Letters To The Editor
November 15, 2006 - MidWeek
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Del.icio.usRammed rail
Rick Hamada’s column about finding an alternative to rail was right on the money. There’s no argument that we must do something to alleviate traffic, but I get the feeling that rail is being rammed down our throats without truly exploring alternatives - such as the one in Tampa that Mr. Hamada pointed out.
Jimmy Matsuo
Pearl City
People’s choice
There are provisions within the City Charter to put important questions before the public, and that is exactly what should be done with the question of building or not building the proposed rail transit system.
Presently, only the mayor and the City Council’s nine members have had their say on this, and not all of them are in agreement. Yet they are racing ahead with both the choice of a system and its route without the consent of the people, and without a full disclosure as to the exact costs of the rights of way for land along its route, or the cost of land at the proposed terminals, or even what these terminals may include such as parking, security, city services, rental spaces, or any of the other incidental construction and operating costs associated with this project. When questioned on these items, their stock answer is that they are hoping for private-sector involvement, or federal government funds, or other vague responses with no real dollar figures attached.
That is a recipe for disaster. If a referendum were held to ask the question of Oahu voters, the City would get a clear and definitive answer - either an agreement to proceed and build the rail system or a resounding no.
To do otherwise should result in the recall of the mayor and those councilmembers who proceed without the consent of the people.
Dave Reed
Honolulu
Evil, not goofy
Alfonso L. Largo wrote a letter to the editor in support of North Korea, saying that Kim Jong Il is not goofy and is just defending his country. Briefly, for the benefit of Mr. Largo, who seems not to understand what he’s talking about, North Korea has been a Stalinist form of totalitarian communism on its second generation of a personality cult with its present “god-like” idol being Kim Jong Il. The people of North Korea have no freedom. They are not allowed to leave their country. The first totalitarian leader, Kim Il Sung, invaded South Korea, and it took a U.N. military action with U.S. and other forces to push them back north and establish the DMV. The fighting was stopped by a cease fire, not an end to the war.
Perhaps brutal and sadistic are more correct traits to describe the two generations of tyrants. It is more than goofy if a despot starved to death more than 2 million of his subjects. Then when the world gave him food aid, it was distributed to his massive military and not to the people. Is it goofy that instead of growing taller over time due to better nutrition, his people are growing shorter due to poor nutrition? You are murdered if caught with a radio that can tune in overseas broadcasts. They must live with a brainwashing programming of propaganda and know nothing about the rest of the world other than the hatred in which they have been programmed by their evil regime. Kim Jong Il is more than goofy, sadistic and brutal. He is evil, as was his father.
Is it goofy for Kim Jong Il to run gulags where hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are brutally tortured and murdered? No Red Cross is allowed to see them. Is it goofy that when President Clinton made the ill-advised 1994 agreement with North Korea that offered incentives, including two “civilian” nuclear reactors on the promise that North Korea would stop making plutonium and any nuclear weapons, that the North Koreans lied and secretly maintained uranium enrichment facilities that were used to make uranium nuclear bombs?
Was it just goofy that North Korea made the Taipo Dong III long range missile that was launched on July 4 and fortunately failed? They later revealed that it was targeted to impact in the ocean near Hawaii. They gave no warning. That missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and the North Koreans have the ability to launch Pearl Harbor II, but with vastly more destruction and death. Or maybe North Korea will give the nukes to terrorists and let them do the deadly job. I will end this by asking Mr. Largo to take a trip to North Korea, including its gulags, to see if it’s as great a place as he proclaims, or if it is the most horrible place he has ever seen. I’d like to know his impression of North Korea - unless they condemn him to death as an “American spy.”
Josh Goldstein
Honolulu
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