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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.
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.
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.
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).