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Associated Press
Elian Gonzalez before he was taken from his uncle's
home by federal agents last weekend and
reunited with his father

Concern for Elian—
and Janet Reno

Elian could become Castro's successor

Your front-page picture on Saturday showing a federal agent forcibly taking Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint made me sad and ashamed. Doesn't the caption on the Statue of Liberty read: "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"?

The Clinton/Gore administration, aided by puppet Attorney General Janet Reno, was no doubt congratulating itself this past Easter.

Look at the face of poor Elian and think how this experience will sear his brain. Talk about psychological harm. And think, too, after he is forced to go back to Cuba how much resentment he will have toward the United States.

Perhaps he will replace Castro in a few short years.

Betty Cesar
Kaneohe

Questions abound before returning boy

I would agree that Elian should be with his father if I could believe:

The photograph of a smiling Elian with his father was real.

His mother would be OK with the arrangement.

Parental rights are as valued in Cuba as they are in this country.

Elian's Miami family would be given visitation rights in Cuba.

Elian's father prefers to return to Cuba rather than stay in this country.

An armed taking of Elian was really necessary.

Elian was not being deprogrammed of his love for his Miami family and his knowledge of this country at this very moment.

Janet Reno.

Sam Dannaway
Makakilo

Leave Enquirer-type photos to the tabloids

Do your editors ever talk to each other? Your April 24 editorial was right on target but Diane Chang's column on the same page showed the kind of fantasy world she lives in. She wrote, "The ever-hovering media -- much maligned and often characterized as being bothersome voyeurs -- were finally redeemed by providing photographic and videotape proof of what Fox News described as 'The Taking of Elian.' "

Let's hope that the "ever-hovering media" can find some other interesting window to peep in, but limit publication of photos like this to the Enquirer-type media. Let the rest of us focus our attention on less dramatic but more relevant matters.

Gossip and scandal are always interesting to some, but news as entertainment has long since gone too far.

John M. Flanigan
Kaneohe

Janet Reno was in a no-win situation

Syndicated columnist John Farmer's excellent April 25 description of the Cuban-American problem of the past few months deserves recognition.

No one in the U.S. questions the reason for the intensity of the Miami Cuban "family," for who could blame them for wanting to escape and provide help to any of their countrymen?

But once the feds made the decision to return the boy to his father, the Cuban-American community put on a sorry, shameful performance. Their bold promises of destructive civil disobedience displayed the frailty of their appreciation to the city that had given thousands a new and better life. And to use a 6-year-old as a hostage!

Janet Reno was the other hostage. She -- and her Justice Department cohorts -- knew the impassioned Cuban Americans might shut down or burn the city, so she was on the spot. Her duty was a winless one. In the weeks and months ahead, she may never know a peaceful moment.

Worse is the possibility that the situation is not yet finished.

Ray Thiele
Kailua

Cuban government usurps parental authority

The Star-Bulletin and other major news outlets have failed to provide any context for the Elian Gonzalez controversy. You either don't know or prefer not to tell the truth about the life he faces in Cuba.

As Castro's daughter, Juanita, told Larry King, children are taken away from their parents at age 11 and placed in an indoctrination camp. There they learn how to blow up bridges, lay mines and throw grenades.

Elian will be put out to labor in the sugar cane or tobacco fields, seeing his parents once a month as long as everyone "cooperates" with the government.

As Cuba's ambassador to the U.S. has said, children belong to the state and not their parents. School teachers are required to keep a file of ideologically suspect children and they are closely interrogated about the "ideological integration" of their parents

Why did Cuban parents send their children out of Cuba in a massive airlift decades ago and why, every day, do Cubans risk death to sail makeshift boats to Florida? Not for cell phones and minivans but for that most precious commodity -- freedom.

Carol White

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Plenty of girls are tuned in to high tech

The April 10 Cox News Service story, "Study: Girls disclaming computer careers," by Andrew Mollison left me unsettled.

I find it ironic that "Girls are avoiding high-tech careers...because they believe computer jobs are boring and lonely." On the contrary, several of my female classmates are planning careers in the computer industry. For some, long gone are ambitions of becoming a doctor or lawyer, and several are vying to become the next Bill Gates.

The 20 students in my HTML/C++ Programming class attest to the fact that girls are interested in computers. Perhaps it's the alluring starting salary or the challenges of programming, but computer science has become the "it" course for many students.

Mollison predicts that until changes are made, the number of women in high-tech jobs will trail that of men. Does he not know that many of these suggestions have already been implemented in most of Hawaii's schools? Technology is integrated into all subjects, from English to economics, where students learn the rudiments of HTML, media presentations and applications. Like a pencil or calculator, the computer has become an essential tool of education for students. And I might add that we are comfortable, far from anxious or phobic, with its use!

The idea that "girls tend to imagine that computer professionals live in a solitary, antisocial and sedentary world" sounds like something from the Dilbert comic strip. My C++ classmates and I recently had the opportunity to meet a Microsoft software developer who makes his own hours, travels the world on his boat and receives a humongous salary.

Microsoft headquarters, get ready! We girls will soon be beating at your doors! My generation of girls is going beyond the anti-social male adolescent stereotype and will show that computer science is a challenging and lucrative field of untapped mysteries for women as well as men.

Anna Ho
Grade 12
Sacred Hearts Academy

Insanity defense will be questionable

Mass murder by Byran Uyesugi opens a can of worms to every soul who has a problem with co-workers, people with road rage, those with domestic problems, etc.

If Uyesugi gets away with murder -- because he didn't know it was "wrong" to kill another human being -- then everyone will use this as an excuse. This way of thinking will become a way of life here, just as it is on the mainland.

Is Uyesugi innocent until proven guilty? I think not!

Jeanette Scharsch

Father's angry outburst in court was telling

It was no surprise that the father of Albert Ian Schweitzer was reported in your April 25 paper as having interrupted his son's sentencing hearing with angry outbursts. Time and time again I hear that the reasons people are in prison are because of their poor anger management skills and lack of control.

Albert Ian's own lack of control resulted in the death of a young woman. When families don't have these skills, they cannot teach them to their children.

The most important service the state departments of health and education can do for the Schweitzer family now is to ensure that services are offered to and accepted by Ian's siblings and their children so they can learn these important life skills to break this pattern.

Libby Tomar

Barbers Point harbor is polluted embarrassment

I can only surmise that Governor Cayetano and state legislators have been so preoccupied in ridding Hawaii of guns, especially those owned by reputable citizens, that they forgot to address a more pressing problem: widespread pollution.

Have you been to Barbers Point harbor recently? Garbage and debris float in what should be clear, tropical water. At the water's edge is trash, mainly old rubber tires, left to rot on the beaches and adjacent sand dunes.

This lovely tropical paradise is turning into another Love Canal disaster. As a citizen of this state, I want it stopped and cleaned up before it's too late, assuming it's not too late.

You cannot fish at Pearl Harbor because of the contamination, which is noted on state signs warning people not to eat the fish or shell fish.

I'm sorry if I don't sound diplomatic, but it's difficult to feel that way with so much disregard and apathy for the health and safety of citizens and the preservation of our natural surroundings.

If word gets out that the waters of Oahu are unsafe because of contamination, our primary industry -- tourism -- will diminish.

Thomas J. Donnelly
Kapolei

Law must not dictate energy development

According to industry sources (http://www.energyusernews.com) our neighbor islands have the highest electricity rates in the country. While Oahu rates are lower, they are still higher than about 95 percent of the rest of the country.

Considering this, we should be looking for ways to lower our electricity costs to control our cost of living and improve our economic competitiveness. Instead the Legislature is considering a bill that would mandate the use of uneconomic renewable energy sources.

We now use renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal when it is economical to do so and have been very successful at it. Mandating the use of uneconomic renewable energy sources would needlessly raise our already high electricity bills.

It is ironic that, while mainland states are taking steps to deregulate the electric utility industry to lower prices, Hawaii government is tightening the regulatory screws, producing higher costs. Some of our state legislators just don't get it.

Dick O'Connell

Quotables "It isn't that we've sold a million copies but what makes me happy is when someone tells me the music has touched them in a positive sense. That brings me immense joy." Makana 21-YEAR-OLD SINGER-GUITARIST Whose impressive self-titled debut album was overlooked in the 2000 hoku award nominations, but opened for Grammy Award-winning star Sting last night at the Blaisdell Arena "It is always good to see one of our own go on to something else besides jail." Sam Slom REPUBLICAN STATE SENATOR Joking about the upward mobility of fellow Sen. Randy Iwase, confirmed to a 10-year term as chairman of the Labor and Industrial Relations Appeals Board

Public workers' benefits must be trimmed

The governor has my full support on civil service reform. Many Hawaii residents have no idea that government employees receive 21 days of vacation, 21 days of sick leave and many additional paid holidays, pay no tax on their pensions, receive refunds for Medicare deductions, get free medical for their family during retirement, and probably receive other benefits.

While in the old days retirees worked until age 65 and probably lived just a few additional years, many now retire at 50 and can live another 50 years. No wonder nothing is left for building maintenance and Hawaii is at the bottom of most lists.

Civil service reform takes guts. It is not too late to lead the march.

Evelyn S. Pacheco

Leaders shouldn't submit to union blackmail

State government reforms should be based purely on economic advantages rather than political blackmailing. The governor and legislators should not succumb to pressure from any particular group solely for the purpose of obtaining their votes during election time.

The majority of the working population and retirees are non-union, tax-paying citizens. We need leaders in government who will legislate what's right for the majority.

Toshio Chinen
Pearl City

Sharif's life sentence was well-deserved

Unlike the average, run-of-the-mill hijacker who exposes himself to danger if he is shot or blown up with the plane, deposed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did not expose himself to any danger. Instead, from the sanctity of his office, he did not allow a commercial airliner -- carrying Gen. Pervez Musharraf from Sri Lanka back to Pakistan -- to land at Karachi.

Sharif got the airport runway blocked. He was willing to let all 200-plus passengers die rather than let the plane land. It was only when the army, loyal to Musharraf, arrested Sharif and cleared the runway that the plane touched down in Karachi -- in Alfred Hitchcock-style drama -- with only seven minutes of fuel left.

By remote-control commandeering the plane from the ground, Sharif has unwittingly given the art of hijacking a novel twist, one that we will undoubtedly see re-enacted in the movies.

The life sentence awarded to Sharif, far from "smacking of retaliation" (Star-Bulletin editorial, April 8), should be a warning to other corrupt rulers, elected or otherwise, not to hold onto their cushy seats at all cost.

Saleem Ahmed

Medical marijuana OK shows true compassion

Congratulations to the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii and numerous other organizations and individuals -- including a group of courageous and forward-thinking state legislators.

They were instrumental in passing legislation to remove state-level criminal sanctions for seriously ill people using marijuana with the approval of their physicians.

Again, Hawaii has demonstrated national leadership in the area of enlightened public health practice and compassion for those suffering from the painful effects of debilitating illnesses, which the medical use of marijuana could potentially alleviate.

The passage of this legislation sends a critical message to two very important groups:

To those who are ill, we have provided evidence that their well-being is important to us and that we are invested in providing them with options to improve their quality of life.

To our children, in supporting humane policies that address the health and welfare needs of our sickest community members, we have demonstrated the values of compassion and caring for others.

Nancy Kern

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