from the you-can't-lie-in-front-of-the-bulldozer-indefinitely dept.
Hawaii Protesters Block Access Road To Stop Construction Of Massive Telescope
About 300 demonstrators are trying to halt construction on the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope, developers of which are supposed to break ground on Hawaii's Big Island this week. Before the sun came up on the summit of Mauna Kea, the island's tallest mountain, a group of about half a dozen protesters chained themselves to a grate in the road at the base of the dormant volcano in an attempt to block workers from accessing the only paved road onto the what they say is a sacred site.
Imai Winchester, a teacher from Oahu who was among the protesters chained to the road, said he arrived at about 3 a.m. local time. "A handful of us committed ourselves to this action to bring light to the situation here," Winchester told KHON. The goal of the civil disobedience, he said, is to inform people about the "desecration of our lands, the failure of the state and its agencies to properly manage something that is important." He added that he expected to be arrested for the nonviolent protest but that it is the group's "burden as well as our privilege to show our children and the rest of the world how much we love our land."
Daniel Meisenzahl, a spokesman for the University of Hawaii, a member of the international partnership of scientists behind the telescope, said it is unclear if the protest has delayed construction convoys.
Previously: Divisive Giant Telescope Cleared for Construction on Hawaiian Peak
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Divisive giant telescope cleared for construction on Hawaiian peak
Last week, the state of Hawaii gave astronomers a green light to begin to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which would rise on the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea as one of the largest telescopes in the world. Project leaders say they are set to begin construction after a 4-year delay caused by sit-down protests and court challenges from Native Hawaiians opposed to structures on a site they consider sacred. But some astronomers worry the threat of disruptions and even violence will persist.
"These are passionate people," says Richard Ellis, an astronomer at University College London who helped develop the TMT concept. "They know that once it gets going their case is weaker." Others say the project should do more to engage with the protesters. "We need to talk with people who disagree with us," says Thayne Currie, an astrophysicist the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, who works on Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.
Although legal barriers are now removed, opponents say they can still try to block access to the road that leads up to the 4200-meter-high summit. "What other tools do we have, apart from having people arrested in large numbers?" asks Kealoha Pisciotta, founder of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, one of the main opposition organizations. In 2015, 1000 protesters gathered on the mountain, but "there are way, way more people involved now," she says. The astronomers "may have won in the courts, but they haven't won the moral high ground."
Previously: Protests Temporarily Halt Thirty-Meter Telescope's Construction in Hawaii
Hawaiian Court Revokes Permit for Construction of Thirty-Meter-Telescope
Thirty Meter Telescope Considering Move as Hawaii Officials Open Hearing
Canary Islands Chosen as Backup Site for the Thirty-Meter Telescope
With access to summit blocked, telescope operators abandon Mauna Kea summit
The directors of existing telescopes at the summit of Mauna Kea evacuated their employees Tuesday as a growing protest against the construction of TMT blocked access to the mountain.
Jessica Dempsey, the deputy director for the East Asian Observatory, said the organizations that run the observatories made a "joint decision" to withdraw all employees as a safety precaution. [...] The telescopes, Dempsey said, have millions of dollars of instrumentation that need constant maintenance. "This is a risk for us to have to step away at this point," she said. "This is not a decision we came to lightly, but want to emphasize the importance of safety for our staffs and the facilities."
Protesters at Mauna Kea welcomed the news Tuesday, with an eruption of cheers and hugs.
'Stolen lands': dozens arrested as Hawaiians protest $1.4bn telescope
Dozens of people have been arrested on Hawaii's Big Island this week after hundreds of protesters stood, lay and even chained themselves to structures in an effort to stop the construction of a billion-dollar space observatory at the summit of Hawaii's tallest mountain.
[...] [Organizer Kahoʻokahi] Kanuha and fellow protesters have vowed to continue fighting the telescope until construction is halted, and plan to continue peaceful protests. On Wednesday an estimated 1,000 demonstrators turned up at the site, with police issuing citations to 33 people.
Previously: Divisive Giant Telescope Cleared for Construction on Hawaiian Peak
Protesters Block Road in Attempt to Halt Thirty Meter Telescope Construction
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @12:21PM (1 child)
If this road block is sustained since the first time I read about it, they've got more staying power than the 99% protesters.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @01:04PM
No?
Wait. What type of Winchester [fandom.com] is that exactly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @12:22PM (1 child)
I've seen that movie [imdb.com]. It was okay, but then, I was in the mood for a chic flick at the time.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:24PM
You are thinking of the wrong movie. See this one [imdb.com] instead.
A bunch of primitive savages are trying to block a corporation that wants to strip mine their planet for valuable unobtainium in exchange for providing education and medicine.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @12:30PM (20 children)
Once you block a road, you are now a rioter, have broken the law, and deserve to be run over.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @01:18PM (11 children)
People are crazy. Some are so certain of their SJWness they will try to destroy others property and commit terroristic acts to prove their point like the idiot who tried to burn down an ICE detention center in Washington and received instant justice. Or the rioters beating up people and destroying property in Portland. These numbskulls are only blocking the way. Unfortunately for them bulldozers won't be affected if they are not visible except needing to be hosed off later. Evergreen State College SJW discovered this too late when blocking bulldozers in Israel back in 2003.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:34PM
yeah.... by the time they actually take action they no longer deserve the pejorative SJW, idiot...
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:59PM (9 children)
Hey, that's some nice projection you got there!
Just a reminder that Rightwing terrorists killed more people than those radical Muslims you're so terrified of. [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by XivLacuna on Tuesday July 16 2019, @04:09PM (5 children)
Yeah let's not include 09/11/2001 in those muslim numbers, especially since some people believe the US or the Jews actually did it.
The left is mostly incompetent when it comes to killing because they've been poisoned their whole lives by BPA and soy in everything. They lack the logical intelligence and just rely on emotions when committing their massacres. The most competent one was that guy who shot up the country music concert in Las Vegas.
Meanwhile the small minority of white nationalists who do violent attacks are typically more competent in their planning and execution of said plans, so they end up with more impressive kill/death ratios.
Anti-fa, spoiled rich kids pretending to be freedom fighters whose views align completely with big business, are more likely to just disfigure people for life and give them brain damage. They show up usually without city permits and attack others. Now they've upped their game with cement tainted milkshakes which burns skin and can permanently blind a person if it gets into the eyes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:31PM (4 children)
Las Vegas Gunman Was a Trump Supporter, Happy With President Because Stock Market Was Doing Well [newsweek.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:08PM (2 children)
Bullshit non-argument. There is no proof or indication he was aligned with any "right wing" groups or beliefs. There has never been any clear motive discovered for his actions.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:11PM (1 child)
I was rebutting the unsubstantiated claim that the Las Vegas gunman was a liberal.
How many liberals do you know that own 47 guns and like Trump?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:15PM
Since I don't know anybody at all with 47 guns, I'd say zero. The second part of the question becomes moot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:10PM
It turns out that you don't have to be a white nationalist or an Islamic radical to be a terrorist. The most deadly terrorist since 9/11 didn't subscribe to any particular ideology at all. He was just generally angry and wanted to kill people - much like the violent incels and most of the foot soldier level members of Al-Qaida.
Ideology is for terrorist leaders. The Vegas shooter was unusual in that he planned like a skilled terrorist leader, but he was motivated like a suicide bomber.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:57PM
According to your citation, 50 people were killed in 2018 which were attributed to right wing extremists. Other than the Tree of Life murders, the others were tenuously attributable with the right wing. Let's look at the big picture, why don't we? In Chicago alone, six were murdered and 63 injured in shootings over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. There have been 271 murdered since the beginning of this year and 765 for all of 2018. That's over 15 times the total right wing extremist deaths for the entire US in 2018 in just one city. Chicago is also not a right wing sanctuary. Baltimore had 177 murders so far this year and 318 in all of 2018. Detroit scored 304 murders in 2018. That right wing terrorism bs the left loves to repeat is no more than a rounding error on blue state homicides.
If 50 deaths per year is the standard you want to use, my calculations say that we have another 42 years of zero muslim terrorist murders just to break even with all those murdered on 9-11.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @11:09PM
https://www.dailywire.com/news/16980/ramadan-terror-death-count-joseph-curl [dailywire.com]
Counted how exactly?
https://www.sikhnet.com/news/islamic-india-biggest-holocaust-world-history [sikhnet.com]
Do some reading. Learn from history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @11:39PM
What do you know? Some Jew whining about "right wing extremism" and "white supremacists" using the ADL as a source.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:23PM (6 children)
Since we're being pedantic, the word "riot" requires violence (in the sense that you are trying to apply it -- a sufficiently hilarious peaceful demonstration could be called a riot in another sense). It doesn't seem relevant to this story, since the protesters weren't rioters in this case, but it should also be noted that "protester" and "rioter" aren't mutually exclusive; if they were, the term "peaceful protester" would be redundant. Generally we call this sort of non-violent law-breaking "civil disobedience," a term used in TFS.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King both deserved to be murdered, according to our neighborhood ACs.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:35PM
Our neighborhood ACs deserve to be ignored, according to anyone seeking reasoned discourse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:08PM (3 children)
For a certain subset of we... not including those who might be characterized as "the other side."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:56PM (2 children)
I honestly haven't read enough about this story to have a side. I personally like the idea of huge telescopes, but don't wish to force them on others. If the protesters are holding a view that is a minority in their locality I'm on the other side, but if the local populace is mostly opposed to the telescope so am I. Seems like 0.002% of island's population showed up for this demonstration (rounding up), but that isn't a great measure of support, and having been involved in demonstrations that reporters lied about the size of I don't necessarily believe media estimates of protester numbers. Regardless of if I'm on their side or not, I'm willing to call their actions civil disobedience. I would extend the same language to any groups I disagreed with, given that their actions fit the definition.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @04:39PM (1 child)
That's a tough one to define in their locality. I had the same issue in West Coast Florida in the 1970s... in my high school Social Studies class they asked everyone who was born in Florida to raise their hands - me and one other kid, out of a class of 30. My parents were also born in Florida - their parents came down from Tennessee after WWII.
So, do you define minority as less than 50% of the current resident population? Do those residents have to own property? Do they have to actually be present on that property for more than 4 months of the year? More than 8 months? How many years do they have to have been resident before they count as part of the locality? 1, 5, a generation, two generations?
Hilo area is experiencing huge immigration growth, and has been for 20+ years. The people opposing the big telescope have (mostly) been residents of Hawaii for multiple generations. If you draw that majority line at 50% of "current residents" - the natives lose easily. If you go back far enough, obviously they win. At what point do the opinions of newcomers outweigh the opinions of the people who made the place the newcomers liked enough to move to?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:19PM
In its general form that's a super tough question I like to dance around without addressing directly, TBH. I get why letting the immigrant population, the relatives of violent invaders, control local policy seems problematic. I also see how not allowing current residents an equal say seems problematic. Does the context of the immigration matter? Should we treat the descendants of conquerors different than the descendants of asylum-seekers? What if an immigrant isn't the descendant of a conqueror, but falls into the same demographic pigeonholes that the descendants of conquerors do? Do we really want to discriminate based on skin color? Aren't we incentivising future genocide and invasion if we don't discriminate based on skin color in this context, given that $CURRENT_YEAR isn't any better of a starting date than any other? This will be a simpler topic when humanity has more thorough woven our culture, history, and genetics into one entangled ball of string. I don't think ethno-nationalism is a sustainable or clever strategy of governance, even if I do have empathy for those people who find themselves in shitty positions because their ancestors faced invading forces, but if we're being totally real I also wonder how much being a white guy living in America has to do with that -- I've gone through some very "I hate modern society" sort of phases, and I can imagine that those might have had a tinge of ethno-nationalist flavor to them if I found myself in the shoes of the historically oppressed rather than the shoes of the historic oppressor.
Now that the big question has been kinda answered but mostly danced around, I have a small, specific question.
Emphasis added, obviously. Are you sure of this claim? While I might not consider it a be-all-end-all deciding factor, I would be interested in knowing if the indigenous people poll strongly against it. I don't know how integrated Hawaii's culture is, and it wouldn't surprise me either way.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:35PM
Good. Please cut your own throat the next time you break the law. I predict you will survive about 12 hours, maybe less.
(Score: 3, Touché) by TrentDavey on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:28PM (2 children)
How do the protesters arrange to get time off from theirs jobs? They must save up their holidays for these things or are independently wealthy. /sarcasm
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @08:09PM
you are such a wholesome asshat!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:46AM
There is something to be said for the notion that protests tend to attract a certain mindset with a certain lifestyle, because the rest of us are at work fulfilling our responsibilities.
(Score: 1) by doke on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:58PM (2 children)
How useful will this telescope be? Some people are worried about the growing constellations of satelites, ie Starlink, adversely affecting ground based astronomy. Could they reduce the image quality to the point of making the telescope not cost effective?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/05/elon-musk-starlink-internet-satellites-trouble-for-astronomy-light-pollution/ [nationalgeographic.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:10PM
The potential harm is exaggerated. Plus the field of view is not wide.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:56AM
The future is the future. Now is now and science can be done now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:14PM
https://gohawaiitours.com/go-hawaii/why-casinos-in-hawaii-prohibited/ [gohawaiitours.com]