Comments on the Akaka Bill?

[LikaNui]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

I'm tired of people who automatically negate the comments of the handful of us HT'ers who are off-island, simply because we are not there at present.

I agree with much of what you wrote. My comment, however, was clearly aimed at just one person who endlessly talks about Seattle. Or at least I thought my comment was clear.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

I agree with much of what you wrote. My comment, however, was clearly aimed at just one person who endlessly talks about Seattle. Or at least I thought my comment was clear.

I know that you (and others) generally mean Miulang, though the brush ends up being broader than you might wish.

Personally, I think Miulang brings a unique perspective to HT - she grew up in the Islands, has lived away from them for several years in different regions of the Mainland, and plans to return home to Hawai`i some day. In my book, that's a lot of valuable real-world experience.

She posts here a lot --- more than anyone else, according to recent accounts. Perhaps that high post-count creates more of an impression than is accurate, because a certain percentage of her posts mention her present home.

There are other folks here who post a lot, and you might think (from a sampling of their posts) that they talk endlessly about beer ... or about race ... or mortgages. If that's what they know, so be it. But I think that, once a bias about a poster is formed, it takes hard effort to shake that bias. I find myself having to do that regularly, but it's worth it, in order to keep a respectful atmosphere.

Thanks for letting me vent, LikaNui. Time for me to go and exercise. In Seattle.

[LikaNui]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

Personally, I think Miulang brings a unique perspective to HT - she grew up in the Islands, has lived away from them for several years in different regions of the Mainland, and plans to return home to Hawai`i some day. In my book, that's a lot of valuable real-world experience.

Agreed. And I actually do enjoy a lot of her posts. It boggles my mind how she's able to spend so very much time online.
Anyway, back to reading comments on the Akaka Bill...

[waioli kai]

Hawai'ian exiles

Those who are of Hawai'i but do not currently reside on one of the islands are, and are becoming even moreso as Hawaii's median cost of housing rises, comparable to those Palestinians who make up the Palestinian Diaspora. For most, leaving home was/is a necessity, moving back home is an unrelinquishable desire hemmed in by seemingly insurmountable walls of financial (for Palestinians, political) circumstance.

It' been decades now since I have experienced life without Hawai'i on the mainland United States. Even so, whenever talk comes up about "The American Culture", I still can only laugh; but, it is not a heartening laugh. It is a laugh of derision. A contemptuous laugh which is borne of personal knowledge of that which is "The American Culture" compared to personal knowledge of the culture of Hawai'i: a culture neither of the Philippines, Japan, China or Portugal, and, most certainly not of the United States of America.

What culture there is that can be defined as truly "American" is near invariably not something to be proud of, and, what to little there once was to feign to lay claim, the United States' CheneyBush regime has all but demolished in the eyes of the world. Some culture !!

[waioli kai]

Re: bait and switch, defeat Akaka Bill motion

In an administration replete with misleaders , our, the world's, Cheney-Bushwacker's have added a new face to the their
fascist line-up on taxpayers' payroll:

' While most White House aides carefully trim their public commentary, they can't take back what they said before arriving in the West Wing, and few in this day and age arrive with a more provocative paper trail than Karl Zinsmeister , who started his new job yesterday. For a dozen years until his appointment, Zinsmeister held forth on all manner of issues and personalities as editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine. ...

' Zinsmeister lamented a "forced diversity crusade"
that fuels more alienation than it solves and argued that "Americans should jettison affirmative action and all racial preferences." He dismissed reparations for slavery as "a clear absurdity" because "the U.S. already made a mighty payment for the sin of slavery. It was called the Civil War." He traces wrongheaded political correctness to colleges that have become "virtual one-party states, ideological monopolies,
badly unbalanced ecosystems." '

Zinsmeister opposes "affirmative action all racial preferences" because his ethnic, religious, economic, social, 'conservative' preferences already have super-extraordinary power-per-individual-ratio of representation in the United States of America, Pacific Ocean and Israel in Palestine: U.S. Militant Corporatists , U.S. Israeli, U.S. Militant Zionists, U.S. Militarists, U.S. RightWing.

It is as if a country in whose founding was written specifically preclusive measures to ensure that the U.S. Executive Branch was never to be run by members of a national standing army, has now evolved into a situation where the United States of America would be best served if the U.S. Military & some recently retired executive officers could just take over the U.S. Executive Branch-tragedy/crime. To begin to exonerate the U.S. Military of the results of U.S. Military actions in U.S. War:Iraq initiated, begun on orders from the unprecedentedly civilian/none-to-relatively minor military experience, secretive, collusionably accountability-free U.S. Executive Branch of Cheney-Bushwackers.

Not, of course, to mean upper echelon corporations of Corporate America, U.S. Taxpayers live under the stun of continuous Bushwacking, chainied to the illusion of the inconsequentiality of unlimited national obligations of debt and unfunded liabilties: pension funds, paper guarantees and promise-sorry notes and guarantees; illusions of sufferable wars without end; illusions of righteousness; illusions forever: but for the U.S. Military's , sanctioned by the U.S. Congress, arresting their CEO and his boss Mr. Cheney, establishing a provisional government until the swearing in of the winner of Presidential Elections 2006, after which presidential elections 2010, 2014, etc., barring some comparable future U.S. Executive Branch's plunging the United States into a quagmire from which the leadership of the Executive Branch has no possible traction for extraction. Quite the opposite, such an Executive Branch's every move only further aggravates the desperateness of themselves, and, most unfortunately, most criminally others say, the feeling of desperateness, the state of desperateness of the United States.
In that context, who's desperate in the U.S.? Virtually no one who is not asked to make humanistic reason of the latest United States' militarist adventure since at least March 2003.

[Miulang]

Back to the drawing board...

It appears as though Dan Inouye has finally decided that he will fight hard to preserve what little gains the kanaka maoli have made to preserve their heritage. He will be introducing a bill to preserve the status of certain programs already reserved for the kanaka maoli without waiting for the Akaka Bill to be heard again in Congress.

This is probably the most prudent thing that can be done, because as the article notes, even those Senators who were objecting to federally recognizing the kanaka maoli would be amenable to allowing existing programs to continue.

"...Inouye said that in negotiations with the Bush administration last year on the Native Hawaiian bill, officials "made it clear" that they supported language in the bill aimed at keeping the 160 federal programs now helping Hawaiians. The bill would protect the programs from legislative and legal attacks.

"What we're going to do is use the language ... in this measure that we hope will protect our benefits," he said. "We will use it verbatim."

Inouye said he hopes to introduce the new bill before Congress leaves for its Fourth of July recess.

"I'm in the process of trying to get bipartisan sponsorship" for the new bill, he said.

Inouye said he hoped House sponsors of the Native Hawaiian bill — Hawai'i's Democratic Reps. Neil Abercrombie and Ed Case — would introduce a similar bill in the House.

Inouye said that he and other supporters "were not going to sneak anything through" the Senate to protect Hawaiian programs.

"We're going to try to get committee approval so that at least if we're going to attach it to something, we can say it's been approved by the committee," he said. "This is just too important a measure to go sneaking around..."

At least if this bill can be passed by both the House and the Senate, the kanaka maoli would not lose any ground in their fight.

Miulang

[tikiyaki]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

This is what I said: We could get away from our dependence on imported oil to power HECO & use solar/wind power instead

Maybe you need to clean your glasses if you wear them. I said nothing about no oil for cars. As Glen says, "ideally" we would have cars powered by something other than gasoline. But for right now, of course we would need gasoline. I don't particulary want to go back to horse & buggy days. and in case you weren't aware - we do produce much of our gasoline locally. I was talking about fuel oil, not gasoline. But, the oil used to produce the gasoline IS imported. Without the Jones Act, oil could be imported from places that are closer to the islands, from countries that could be bargained with outside of US restrictions.

Try to think outside the box...............its much more interesting.

I'm all for ditching dependence on foreign oil...

There's probably enough used deep fryer oil from LnL Fast Foods in Hawaii to run alot of bio deisel autos in Hawaii....

Here's a link.

http://www.greasecar.com/

[Miulang]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

Another zinger column from Lee Cataluna today: How can the President want to preserve the NWHI as a place for Native Hawaiians to be able to practice their culture, when Congress says there no such thing as a Native Hawaiian? Was this the political tradeoff that was agreed to? Creating the NWHI sanctuary in return for defeating the Akaka Bill?

"...Eh, maybe Jean-Michel can make one movie about us guys, too.

Worked good for the monk seals. Maybe Bush can be convinced to save some Hawaiians while he's in a magnanimous mood.

Save the endangered Native Hawaiians and their habitat, the Southeastern Hawaiian Islands.

If the monk seals, sea birds and some big tunas can score federal protection under the Bush administration, can't the president and his party spare some compassion for a culture that has lost more than natural habitat and population numbers, and that scores at the top of nearly every negative social statistic?...

"..."We will preserve access for Native Hawaiian cultural activities," Bush said. "For more than a thousand years, Native Hawaiians sailed these waters and visited these islands as part of sacred journeys. The islands are dotted with archaeological treasures and traditional sites of worship. This monument will protect the cultural ties that Native Hawaiians have to these lands and waters. We respect these natives' beliefs, and this monument will safeguard both the natural and spiritual treasures of the region. And for this reason, we will consult with Native Hawaiian leaders to give this monument a Native Hawaiian name."

So wait, when it comes to seals, they care what Hawaiians think, but when it comes to Keali'i Pauahi's money, ceded lands and self-determination, they don't want to hear it? They'll let Hawaiians name the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, kind of like a fourth-grade poster contest.

What's the Hawaiian word for "hypocrisy"?..."
Indeed.

Miulang

[Jewlipino]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

I don't think anyone has ever doubted the existence of Native Hawaiians, but there has been significant and very pertinent doubts as to whether Native Hawaiians exist as a "tribe" or some other POLITICAL organization. The kanakas spend all their time arguing with each other over who gets to rebury stolen artifacts and over who gets to be the ali'i when they finally kick all the haoles out (like that will ever happen...). As a people the Hawaiians have been almost entirely culturally assimilated and have lost their cultural and ethnic distinctiveness. Hell the vast majority of them worship Jesus, the GOD OF THEIR CONQUERORS AND OPPRESSORS. If that isn't a conflict of interest I don't know what is. For those Hawaiians who wax poetic about sovereignty as a panacea for all the social injustice visited upon them I'd like to share this tidbit: After the destruction of Judea by the Romans (see the Bar Kochba Revolt... at least the Jews fought and DIED for their land, unlike some people that I don't think that I have to mention) the Jewish Diaspora had to suffer through close to 2000 YEARS of homelessness and persecution throughout the Christian nations. It took the HOLOCAUST for the Jews to get Israel and frankly, from my perspective, it seems to be a bit of a poison pill. As I watch what happens in Israel I can't help but think that in many ways Jews have become the oppressors.

The point is, the Akaka Bill (notice how I managed to steer this back on subject) is worthless in ANY event since the Hawaiians (the Kanakas that is) lack the cultural unity to the point where I'm not convinced they even deserve to be called a nation of people! Ask yourselves, how many Hawaiians have died for the cause? The Hawaiians don't want it badly enough and they NEVER DID, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed the haoles to take over so easily.

Jewlipino

[timkona]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

I love sailing. I love to race sailboats. I love to watch sunsets from the rolling deck of a sailboat.

I seldom see any Hawaiians sailing. But they do love their power boats. Sailing is a skill that is lost on the modern Hawaiian. Same is true with Astronomy, wherein Hawaiians were the world leaders 1000 years ago, and today you find them protesting on Mauna Kea.

It is truly ironic that Hawaiians would sooner fight amongst themselves. Kamehameha is revered as a hero for the way he killed so many fellow Hawaiians. But the reverence is couched in 'unifying' the islands. Crazy.

[Jewlipino]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

So VERY ironic.

Jewlipino

[sinjin]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

Kamehameha is revered as a hero for the way he killed so many fellow Hawaiians. But the reverence is couched in 'unifying' the islands. Crazy.

Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and others killed many Americans and yet their deeds are couched in 'unifying' the country.

[kimo55]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

I seldom see any Hawaiians sailing. But they do love their power boats.

Conversely, I happen to see and know many Hawaiians that sail and love to do it.

[Miulang]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

And there's been a resurgence of outrigger canoeing, too, and we're not just talking in Hawai'i...there are lots of outrigger paddling clubs on the West Coast.

Miulang

[LikaNui]

Re: Comments on the Akaka Bill?

Sailing is a skill that is lost on the modern Hawaiian. Same is true with Astronomy

Tell that to Nainoa Thompson, the various crews of Hokulea, and all the celestial navigators who are learning from them.
Wrong again, Tim.

Conversely, I happen to see and know many Hawaiians that sail and love to do it.

I agree with Kimo. I know several, and I see many more that I don't know.
Tim, you're just hanging out in the wrong area, apparently.