• Just the fax? •Preaching education, understanding Just the fax? The common sense principle that the simplest explanation is usually correct eludes conspiracy theorists of all stripes, especially when the stripes are colored with self-serving, political motivations during an election
• Just the fax?
•Preaching education, understanding
Just the fax?
The common sense principle that the simplest explanation is usually correct eludes conspiracy theorists of all stripes, especially when the stripes are colored with self-serving, political motivations during an election year. Such conspiratorial logic held sway at the Kaua‘i County Council meeting on Thursday, June 15, where council members accused “someone” of tampering with a government document, and publishing it on the Internet with the intent of misleading the public in an attempt to disparage the County Council.
The document in question was a fax informing Police Chief Lum of finance director Michael Tresler’s decision to cancel his employment contract.
Puffed up with righteous indignation, there were threats of having the county attorney look into violations of the law for tampering with a government record. The hyper-ventilated comic renderings of the council were replete with chair Asing’s computer graphic presentations detailing the supposed fraud being foisted upon a gullible public to intentionally disparage the august council members. This election-time blustering replaced doing the people’s business for an inordinate amount of time as council members spun webs of conspiracy and cast aspersions on unnamed individuals while strongly hinting who they were. They fretted that the forged document was still available on an Internet site, and demanded an apology from the responsible parties.
The alleged document tampering involved removing the content of page 3 and appending the signature of the county’s outside attorney at the bottom of page 2. The supposed intent of the document tampering was to conceal from the public that the county “may” reinstate Lum in a lieutenant’s position.
The simple and most likely explanation, which eluded the county council, was that a misfeed of pages 2 and 3 during a fax transmission masked all the content of page 3 except the signature. This caused the signature to appear on the bottom of page 2.
Anyone can check this for themselves by printing out the three page document, putting page 2 over page 3, and sliding page 3 down until the signature is visible at the bottom of page 2. I did this and it looks like that’s what happened, but I guess this simple experiment is beyond the capacity of a council blinded by self-serving political motivations.
As a man with a beard once said, “Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on ‘giving as good as they get.’” (E. Hubbard, 1851)
Preaching education, understanding
I’m writing in response to the June 17, 2006, letter from Peter Saker concerning his assertion that The Garden Island does not allow for “fair and balanced coverage,” pitted in the context of the “liberal v. conservative agenda” and the lack of the media’s allowance for coverage of more than one point of view.
First, while he frames his argument of the lost “voice of the people,” he veers off into a vitriolic diatribe, rooted in idea logic rhetoric, and ends up accusing editorialists’ arguments of the lack of response to the AIDS epidemic (after 25 years), and linking this to the complaint that “schools and the liberal left media” are propagating homosexuality and promiscuity!? Huh? Wow!
While I am frightened, saddened and stunned by this idiocy, I must set the record straight.
• AIDS is not spread by homosexuality and promiscuity. AIDS is spread through the transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which can be passed through the exchange of body fluids (including blood products), sexual contact and intravenous drug use. The U.S. blood supply was not tested for HIV until 1992, which previously allowed HIV to be transmitted through blood transfusions in the general population (e.g. hemophiliacs, surgical procedures).
• As recently reported, scientists (have) come to conclusions about where HIV came from. The colonial horrors of mid-20th-century Africa allowed the virus to jump from chimpanzees to humans and become established in human populations around 1930. Scientists say they have pinpointed the origin of the AIDS virus. It all started in southern Cameroon in West Central Africa around 1930, according to a study published online by the journal Science.
• Global statistics report that (HIV) has since infected 60 million people around the world. While the United States has more than 1.2 million current reported cases, India, South Africa and other “hot spots” around the globe are also grappling with this epidemic that is killing entire generations, with over 25 million reported cases in Africa alone.
• The rate of new HIV infections has increased in the current year over the prior year. Some of the identified at-risk populations include women, people of color, IV drug users — not just homosexuals.
According the Hawai‘i Department of Health, the proportion of AIDS cases among homosexual men has actually decreased over time; the rates of infection among these other populations are increasing.
• Hawai‘i is considered the Hepatitis capital of the United States. This complication adds to the complexity of public education. The issues surrounding societal stigma of “disease,” whether sexually transmitted or not, greatly adds to the social welfare load of fighting HIV, Hepatitis and other STDs, and which is never mentioned in the aforementioned writer’s diatribe and has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
Unless we all take responsibility for the human condition, our health care system, the education of the public of complex issues such as HIV, the reality of differing viewpoints, religious beliefs, socio-economic realities, geographic and ethnic boundaries and hurdles, we will never grow or learn. The hateful, hypocritical, discriminatory and bigoted language referenced by Saker and purportedly rooted in “the laws of God” are so misconstrued, misunderstood and ignorant; anyone with half-of-a-brain should be able to see through his thinly veiled, foolish and divisive perspective.
Finally, let’s hope that sharing and printing differing viewpoints can serve to educate and promote the human race and general well being of us all, and not serve to turn back scientific facts and statistical data which disprove Saker’s “theories.”
Please come, visit Malama Pono for unbiased, non-discriminatory information, education and free and confidential HIV and Hepatitis C testing, or to understand HIV epidemiology.
Interim Executive Director
Malama Pono n Kauai AIDS Project
Lihu‘e
