Malu 'Aina

I’m posting this in support of the PunaPono Alliance.  Please pass on to others

Woody Harper asked:
“Why don’t you respect the will of the people here in Hawaii that they permit and profit from being American citizens? and allowing the use of PTA by the beloved military?”

First of all, “the will of the people” is a meaningless phrase, unless Mr. Harper specifies exactly which people he is talking about. It is clearly not the will of all the people to bomb Pohakuloa. It is clearly not the will of all the people that the Nation of Hawai’i is illegally occupied by the USA. The leader of the so-called “free world” at that time, President Cleveland, attempted to prevent the completion of the illegal overthrow.

See http://www.hawaii-nation.org/cleveland.html for President Cleveland’s thorough and well grounded objections to the machinations of corrupt congressmen. Cleveland’s words clearly indicate that there was no “will of the people” – except for the will of a few rich American businessman people – asking for Hawai’i to be occupied by the USA.

Second of all, “profit from being American citizens” makes no sense. There is no inherent “profit” in simply being an American citizen. I do not get paid for being an American citizen. If Mr. Harper does, I need to talk to a lawyer, since we are all supposedly equal as citizens and thus I should be getting my share of that profit as well.

Third of all, there is specifically no profit involved in military operations. Military operations are a complete and total loss of money. The military does not make money – it spends money. Specifically, it spends taxpayer money.

Our tax dollars are used to build bombs, missiles, guns of all kinds and sizes, ammunition for those guns, fighter jets, helicopters, land mines and other military devices. These devices are used to kill people, or to train people to kill people.

In the case of training such as at Pohakuloa, our tax dollars are being blown to bits on a regular basis. Expensive bombs, bullets, missiles and other devices we paid for are purposely destroyed – in some cases destroyed by being used to destroy other expensive military devices we paid for. It seems beyond obvious that this is loss, and not profit.

It seems to me Mr. Harper is disrespecting the actual “will of the people” of Hawai’i at the time of the overthrow. With the exception of a tiny and disproportionately powerful minority of foreigners, “the people” of Hawai’i  did not ask for, revolt for, or vote for occupation by the USA. He is also disrespecting “the will of the people” as expressed by the then-leader of the United States, President Cleveland, who objected to what was clearly an illegal action against a sovereign nation, proposed and promoted by corrupt members of congress.

John Schinnerer
Kea’au, Hawai’i

Killing Nation!

       The tragic killings in Aurora, Colorado on July 20th, should give the U.S. pause to take stock of its violence. It’s still not clear what prompted the attack on a packed theater showing a Batman film. But one thing has been clear for a long time. “Violence is as American as cherry pie,” Black activist H. Rap Brown said during the 1960s.

      Recently, Doug Noble published an article that takes stock of official U.S. Violence carried out in every citizen’s name.  Noble’s article is entitled Assassination Nation –Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’: From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31925.htm

      Then CIA Director William Colby, conceded that Phoenix operations killed over 20,000 people between 1967 and 1972 in Vietnam and by 1973, Phoenix generated 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. The My Lai massacre, hardly an isolated incident, was itself a Phoenix operation.

      Noble says “Phoenix-derived reigns of terror, kill lists, and death squads were applied by the U.S. throughout Latin America and beyond. The U.S. Army’s School of Americas (SOA), started in 1946, trained mass murderers and orchestrated coups in Peru, Panama, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. The SOA trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers implicated in widespread slaughter of civilian populations across Latin America.”In 2001, SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), but peace activists know it as School of Assassins located at Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia. This program was exported to other countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Middle East.

      Today, we have a Global Phoenix Program of targeted assassination teams numbering tens of thousands ( also called Special Ops or Black Ops) and Predator and Reaper remote controlled drone attacks, initiated under George W. Bush and greatly expanded under Obama.

      Many innocent people have been, and are being, killed by U.S. assassination teams and drone fired missiles. The grief of their families is as real as the grief of the families of victims in the Aurora killings, though seldom acknowledged by western media.

      U.S. policy today embraces assassinations and drone attacks. Our youth play computer killing games with such names as “Call of Duty.” The U.S. is a nation armed to the teeth. It is the world’s number one arms merchant. We should not be surprised when the chickens come home to roost. Indeed the U.S.A. has become a killing nation.

End the Violence!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties.4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, etc.
5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622.  Emailja@malu-aina.org   http://www.malu-aina.org
Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (July 27, 2012 – 566th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

yo walking eagle, keep on walking right oughta here. the military is not beloved to our queen nor the citizens of the hawaiian kingdom, nor the muslims in the middle east, nor the indians on turtle island. being a military person is not bad, what is evil is killing people to take what is theirs because they didn’t want to give it to whitey—skipito