August 15, 2013 comments on “Geothermal Public Health Assessment” Draft V-3 7/23/13

(Background:  Mayor Billie Kenoi contracted Peter Adler, PhD at a cost of $50,000 to form a volunteer study group to do a “Geothermal Public health Assessment.”  That Assessment draft can be viewed here http://www.accord3.com/pg68.cfm

My testimony at the Pahoa Community Center 3:30PM  Public Hearing are below.

by Jim Albertini for Malu ‘Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Ola’a (Kurtistown) Hawai’i 96760 Phone 808-966-7622 Email ja@malu-aina.org www.malu-aina.org

1. I commend the members of the study group for all their hard volunteer     work and good faith efforts in preparing
the assessment. I support the findings and recommendations in the assessment but with some additions.

I also support the points raised about the assessment by members of Puna Pono Alliance in an email sent out by the group yesterday

2. A main point I want to speak to is that despite good faith efforts, we sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees. More than 20 years ago in the struggle to save the Wao Kele O Puna rainforest from destruction by 500 MW of geothermal planned for that area, a very important video was put together by the Pele Defense Fund entitled “Pele’s Appeal.” I know that many of you in the study group have seen this video. Besides the importance of saving the forest, the video raises profound questions. What are the psychological health impacts to Native Hawaiian practitioners of geothermal drilling into the Hawaiian deity – Pele? Everyone in this room knows that Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire, the goddess of the Volcano. How does geothermal drilling into Pele affect the health of an entire race of people when their spiritual beliefs are not respected, but in fact, desecrated by geothermal drilling into Pele. In the Geothermal Public Health Assessment p. 33 Section 4 General Findings. It states the sole focus of the assessment is “what health stressors have been created by geothermal?” Well, the psychological health effects of geothermal drilling on native Hawaiians religious belief in Pele as a deity was grossly overlooked.
3. I note that no Native Hawaiians, especially Pele Practitioners, were on the Study group. Dr. Maile Tuali’i, PhD from Honolulu was suppose to be a member on the study group but had to withdraw leaving no one to represent a native Hawaiian cultural and religious perspective. Surely, there were others that could have been invited: Palikapu Dedman of the Pele Defense Fund, Dr. Emmett Aluli, UH Dept. of Hawaiian Studies, many of Puna’s Hawaiian Cultural practitioners, etc.
4. My main recommendation is this: Include as a separate recommended action on page 8 the need for a comprehensive study of the psychological health effect of geothermal drilling on Native Hawaiian religious belief in Pele as a deity. Put this at the top of the list of your 7 or 8 other recommendations. By putting this at the top of the list of recommendations, you would be showing respect for Hawaii’s host people and culture. You would be saying clearly that respect for Native Hawaiian religious beliefs is a top priority and the responsibility of all of us who now call Hawaii home. Also list the video “Pele’s Appeal” in the Bibliography resource list.
5. I would further recommend that the study group calls for a complete moratorium on any new geothermal development until all the recommendations called for in this assessment are completed. It’s common sense. Before you cause impacts, you first need to study and understand the possible impacts of the proposed actions. Like the EIS process. You study first to eliminate or minimize the impacts. Otherwise the cart’s before the horse. The geothermal cart has been before the horse for over 30 years. Put a stop to that. Call for a halt to any new geothermal before your recommendations are completed.

   Mahalo.

Jim Albertini

The Moral Imperative of Activism!

Today’s crises – endless war, environmental catastrophe, desperate poverty and more – can seem so daunting that they paralyze action rather than inspire activism. But the imperative to do something in the face of injustice defines one’s moral place in the universe, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

By Ray McGovern

     That America is in deep moral and legal trouble was pretty much obvious to everyone before Edward Snowden released official documents showing the extent to which the U.S. government has been playing fast and loose with the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Snowden’s revelations – as explosive as they are – were, in one sense, merely the latest challenge to those of us who took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic….

After all the many troubling disclosures — from torture to ”extraordinary renditions” to aggressive war under false pretenses to warrantless wiretaps to lethal drone strikes to whistleblowers prosecutions to the expanded “surveillance state” – it might be time to take a moment … a “thinking break…”

This is our summer of discontent. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether that discontent will move us to action. Never in my lifetime have there been such serious challenges to whether the Republic established by the Founders will survive. Immediately after the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin told a questioner that the new structure created “a Republic, if you can keep it.” He was right, of course; it is up to us.

So let’s face it. The Obama White House and its co-conspirators in Congress and the Judiciary have thrown the gauntlet down at our feet. It turned out that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. .. And as one of my favorite activists/prophets continued to insist, “Do not say there are not enough of us. There ARE enough of us!”

Besides threats to basic constitutional rights and gross violations of international law, there are other pressing issues for Americans, especially the obscene, growing chasm between the very rich and the jobless (and often homeless) poor. .. It seems we are guided far more by profits than by prophets. And without prophetic vision, the people perish…

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned: “A time comes when silence is betrayal … We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak…. There is such a thing as being too late…. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity…. Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”

(See the complete article here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35823.htm )

Speak Up & Act For Justice & Peace Now!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc. 5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world. Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760. Phone (808) 966-7622. Email ja@malu-aina.org http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet

(August 16, 2013– 621st week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

Bob
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http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-call-to-ask-questions-4721259.php