Don’t shirk your responsibility
Is it possible Mayor Harry Kim is applying for the Nobel Peace Prize? This possible extension of the truce is an over-the-top accommodation, and is for naught. This is an adventure in idiocy given Ms. Wong-Wilson’s comment that “she hopes the period can be extended, in order to give TMT officials more time to consider building elsewhere.”
The “elsewhere” embodies the underlying problem with Kim’s negotiations. The protesters talk about TMT moving to another locale, not reaching an agreement covering the cessation of their illegal occupancy of the mountain. It plainly is a matter of their way or the highway with no give allowed. No resolution is possible unless our elected officials, both county and state, execute their sworn obligation to follow the law and enforce the intent of the Supreme Court.
How about this Harry, forget Oslo and enforce the law — don’t shirk your responsibility!
Pete Webber
Kona
What compromise?
Isn’t it rich that Noe Noe Wong-Wilson says that she is in favor of extending the truce of starting construction another two months in order to give TMT officials more time to consider building elsewhere. It has always been obvious from the beginning of the access road blockade that the “protectors” would never accept the building of the TMT. So much for “compromise” on the part of the “protectors.”
Jay Moore
Waikoloa
The intended consequence of dictatorial rule
For those who missed Janice Palma-Glennie’s succinct and timely treatise on justice in America as it is being violated today (WHT Feb. 13), don’t let it slip past you.
Hopefully, others will join the narrative and to that end, I would like to submit chapter two: As the rule of law is being ignored by those vested with its creation (U.S. Congress), frustration within the ranks of those who enforce it is leading to harsher and more vengeful application of justice in an effort to maintain relevancy.
You will remember that some months back, a young man on his way to work in Kona, perhaps running late, made the fatal choice to disregard the rules of the road, and in doing so killed a fellow motorist. Consequently, the sentence for the unintended result of a traffic violation/foolish act, though tragically resulting in this death, is being adjudicated according to the severity of the result rather than the intent of the act.
At the opposite end of the scale, the Senate of these United States has declared that while their leadership, in collusion with the White House, has not completely destroyed the rule of law, they are not guilty of anything wrong because their intent has not been fully realized.
Furthermore, they are now on course to pardon the most heinous of crimes against our democracy and we, in our frustration and fear, respond to their defiance of the law by imposing what looks more like revenge than justice upon a young man whose only crime was to have made a bad choice.
It is critical that while we recognize the loss to our community, and to the family of a dedicated member of society, the cruel irony is that the man who died here is further victimized by this frustration over the disregard for a system of justice now crumbling. He is now being associated with a sentencing he would not have wished upon anyone.
This is precisely the intended consequence of dictatorial rule.
Kelly Greenwell
Kailua-Kona