Editorials
Tuesday, February 17, 1998WHILE there are obvious benefits for Hawaii tourism in direct flights from overseas points to the neighbor islands, there is also danger for the environment through increased access for alien species. The problem was highlighted by Hawaiian Airlines' application for approval by the Federal Aviation Administration of direct Maui-Japan flights. The plan depends on extension of the Kahului Airport runway to enable fully loaded airliners to make the flights. Keeping alien species
from entering HawaiiThe National Park Service has criticized an environmental impact statement for the runway extension, contending that it fails to provide adequate safeguards to prevent the introduction of alien species. Don Reeser, superintendent of Haleakala National Park, said direct flights from various points could be a disaster for the native environment.
Hawaii's native flora and fauna have been devastated by the introduction of alien species, starting from the first Polynesian voyagers to reach the islands, through the discovery of Hawaii for the West by Capt. James Cook on up to the current threat from the brown tree snake. Despite the damage that has already been done, however, there is still much worth saving.
The problem posed to the neighbor islands by direct flights is not confined to the Japan-Maui route. There are already direct flights from Japan to Kona, as well as flights to Maui and Kona from the U.S. mainland. Extending the Maui runway would not create a new problem, but it could make the existing problem worse.
The park service is asking the state and federal governments to establish a regulatory board for alien species prevention and an interagency team to eradicate alien pests once they are reported. It may be impossible to prevent all such pests from entering the islands but a stronger effort to bar them seems indicated.
FOR the second time in less than two years, India is going to the polls. More than 100 million people cast their votes in the first phase of general elections yesterday. The elections are staggered over several weeks and the results won't be known until March 3. Indian elections
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to win the largest share of parliamentary seats but less than a majority. This could lead to a coalition led either by the BJP or its arch rival, the Congress Party, which has ruled India for all but five years since independence.
The elections were forced by the withdrawal of the Congress Party from the previous coalition, which lasted only seven months. The Congress Party pulled out after a report implicated one of the coalition parties in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a terrorist explosion.
In recent years the Congress Party has been damaged by scandal and lost its dominant position. But no other party has been able to replace it.
In the current election campaign, the star campaigner for the Congress Party has been Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's Italian-born widow.
The BJP won the largest number of seats in the 1996 elections, but its Hindu nationalist platform deterred other parties from joining it in a coalition. Eventually a loose coalition of left-of-center parties, the Congress Party and the Marxists was formed, led by H.D. Deve Gowda, but it too soon collapsed.
In calling the elections, President K.R. Narayanan declared, "The people of India need a respite from instability." But there is not much confidence that the balloting will result in a more stable government. The world's largest democracy is having great difficulty in reaching political consensus. India is adrift.
FIRST Amendment protection has allowed a proliferation of racial hatred on the Internet, but messages that go beyond free speech carry the same risk as in any other medium. A college dropout in California learned about the risk Friday when he was convicted of a civil-rights violation for sending racially based threats in e-mail messages to 59 Asian-American students. Hate on the Internet
Richard Machado, a naturalized citizen from El Salvador, was infuriated at flunking out of the University of California at Irvine and blamed Asian-American students for inflating the grading curve in his classes. By e-mail, he vowed to "find, hunt down and kill" them. Some of the recipients of Machado's messages were frightened enough that they stopped going to night classes or began carrying tear gas. Machado, 21, faces up to a year in federal prison and $100,000 in fines.
German law prohibits World Wide Web sites that deny the holocaust from originating in that country. Canada has criminalized hate speech on the Internet. Those laws are ineffective because cyberspace has no national boundaries. The First Amendment has allowed online hatred to flourish in the United States, where such bans would be unconstitutional.
The Anti-Defamation League estimates that the number of Web hate sites has doubled to 800 since 1996, most of them advocating holocaust denial, white power and anti-Semitism, and seeking recruits and donations. Louisiana politician and former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke, KKK leader Don Black and William Pierce, author of "The Turner Diaries," which influenced the Oklahoma City bombing, lead the pack.
Racists are subject to regulation by the Anti-Terrorism Act when posting bomb-making instructions on the Internet. Otherwise, they are free to spew their poison through whatever medium they can use, short of making physical threats. The same laws that have protected the public from media excesses for 200 years work just fine in dealing with racial hatred on the Internet.
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
