:50:06 -1000
From: Oahu Deeksha <ohm.oahu@gmail.com>
I know this mailing list has been receiving more emails lately and that
can get old, however I really want to support this wonderful young artist
and share her art with all of you. Her art gives deeksha. Come to the Open
House. Do some Christmas shopping. COnsider buying yourself the gift of a
soul painting. You will be glad you did. Sue
Come join in the celebration and opening of this very special center for
healing and soul art.
Connect with others, enjoy the inspiring art, find some special holiday
gifts!
Happy Holidays to one and all...
Warmest Aloha,
Lusana
"Life Fully, Love Freely, Live Aloha Now!"
www.AliveWithAloha.com
cell: (808) 386-LOVE (386-5683)
Tamara 'rainbow' Tavernier < tamara_tavernier@hotmail.com> wrote:
OPEN HOUSE
ALOHA RAINBOWBRIDGE
ART AND HEALING CENTER
COME SHARE THE BEGINNING OF A NEW VISION IN HONOLULU.
RAINBOW, a visionary artist, author and illustrator of Children*s Books
wants to spread
love through her spiritual affordable art.
Come hear about plans for classes and workshops and healing practices
that will heal your body and grow your soul.
GRAND OPENING SALE - GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFTS!
Saturday December 8 and Sunday December 16, 2007, 10:00 am until 2:00 pm
Center Blessing at 12 Noon on December 8th.
1040 S King Street Suite 101, Honolulu,
Validated Parking - Entrance off of Young Street.
808 225-8428
rainbow
visionary artist
808 225-8428
"My vision and mission is to spread LOVE through my paintings, in the
hope people feel that they are LOVE". (RAINBOW)
********************************************************************************
41. Statehood Commission revealed
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:37:05 -1000
From: Scott Crawford <scott@aloha.net>
A totally independent, slightly irreverent and hopelessly idealistic view
of people and events in Hawai'i and beyond. David Shapiro has covered
Hawai'i and national news for 38 years as a reporter, editor and
columnist. Reach David at dave@volcanicash.net.
Posted on: November 21, 2007 at 9:10:30 pm
Statehood Commission revealed
After my column yesterday on the political eggshell-stepping that has
marked planning for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawai'i's
statehood, several readers asked for a list of the 25 members of the
state's 50th Anniversary of Statehood Commission.
Here they are, grouped by the entity that appointed them with officers
noted. Other than this, I'm taking the rest of the week off for the
holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Governor:
Vivian Aiona
Tammy Kubo
Stafford Kiguchi, vice chair - finance
Keith Vieira, vice chair
Lenny Klompus, vice chair - events
U.S. Pacific Command:
Major General Vern Miyagi
Senate:
Judge James S. Burns
Kahu Curt Pa'alua Kekuna (Kawaiaha'o Church)
Walter Dods, Jr.
Denise Hayashi
Ah Quon McElrath
Ted Tsukiyama, Esq.
House:
Duk Hee Murabayashi
Elias Beniga
Danny Young
Allicyn Hikida Tasaka
Kippen de Alba Chu, chair
Edward Pei
City and County of Honolulu:
Michael Pili Pang (Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of
Culture and the Arts)
Hawai'i County:
George S. Applegate (Chairman/Executive Director of Hawai'i Island
Visitors Bureau)
Maui County:
Deidre Tegarden (Coordinator for the Office of Economic Development),
secretary
Kaua'i County:
Ms. Lani Nakazawa (Executive Assistant to the Mayor)
The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts:
Lori Thomas, Chairperson of the board
Office of Hawaiian Affairs:
Trustee Donald Cataluna
Hawai'i Tourism Authority:
Muriel Anderson
--------------------------------------------------------------------
42. Apoliona, Namu`o and Bernardino Control OHA
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:10:52 -1000
From: lcruz <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
this is making the rounds on other lists...
----- Original Message ----- From: linda gomes
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:42 AM
As of the 8th of November 2007 OHA now operates in greater secrecy with
the passage of "amendments of OHA Bylaws Article VI, by adding a new
section "C" and to approve the creation of conforming OHA Executive
Policies,^Ô which took place at the Board of Trustees Meeting on Lana'i at
9:00 am. With the passage of ^Ónew section C,^Ô Haunani Apoliona has
gained full control over the dissemination of all information discussed
during the Board of Trustees^Ò Executive Sessions. Essentially,
beneficiaries and the greater public have lost access to all and any
information and decisions made in all past and future Executive Sessions.
With the new policy change, Clyde Namu^Ño and Mona Bernardino developed an
Administrative Policy to destroy all Executive Session minutes. The
beneficiaries and greater public have now lost their ability to access
OHA^Òs historical record.
Let us not forget, Namu^Ño and Bernardino have also installed a
surveillance camera in the hallway outside of OHA^Òs Boardroom on the
fifth floor. The camera^Òs monitor has been strategically placed outside
of the Administrator^Òs office, so all activity by staff, Trustees,
beneficiaries, and the greater public can be monitored at all times.
Along the same notion, Bernardino has received approval from Namu^Ño to
install a private doorway between her personal office and the conference
room located next door. The cost to beneficiaries for Bernardino^Òs
private entry to the conference room is estimated in the range of $4,500
to $5,000, not to mention the newly ordered table estimated nearly at
$2,000. Why does Bernardino need a private entry into a conference room
with a new table at the beneficiaries^Ò expense? Who does she plan on
meeting with in secrecy? Could it be discussions with to assist with
OHA^Òs image campaign and assist Ho^Ñakea Communications LLC whose total
contracts are estimated to have exceeded $1,000,000 with crafting a media
campaign to influence the public^Òs opinion towards supporting the
Hawaiian Federal Recognition Bill (Akaka Bill) and the development of
La^Ñau Point?
All beneficiaries and the greater public must understand that these
decisions being made by Apoliona, Namu^Ño, and Bernardino are to limit our
rights as beneficiaries and the greater public^Òs ability to access
information pertaining to the public trust established under Chapter 10 of
the Hawai^Ñi State Constitution. One must also be concerned about OHA^Òs
spending patterns under the Apoliona, Namu^Ño, and Bernardino regime.
Since this regime has taken over OHA^Òs leadership has nearly doubled
OHA^Òs budget in less than four years from an estimated $21,000,000 to an
estimated current budget of $42,000,000. Public trust funds have funded
everything from Hawaiian Federal Recognition chocolate macadamia nuts to
Kau Inoa balloons to Blackberry phones to staff trips across the continent
(most recently New York) to multiple staff retreats (most recently an all
OHA retreat held at Trustee Stender^Òs private estate, which closed all
OHA offices down for an entire day and required three private buses to
transport the entire staff to the estate) to a private dinner at Tony
Roma^Òs Restaurant.
On the 16th of August 2007, during the Honolulu Advertiser Hot Seat ^Ö an
online question and answer session - Namu^Ño stated, ^ÓBecause OHA is
lobbying for more than one legal issue at a time, i.e., the Akaka Bill and
similar measures, it is difficult to determine exactly what portion of the
funds spent can be attributed solely to federal recognition.^Ô This is a
false statement; OHA (like every other State agency) has an accounting
system that requires cost centers, object codes, description and purpose
of purchase, vendor, dollar amount spent, date of purchase, purchase
requisition number, purchase order number, payment request, and date of
payment ^Ö that enables OHA to generate detailed reports on all spending
in all areas ^Ö such as the Akaka Bill.
Beneficiaries have a duty to honor our ancestors and ensure our
descendants^Ò future by actively participating in the oversight of our
public trust being managed by OHA. It is time, OHA must be held fiscally
accountable. A forensic audit needs to occur ^Ö now, before further
mismanagement is allowed. Transparency and accountability at OHA must be
the normal course of business. If OHA has nothing to hide, than OHA will
support or even request that they undergo an open forensic audit. We can
longer be observers. We must be proactive and take a stand. No longer
can we allow Apoliona, Namu^Ño, and Bernardino to control OHA.
On Thursday, November 1, 2007 during the OHA Board of Trustee meeting OHA
Chair Apoliona and Administrator Namu'o pushed an amendment pertaining to
the OHA Bylaws Article VI forward that will "gag, suppress, and restrict"
OHA Trustees from being transparent and held accountable to respond to
beneficiary inquiries.
Apoliona and Namu^Òo are preparing to push a final vote to support
"amendments of OHA Bylaws Article VI, by adding a new section "C" and to
approve the creation of conforming OHA Executive Policies" at the
Thursday, November 8, 2007 Board of Trustees Meeting on Lana'i at 9:00 am.
A community meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 6:30
pm.
Essentially, "new section C" will require a unanimous vote ^Ö all 9 OHA
Trustee votes ^Ö to release information to the beneficiaries and greater
public. Therefore, Apoliona can block information pertaining to OHA's
decisions made in Executive Session from reaching the beneficiaries and
greater public. Hence, these "amendments of OHA Bylaws Article VI, by
adding a new section "C" and to approve the creation of conforming OHA
Executive Policies" will allow OHA to operate in secrecy and without
accountability to those they are suppose to serve ^Ö the native Hawaiian
beneficiaries. Furthermore, any OHA Trustee who releases information
without a unanimous vote will be sued.
OHA^Òs current policy allows information in Executive Session to be
disseminated to the beneficiaries and greater public with a majority vote
^Ö 5 OHA Trustee votes. This current policy has been working for 27
years. Therefore, why change the policy? What are Apoliona and Namu'o
doing that would cause them to advocate for such a policy change? What
does OHA want to hide ^Ö something illegal or unethical? Why has OHA
installed cameras to monitor the beneficiaries and greater public outside
of the boardroom? Why is OHA fingerprinting and photographing the staff?
Obviously, Apoliona and Namu^Ño are attempting to suppress both the staff
and Trustees. The question is ^Ö Why? What are they hiding?
Beneficiaries and the greater public should demand transparency. The
trust fund managed by OHA belongs to the beneficiaries. Unfortunately,
the current OHA Chair and Administration use the trust to buy political
and community favors. Why else would Apoliona ensure that Namu^Ño can
continue to disseminate funds $25,000 or less through the various
divisions to the same individuals and groups without any accountability?
Beneficiaries should call for a fiscal audit of these funds and the trust.
We all must demand transparency, as this is not about us ^Ö it is about
our descendants. It is our responsibility to ensure the perpetuation of
the trust. To do so, we should require OHA to operate with honesty,
openness, and integrity ^Ö it begins with letters, phone calls, and
testimony to the Trustees to vote no to "amendments of OHA Bylaws Article
VI, by adding a new section "C" and to approve the creation of conforming
OHA Executive Policies."
________________________________________________________________________________
43. Iwi (Maori) Sign International Treaty on Indigenous Rights
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:37:41 +1300
From: karaka <tepaatu@gmail.com>
------ Forwarded Message
Iwi Sign International Treaty on Indigenous Rights
Press Release: Ngati Awa
23 iwi, hapū and hapū collectives have today ratified the United
League of Indigenous Nations Treaty at a hui in Whakatane.
The treaty, which has already been signed by indigenous nations from
Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand, establishes an
international political and economic alliance. The treaty seeks to advance
the common interests of indigenous nations on the impacts of climate
change on their homelands, promotes trade and commerce among Indigenous
Nations, brings cultural properties under the protection of the laws of
Indigenous Nations, protects the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and
asserts traditional rights to cross international borders.
The hui was hosted by Te Hono o Mataatua (The Mataatua Assembly), which
represents the interests of the iwi of Mataatua and sent a representative
to the original signing ceremony.
Dr Hirini Mead, Chairman of Te Hono o Mataatua and Te Rūnanga o
Ngāti Awa, one of the original signatories to the treaty, said,
"Today marks an important step in the promotion and enhancement of the
rights of indigenous nations. It is clear from the failure of the New
Zealand Government to endorse the United Nations' Declaration on
Indigenous Rights that we have to take action to ensure we protect our
rights."
Dr Mead also noted, "By signing this treaty we create a strong statement
between a wide range of indigenous nations across the world that we need
to work together and have a common voice to advance the interests of
indigenous peoples and protect our cultures."
Dr Mead said that he expected more iwi to sign once they had the chance to
discuss the treaty among themselves.
The signing was witnessed by representatives of the Sucker Creek Cree
Nation on behalf of the original signatories.
28 November 2007 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0711/S00452.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------
44. Army man charged with UH dorm break-in
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:45:37 -1000
From: Kyle Kajihiro <keboi@aol.com>
Article: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Nov/27/br/
br8193742056.html
Updated at 6:10 p.m., Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Army man charged with UH dorm break-in
By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer
A 20-year-old man assigned to the Army's Stryker brigade at Schofield
charged in connection with Sunday's alleged break-in at a University of
Hawai'i at Manoa dorm room was in possession of stolen property, which
included women's underwear and an iPod, according to a court document.
Mark Andrew Heath, accused of unauthorized entry into a dwelling and
first-degree burglary, was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail awaiting a
preliminary hearing Thursday at District Court on his warrantless arrest
following his initial appearance at court today. High bail was requested
and granted because Heath presents a "danger to the community,"
prosecutors said. According to Schofield public affairs, Heath is a scout
with Alpha Troop 2nd Squadron 14th Cavalry. The spokesperson was not sure
if Heath is scheduled for deployment to Iraq with the Stryker brigade in
coming weeks.
The soldier was arrested at 9:35 a.m. Sunday in the lobby of the
Lokelani Dorm building at 2579 Dole St. by police investigating a
reported break-in.
The unauthorized entry charge stems from Heath allegedly opening the
door and entering a fourth-floor unit, according to an affidavit
filed at District Court. A woman resident and her boyfriend were in
the unit.
The boyfriend chased down Heath after he allegedly fled from the room.
When asked why he trying to enter the room, Heath allegedly said he
was looking for a friend, "Travis Ford in dorm room 453," the
affidavit stated. Police and Campus Security said a check of the name
and room number met with negative results, the document said.
According to witnesses, Heath appeared intoxicated, the affidavit said.
The woman resident of the dorm room Heath allegedly entered is the
complainant in the unauthorized entry case.
Another 18-year-old female student and Lokelani Dorm resident
identified a pink Nano iPod and lingerie allegedly found in Heath's
possession as belonging to her, leading to the burglary charge.
The student told authorities the items were stolen sometime between
Thanksgiving day and Sunday from her dorm room, the court document
said. Her's is a different room than the one in the unauthorized
entry case.
UH spokesman Gregg Takayama said school officials are investigating
how Heath gained entrance into Lokelani Dorm, which is part of the
cluster of Hale Aloha campus dorms.
Takayama said the dorms have around-the-clock front desk check-in
where guests are admitted only if escorted by a resident. Takayama
declined comment when asked if Heath was a registered guest.
Dorm residents were also advised to lock their doors from the
beginning of the current school year, Takayama said.
According to investigators, the dorms are not equipped with security
surveillance cameras.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
45. Holiday Specials!
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:47:16 -1000
From: Rainbow Healing Arts <info@rainbowhealingarts.com>
Rainbow Healing Arts
Announces Our Holiday Specials
Getting geared up for the holidays and needing some new ideas? Feeling a
little weary yourself after hours of shopping? Why not stop by after your
trip to the mall and take advantage of a 30 minute leg and foot massage?
Or indulge yourself in a discounted hour and a half Massage or Stones &
Hands? While you're here, pick up some gift certificates for those loved
ones who need more than just a chotchke (trinket) to keep them happy.
Now until Dec. 31st we are offering these gift specials to help make the
season bright.
*For You:
· 30 minute leg and foot rub using therapeutic essential oils - $30
· 1 ½ hour massage - $80 ($10 savings)
· Stones and Hands - $90 ($10 savings)
*If you don't have time now to relax and enjoy, you may purchase these now
and use later.
For Others:
· Buy 1 gift certificate and get 5% off
· Buy 2 gift certificates and get 10% off
· Buy 3 or more gift certificates and get 15% off
Check our website www.rainbowhealingarts.com for details on treatments and
rates. We are happy to mail you the certificates, and cash, check, and
credit cards (VISA & MC) are accepted. Wanting to give a gift of
therapeutic grade essential oils? We will be happy to help assist you in
ordering or you may visit www.youngliving.com/hioils.
Have very safe, happy and healthy holidays.
Love, Kathy and Liza
Rainbow Healing Arts
Medical Grade Essential Oils & Classes
Reiki Treatments & Classes
Craniosacral Therapy - Lymphatic Drainage
Swedish Massage - Stone Therapy - Lomi lomi
Kathy Edwards and Liza Delin
(808) 262-3700
www.rainbowhealingarts.com
www.youngliving.com/hioils
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
46. SuperFerry car transport could easily transport coqui frogs!!!! - more
comment
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:51:11 -1000
From: Tane . <Tane_1@msn.com>
That's why I said that all vehicles Land, sea, and air should step up its
policies regarding invasive species. The worst is the military! matson
and Young Brothers must conform to the updating of policies. I remember
one year, decades ago, a container was taken to Molokai and when they
opened it up, it was filled with locusts. That was about 40 - 50 years
ago. It would make sense for the state to review the standards and step
it up in all areas concerned. The military bombing should be stopped,
too. Tsah!
Tane
________________________________________________________________________________
47. Happening at Revolution Books
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:56:22 -0600
From: revolutionbks@yahoo.com
What's Happening at Revolution Books...
Be a Part of Making the Revolution Newspaper Expansion and $500,000 Fund
Drive a Success
Join us at Revolution Books
Sunday, December 2, 3pm
- If you see that much of humanity finds itself in a living hell...
- If you want to know how the Revolution newspaper expansion and fund
drive is part of changing this...
- Join others to discuss the the plans to radically expand Revolution's
funding and distribution.
Much has been done! Thousands of fundraising brochures have been
distributed, and our local subscription base has expanded. Supporters are
selling the "Wanted for War Crimes" T-shirts and Totes and profits have
been sent to Revolution. Supporters have also made everything from soap to
jam to sell. Artists have created special pieces. We've had a rummage
sale. And many people have made sizeable donations. However, we still
haven't reached our goal. We have some ideas, and hope you'll bring yours
as well. There are new developments in the campaign you'll want to hear
about. Get involved! For more information on the fund drive: Fund Drive
Information
Revolution Discussion Group
Monday evening, December 3, 6:15pm-8pm
Each Monday evening there is a discussion of one of the articles in
Revolution Newspaper. This week we'll be discussing "A Major Fascistic
Step: House Passes â^À^ÜThought Crimesâ^À^Ý Bill". Few people know that on
October 23 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill called
â^À^ÜViolent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of
2007â^À^Ý (HR 1955). Sponsored by a California Democrat, Jane Harman, the
bill was approved by an overwhelming vote of 404 to 6 and is now being
considered in the Senate. Join us as we read and discuss the article. The
article is at: Thought Crimes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
48. OHA Pilikia - The kakio's are showing.. - more comment
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:25:43 -1000
From: Kepalo <kepalo@hawaii.rr.com>
If all state departments and agency do the same no problem. If only OHA
auwe. Hawaiian Organization having discrimination against employed
Hawaiian. The Plantation Bosses should give OHA and award for this. This
is good fear is in the air....kepalo
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gabrielle Welford, Ph.D.
freelance writer, editor, teacher
welford@hawaii.edu
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