No need for hysteria over Rouse's departure

In her April 22 letter, Carolyn Golojuch chastises our local newspapers for daring to call into question Sen. Brian Kanno for going to bat for a convicted pedophile who served eight years in a Filipino prison and then was fired from Norwegian Cruise Line for allegedly sexually harassing other male employees.

Norwegian Cruise Line was perfectly within its rights to fire Leon Rouse for his conduct, because it reportedly occurred during his 90-day probationary period. So this is hardly a case of David vs. Goliath.

I find it disingenuous for Golojuch to call this a "witch hunt" against a Democrat. I don't care what political party Kanno belongs to; wrong is wrong. Kanno used his powers as an elected official in seeking special treatment for Rouse and he got busted.

It's also personally offensive to me and other Filipinos for Golojuch to disparage the Philippines and my people by questioning our civil rights record. If Golojuch is so concerned about civil rights, I wonder why she's not worried about the civil rights of Rouse's 15-year-old victim?

Others want to define who is a Hawaiian

I was saddened by James Day's May 6 letter, "Why do mixed races claim to be Hawaiian?", asserting that only "pure Hawaiians" have any valid standing in restoration of claims, which includes rights to culture, art, language, spirituality and all forms of Hawaiian ethnocultural identity.

Why is it always a non-Hawaiian dictating how Hawaiians should view and acknowledge one another? Just because Day "feels he isn't Irish" because he is not "race pure" doesn't give him the right to force his ethnocentric view upon another people.

Pacific Islanders, like Hawaiians, are accepting of people of part-Pacific Islander, mixed race-multiethnic ancestry as being of their ethnocultural group. Today people of Hawaiian ancestry continue to endure having their ethnocultural identity stripped from them as dominate Asian and Caucasian groups continue to deny people of Hawaiian ancestry their right "to be Hawaiian," while at the same time steal the ethnocultural identity of mixed-race Hawaiians, or hapa, which was passed down to them by their kupuna and is the Hawaiian cultural term that defines and describes people of part-Hawaiian ancestry.

Blood does not know what one's race is

There is no race blood. The races do not have race blood. The races have human blood.

The Hawaiians do not have Hawaiian blood. The Hawaiians do not have one-half Hawaiian blood required to attend Kamehameha School for Hawaiians built and run by Hawaiian Bernice Pauahi Bishop's trust. The Hawaiians have human blood, so they donate to the hospitals human blood banks.

The American Indians do not have Indian blood. The American Indians have human blood, so they donate to the hospitals human blood banks.

Hawaii's population has human blood. Mainland U.S. population has human blood.

Bush energy bill favors Big Oil

Watching President Bush and the Saudi prince holding hands in Texas confirms that the war in Iraq has been a good arrangement for Big Oil. What amazes me the most is that while the American economy and people get hammered at the gas pump, American citizens still are not outraged by the fact the major U.S. oil companies posted record oil profits for the year 2004. Exxon Mobile reported the largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S. history and the highest quarterly profit -- $8.42 billion -- ever by a American company.

Meanwhile, the Bush-Cheney energy bill cuts funding for renewable energy research and is loaded with corporate giveaways and tax breaks for big oil. The $2,000 tax credits for fuel efficient hybrid vehicles will be phased out and the $25,000 tax write-off for the gas guzzling Hummer remains in effect. Nothing is done to raise CAFE (fuel efficiency) standards for new cars and the Bush-Cheney bill does nothing to prevent the projected over-80 percent increase in foreign oil imports by 2025.

Polling shows 70 percent of Americans support a drastic increase in public spending on renewable energy sources. Any American energy policy without broad investment in renewables and fuel efficiency is a one-way ticket to national bankruptcy and a burden on our children for generations to come.

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