TMT squabble
TMT squabble
Mauna Kea was born 1 million years ago on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from the nearest earthly continents.
Mauna Kea peeked up from the ocean waves, into the air 500,000 years later.
For hundreds of thousands of years after that, plants, animals and birds that had the strength and fortitude made the journey to Hawaii, to colonize the new land and make it verdant.
Finally, 1,500 years ago, brave Polynesian voyagers arrived on this land and made it their new home. A thousand years later (a hundred generations for the Hawaiian people, but only a heart beat for Mauna Kea), other humans arrived from the far reaches of Earth — and within another hundred years (less than the blink of an eye), humans from all over the world had made Mauna Kea, and these islands, their home.
Today, these small beings squabble and fight about who “owns” this great mountain and who has “the right to decide its future.”
One million years from today, this mountain will still stand, majestic and serene — and all these arguments and pilikia, from tiny humans on its surface, will be long forgotten.
Joel Aycock
Hawaiian Acres
Story lacked balance
I was really surprised by the unbalanced story you published titled “Roundup dominates council budget talks.”
The reporter only quoted two people who testified and gave Monsanto the last word. How can you print the propaganda their PR spokesman tells you without doing your own research that would show you that they are misleading the public with these statements? It is clear that if Monsanto admits to the new scientific evidence, they would loose billions of dollars.
You are a newspaper and are supposed to report the news so readers can understand the whole picture. I hope you will assign reporters to dig deeper into this story and report on the new scientific studies that detail the dangers of this herbicide and why countries and communities around the world banned Roundup completely.
The readers of both island newspapers deserve to hear and want to understand the new scientific evidence the new studies reveal.
And I hope the testimony from all the people across the island who took time off from work and from their families to come to the council meeting would be a bigger part of the story — our voices matter and should be covered in a story that is impacting all of us.
Danny Miller
Hilo