“In the future, everybody will be Emmanuel Goldstein for 2 minutes.” – Andy Orwell

by Andrew Walden

Its already been forgotten.

Breathlessly ecstatic anti-telescope protesters of Kāko'o Haleakalā  September 18, 2019 released a two week old audio recording of UH Manoa astronomy professor John Learned intoning:

“We know that the Kam Schools are academically unsuccessful...a student that we have here who is working on his Master's and is a physics teacher at Kam Schools, he told me that he had to graduate people in physics that couldn't even read.” 

As of September 19 at 3:30pm, it had been viewed over 11,000 times and shared 631 times.

As expected, everybody rushed to signal their own virtue, thus changing one 24-hour news cycle to favor the protesters:

• Ka Leo’s headline blares: “Mauna Kea Protectors at UH demand university officials take action on reported claims of racist attacks.”
• Free Hawaii asks: “Can University of Hawai’i be trusted with Mauna Kea management when UH professors attack Hawaiians?”
• UH President Lassner “directed that the responsible officials at UH review the materials provided to assess appropriate next steps under applicable UH policies and procedures.”
• Lassner then followed up with another apology letter--in which he apologized for sending out so many lengthy apologies.

Pro-telescope group Imua TMT pointed out:

Do the protesters know no shame? In a recent social media campaign waged by the opposing side, protesters including Kāko'o Haleakalā have falsely slandered Imua TMT by illegally placing our logo next to the picture of disgraced UH Manoa Professor John Learned. This is yet another lie, in a long line of lies and deceit coming from the protesters-which started with false statements such as TMT being nuclear powered, TMT damaging the aquifer, and all Native Hawaiians opposing TMT. All of these assertions have been proven false. And now, in desperation, the protesters are resorting to using our logo without permission on audio recordings of statements made two weeks ago (that they are treating like breaking news.)

Such actions do not help advance our collective conversation about how to manage Maunakea for the benefit of all Hawaii and calls into question the entire motivation behind these protests.

We reiterate our demand that all protester groups remove the image of our logo beside John Learned immediately.

HNN: UH professor behind controversial comments against Kamehameha schools apologizes 

SA: University professor apologizes for making ‘inappropriate’ remarks