February 20, 2003

Dear Sir,

I pay Cablevision per month yet some stations have no real value. (channels 3, 9, 11, 15, 24, 25, 35 & 36). Is there a purpose to have channels that repeat or don't show much of anything?

How about the fact that channel 15 is somewhat like watching one of the movie channels? (Profanity lives on this station as well).

When are the people who work at Cablevision going to realise they have made errors in the past and still making more now? ESPN is sometimes in Spanish. TCN never shows titles of shows in English on channel 2 and they went overboard with the whole cable box thing (it's even more shocking to know that they once stole cable and now charging the community for viewing which they stole to begin with). Charges should be dropped!

March 3, 2003

Dear Sir,

OK Renee, give us a break! Please don't insult Bermudian intelligence! The use of 'stock photographs' usually means 'stock photographs of your own location'.

The use of other countries photos to advertise Bermuda is nothing short of 'photographic plagiarism'.

It is DISHONEST to pass off another countries photos as ours.

It is CHEATING and DECEIVING the consumer that you are trying to attract to our shores.

It is UNFAIR to the countries who's photos you are using.

It is FRAUDULENT.

And it is an INSULT to Bermuda!

Don't you think that we have beauty of our own?

Why should we have to lie about being somewhere else?

There are so many beautiful spots in Bermuda and so many talented photographers who are capable of creating different "images". We do not have to resort to using 'stock' photographs of some other destination and thereby create a false image. Besides, put the shoe on the other foot what would your attitude be if you saw some other country's ads using photos of Bermuda? I don't think you would take it so lightly.

You certainly have given Bermuda a lot of media attention - but I don't think it is the kind of attention we want.

CNN reported "Bermuda admits to using photographs of other countries for its advertising".

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Mar 1/03) reported vice president of global corporate communications and partners with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau as saying: "I've been at the bureau for 13 years, and it has always been a policy of this organisation that our images are Hawaii. I think someone would be in pretty hot water, whether it would be someone in our bureau or any of our agencies, who would even venture to do something like that. It's appalling to me."

They also reported the chairman and chief executive officer of Starr Seigle Communications Inc. as saying "if they use our picture, please give us credit at the bottom of the page".

So there we have it. I guess Bermuda's dollars spent on advertising has given adverse publicity to us and free advertisement for Hawaii, and perhaps Florida and the Seychelles as well.

Come on Renee break the "political rule" and be big enough to apologise and admit you were wrong, or at least used poor judgment. People will respect you at least for that.

It is a sad day for Bermuda when her own Minister of Tourism is not proud enough of her country to display her for the beauty she is.

March 5, 2003

Dear Sir,

Amid all this discussion about the beautiful lady advertising Hawaii and Bermuda (was it taken in a studio, perhaps?) I was fascinated last night to see on "The Price is Right" television programme a picture of a Bermuda cottage used to symbolise a holiday in Costa Rica.

The cottage had been used more often to illustrate holidays anywhere in the tropics or semi-tropics - from Tahiti to Martinique and most points in between. The "Price is Right" cottage is painted yellow, and (apart from the colour) is a reverse - a mirror image - of Winslow Homer's painting of a Bermuda cottage which is owned (I believe) by the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Some years ago I sent a copy of the painting to the show with a humourous letter and eventually received a rather distant acknowledgement of its receipt. It seemed to me that the use of the little Bermuda cottage fell off after that.

I don't know what moral one can draw from this, except that seeing is not always believing.

February 19, 2003

Dear Sir,

The peace march across the world recently reminds me of Neville Chamberlain coming back to England with a piece of paper with Hitler's signature, proclaiming peace in our time.

Hitler then marched on the Sudetenland. The world did nothing, the United States was neutral. Hitler made the mistake of attacking England and Russia at the same time, which was his downfall.

Saddam Hussein admires Hitler and tried to do the same as Hitler by taking over Kuwait. Since George Bush senior knew history and did not want to repeat the Second World War, he stopped him and freed Kuwait. But he did not follow through and went on to make the same mistake as the Allies at the end of the First World War by not pressing on to unconditional surrender; they simply had an armistice.

At the end of the First World War, the armistice allowed the Germans to mach home, refusing to accept they not lost the war. Twenty years later, the Second World War occurred, where the Nazis killed an estimated nine million, mostly Jews.

A few years before Kuwait, the Germans supplied Saddam with a super gun, capable of reaching Israel, but Israel destroyed it. The Germans also supplied him with poison gas technology. The French are dealing billion of dollars with Saddam every year; to me Chirac is another Petain.

"Liberte, egalite, fraternise" but not for the people of Iraq. As Bush has said, if the UN fails in removing the threat of Saddam, it is finished on the world stage, just like the League of Nations.

If we don't learn the lessons of history, we are condemned to repeat them. The people marching for peace don't know history - I asked some of them and they didn't know who Chamberlain was. I was nine when the Second World War began and remember it vividly.

Although I don't want to see world conflict again, I believe the current Bush needs to carry thought and eliminate Saddam and free Iraq. God bless President Bush and America.

February 24, 2003

Dear Sir,

I'd like to congratulate Bermuda's Drug Interdiction Squad for eradicating the Island of marijuana for the past month.

Way to go lads... now our choices are limited to heroin and crack cocaine, which are still available on any street corner. And, of course, alcohol, the drug that has caused more heartache and violence than any other in history. This county is insane, removing the safest recreational drug of all from our streets.

In my opinion, this is purely a political move made by brain-dead politicians and the Police and Customs as it is the only drug they can easily detect.

Buying into war mongering America's so called "war on drugs" is crazy. What war ever solved anything? Most sane countries around the world are decriminalising cannabis today or at least looking the other way.

They know the truth: marijuana is essentially harmless, non-addictive, and is consumed by peaceful people. Not one recorded death can be attributed to smoking cannabis. Don't believe the misleading commercials on American TV ... that pot is a "gateway drug". Legal cigarettes and alcohol are the true gateway drugs and cause more damage to society than all others combined. Cannabis was only criminalised in Bermuda during the early 1960s before then it was not perceived as a problem.

Why now? Because of blatant ignorance, racism, dumb politics and pressure from the United States. Marijuana was made illegal in the States during the late 1930s as a result of sensationalistic articles by the racist Hearst newspaper chain. They portrayed "Negroes" and Mexicans as frenzied beasts who, under the influence of marijuana, would play anti-white "voodoo-satanic" music (jazz) and heap disrespect and "viciousness" upon the predominately white readership.

Other such offences resulting from this drug-induced "crime wave" included: stepping on white men's shadows, looking white people directly in the eye for three seconds or more, looking at a white woman twice, laughing at a white person, etc.

It was all helped along by the again racist, Southern Congressman, Herman Oliphant, and the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the DEA.), another racist, Harry J. Anslinger, who were trying to score political points at the cost of Afro Americans' and Mexicans' freedom.

You can read all about the truth in the excellent book, 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' by Jack Herer, a newly updated version of which is available from Amazon.com.

However, what really scares me in Bermuda right now is the number of harmless pot smokers, who cannot get their drug of choice, and who will try the truly deadly drug, heroin, and become addicted (it has happened before during the pot drought in the early 1980s).

Not to mention all the violence that's going on now as a result of alcohol and crack abuse. That's the real evil folks! Think people, think!... it is time to decriminalise marijuana now, and stop all the ignorant lies surrounding the safest recreational drug in the world.