Impressed by camp
We have been to the mountain. My daughter and I visited the Thirty Meter Telescope protesters’ campsite on July 17 and 18. Here is what we have witnessed for two days we visited the Maunakea protectors’ campsite.
At first glance, it looked loosely organized. People were walking back and forth aimlessly. Keiki were playing around, kupuna were relaxing in the beach chairs, while a young woman was offering some sweet grapes to people, including the strangers like us.
Soon we noticed that there were not a single trash on the ground as far as our eyes could see. There were the tents for first aid, for the water bottles or for some snacks. Many mobile johns were set up, with a good supply of clean tissues. And if these were not impressive enough, let us tell you what we heard and enjoyed were the beautiful chorus of Hawaiian chanting and prayers.
As we were descending from the mountain, we knew whichever side you might be for, the mountain’s protectors’ one mind, one heart, and one goal seems to be reminding all of us what we have forgotten a long time ago.
Masako Ryan
Hilo
Hubble is enough
I am amazed by the utter stupidity of the financial backers of the proposed TMT for wasting $1.4 billion on a project that is already obsolete before it even starts construction. The Hubble space telescope that has sent back thousands and thousands of color photographs that TMT telescope, if ever complete, will not be able to equal, ever.
Nothing on Earth can ever compare to the Hubble space telescope that has reached 1 trillion years into the vast universe.
Roger Dennis Hawley
Kula, Maui
We’re watching
In the first days of June, 1989 I was watching CNN cable television as they prepared to shut down coverage of a sports event in Beijing, China. As I recall, they had a legal contract to televise in China so Chinese authorities were unprepared for CNN when they began to transfer coverage to the unfolding student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.
It was fascinating. Students and other protesters by the thousands had openly assembled in a peaceful sit-in at one of Communist China’s most visible landmarks.
Chinese officials began to try to shut down CNN’s television coverage, and soon they succeeded.
Then the communist officials brought in tanks and machine guns and killed thousands of young and old peaceful protesters.
The lasting, iconic image from just before the crackdown is of an unknown Chinese civilian man, holding a shopping bag, staring down a huge military tank. He stopped that tank. But not for long. The official death toll is still a state secret.
Now we see a similar pro-democracy protest, this time in Hong Kong.
And again, Beijing Communist authorities are threatening to bring in the tanks.
My heart goes out to those protesters who, like so many of our own ancestors, are putting their lives on the line in their yearning to live in freedom.
Beijing: The world is watching!
Mark Van Doren
Kurtistown