[ExI] Update on the Hawaiian observatory shutdown

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting John Clark:

> *> I say give them the mountain and lease it back from them.*
>
> That will never work. Now that the thugs have had a taste of power and
> demonstrated they have the ability to shut down the entire observatory
> anytime they want despite what the law says they will never agree to allow
> the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. The astronomers will be
> lucky if they just allow the observatory to remain open, the mob has
> granted them permission to do so for the time being but they could withdraw
> it at any time.

If they able to shut down the mountain whenever they want, they  
effectively own it any ways. At least my solution gives them a  
financial incentive to keep the observatory open.

>
>
>>>> Quoting Adrian Tymes: "Better to give them some of the islands no one
>> yet lives on -  perhaps Nihoa and Necker, where there is proof of ancestral
>> claims and self-policing may be within their means."
>>
>
>> *> **The reason nobody lives on those island is that they are unlivable. *
>
> Those islands are one hell of a lot more livable than Mauna Kea, it's hard
> to breath at 13,803 feet and it's cold and dry as a bone, nothing and no
> one has EVER lived there and until astronomers came along nobody even
> wanted to live there, except of course for the invisible man.

Bringing the right invisible man to indigenous populations was one of  
the favorite excuses for colonizing them in the first place.

>> *they had the strategic acumen to seize the high-ground, literally and
>> figuratively,*
>
> That is literally true but not figuratively. Tyrants and barbarians have
> been using the military tactic of seizing the high ground from the
> beginning of history, but that does not necessarily mean they occupy the
> moral high ground.

>
>> But, you can't know what they would settle for until you sit down
>> and start bargaining with them.
>>
>
> Do you think that hasn't been tried??

If the astronomers were the only ones to try bargaining with them then  
it was bound to fail. The astronomers do not have the authority to  
grant the natives tribal lands. It will take state and federal  
governments to get involved.

>
>>
>> *Blocking access to an important mountain on ancestral lands is political
>> strategy.*
>
> I agree completely and the strategy was enormously successful, the Thirty
> Meter Telescope is dead regardless of what the law may say. But I don't
> think political theater is the highest form of human endeavor. So Stuart
> perhaps you can answer a question I asked in my last post. How could
> anybody who can see the beauty in Science and the magnificence of the
> universe have the slightest sympathy for these sphincters?


Unfortunately whereas native Hawaiians comprise a minority,  
astronomers comprise an even smaller minority. In a democracy, that  
means they get screwed. I too want the 30-meter telescope to be built.  
I just think this doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Surely a sky-god  
and a telescope can coexist in some win-win fashion on that  
mountain-top.

Stuart LaForge