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Hawaii Approves Telescope On Volcano Sacred To Indigenous People (reuters.com)
A new $1.4 billion telescope will be built atop a Hawaiian volcano indigenous people consider sacred. The team of scientists fighting for the telescope won approval from Hawaiian officials on Thursday after selecting the site and applying to build there in 2009. Reuters reports: The Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 5-2 to allow construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island, state officials said in a statement. Astronomers consider the summit one of the world's best places to view the cosmos, while Native Hawaiians say the project would disturb holy ground crucial to their connection with ancestors and the heavens. A consortium of scientists initially received construction permits from state officials in 2011. In 2015, the Hawaii Supreme Court voided that decision, saying officials did not follow the proper procedures for a "contested case hearing." That forced the state board to re-evaluate the proposal with more input from opponents. The project calls for building one of the world's largest telescopes atop the dormant volcano.
But at large cost as is often the case.
We will see the usual troublemakers rush back in to try and stir up more protests now.
The same ones who have been missing throughout this actual process, because creating public strife and being the center of attention is what the seek, rather than any actual improvement to peoples lives.
They sent some shaman (or whatever the druggy is called in their religion) to converse with the ancients and they said a gift of a few million bucks could appease them...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ancient corpses are only used in building the support arms for the secondary mirror; the primary mirror is entirely corpse free.
All we want to do is eat your brains.
I always find it interesting that when the (few) native Hawaiians and their opportunistic supporters go up the mountain, they always seem to do it using the roads that the telescope facilities built and manage/maintain. I guess that part of the desecration is just a nice time saver.
Hawaiian natives don't give a shit either. This "You can't build here because it's sacred" is just their long-standing way of demanding a bribe. You would think a "consortium of scientists" would be smart enough to figure out this is how things work in Hawaii.
Did somebody make a Hoffa they can't refuse?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Their so-called 'native religion' is nothing but a pathetic hoax
I wholeheartedly agree! A hoax like all religions!
The tricky part is that there really isn't a good way to differentiate. A Pastafarian is every bit as legitimate as a traditional Christian or a fundamentalist one, or Muslim or Hindu, or Jain and so on Nowhere is it written that a god cannot have a sense of humor.
In the Name of the Pasta, and of the Sauce, and of the Holy Meatballs, R'Amen.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Which way does liberal outrage swing these days?
I think the latest algorithm works like this:
Yeah yeah, take whatever group you don't like, and strawman the living fuck out of them. It kind of leaves out my family, who were serious liberals, yet were very religious.
And then there was me, the most conservative one of the bunch, who doesn't have any part of that bullshit fairy tale or any fairy tale for that matter.
Regardless, despite what people have been trained to think, there are right wing atheists, and left wing deeply religious. If a religion has a litmus test of politics, it is a political group more than a religion.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The author of this piece has an agenda, lying by omission. There are several large telescopes on Mauna Kea. The "sacred ground" is already highly developed. The new telescope will be built on the site of one of the existing telescopes, which will be remove.
The original plan was to build on a new site. The compromise is to build on an existing site.
The summit of Mauna Kea isn't sacred like a burial ground. The native Hawaiians never went there. It's sacred like Mount Olympus was sacred to the ancient Greeks (they never went there either).
Agreed, but the issue is which religions are PC to criticize, and which are protected from any and all criticism. Right now it's open season on Christianity, but every other religion gets a pass. If it were Christianity objecting to this telescope on "sacred ground" people would be waiting in line for hours to throw their two cents of derision Christianity's way. But if this is "sacred ground" to "indigenous people" (they are not) suddenly we have to respect and revere these ancient traditions and protest against this scientific endeavor. If we were consistent we'd call BS on all religious mumbo jumbo instead of reserving whipping boy status only for Christianity.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.