Mauna Kea is under threat by planned construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. Though Hawaiians and non-Hawaiian allies successfully disrupted the TMT groundbreaking ceremony, the fight isn’t over yet. The award-winning Hawaiian filmmakers Anne Keala Kelly and Mary Alice Kaʻiulani Milham are teaming up to create a documentary in protection of Mauna Kea. They are holding a fundraiser to allow production and mass distribution of a film to galvanize opposition to the destructive and desecrating TMT project. Time is short to stop this industrial expansion, and your contribution is crucial - whether a direct monetary donation or helping by spreading the word. ...

Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV), operator of the geothermal plant in lower Puna on Hawai’i island, plans to start drilling a new well as early as January 2015. The existing five wells have mysteriously dropped in electricity generation from 38 to 30 megawatts. The last well PGV drilled two years ago, at great expense to the sleep and health of neighbors, has never come online as it failed to find sufficient heat. In the past few years, the plant has released potentially deadly hydrogen sulfide on multiple occasions, with ongoing refusal by PGV or civil defense to put proper monitoring equipment and systems into place to protect nearby residents. ...

Owen Lloyd of the Deep Green Resistance News Service recently interviewed Hawaiian activist and filmmaker Anne Keala Kelly on traditional practices such as the lū‘au, hula, and giving of lei. They explore how the dominant colonizer culture has appropriated and corrupted those traditions, in part to sell a tourism industry, and as part of the larger assimilation and undermining of Hawaiians. Lloyd ends by asking the crucial question: ‬What advice do you have for non-Hawaiians wishing to stand with Kānaka‭ ‬ʻŌiwi against cultural appropriation and colonialism more generally‭? ...

Jon Rappoport, a free-lance investigative journalist, has written numerous posts recently about GMOs, labeling vs banning, and the recent passing and subsequent overturning of laws in Hawai’i to ban GMOs and their attendant poisons. He provides some good insights into the corruption in the political and judicial systems, and even with big NGOs supposedly looking out for the health of humans and our landbases. The main angle he’s missing is CELDF style laws, which not only block unwanted industry or pollution from a locale, but explicitly state that the local protections supersede the rights of corporations or the State or Federal laws written by those corporate interests. ...

Though Deep Green Resistance is skeptical of the ability of citizens to petition decision makers to make decisions in the interest of the people and the aina, we share this petition as a quick way to voice your opposition to a blatant conflict of interest on the Hawai’i House Agriculture Committee:

Anne Keala Kelly, a Hawaiian journalist, filmmaker, and activist, will speak at this year’s Earth at Risk. The event spans the weekend of November 22 and 23, with two full days of panels and speakers discussing environmental defense, social justice, and grassroots activism. Kelly will join such notables as Vandana Shiva, Alice Walker, Chris Hedges, and Derrick Jensen. Kelly is scheduled for a panel on November 22, and the entire event should be well worth attending for anyone in the area. Please spread the word to anyone who might be able to make it! ...

In some good news, a significant amount of water will be returned to Wailuku River and Waikapū Stream on Maui. After a long court battle, two companies diverting the waters have agreed to restore up to 12.9 mgd to the two water ways. It was here in Wailuku and Waikapū that the first sugar plantations on Maui began draining the streams more than 150 years ago. In a sense, today’s restoration of flow brings us full circle to where the private diversions of stream flows and deprivation of Native Hawaiian communities and stream, wetland, and nearshore ecosystems began. ...

On Tuesday, October 7, a ground-breaking ceremony was attempted to kick off construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a $1.5 billion desecration of sacred Mauna Kea. The project has been rammed through by the so-called “state” of Hawai’i despite environmental, cultural, and legal concerns. Native Hawaiians led a protest and, joined by non-Hawaiians, successfully disrupted and halted the ceremony, forcing the organizers to shut off the live stream and go home early. ...

Press release from Keala Kelly. For more information, contact her at: Phone: 808-265-0177 Email: sacredmaunakea@gmail.com Website: Sacred Mauna Kea Facebook What: Mauna Kea Protest When: Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 7am to 2pm Where: Saddle Road at the entrance to the Mauna Kea Observatory Road Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians will gather for a peaceful protest against the Astronomy industry and the “State of Hawaii’s” ground-breaking ceremony for a thirty-meter telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea. ...

Norris Thomlinson of Deep Green Resistance Hawai’i wrote a review recently of the documentary Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds. He analyzes it from a liberal vs radical perspective, ultimately coming away disappointed that the film didn’t offer anything more than a typical liberal approach to systemic problems of power. The film shows beautiful time lapse sequences of seeds sprouting and shooting into new life. Even rarer, it shows people feeling very emotional about seeds, displaying extra-human connections we normally only see with domesticated pets, and hinting at the human responsibility of respectful relationship with all beings described by so many indigenous people. The movie highlights great projects from seed schools and the Seed Broadcast truck educating people on why and how to save seed, to William Woys Weaver and others within Seed Savers Exchange doing the on-the-ground work of saving varieties from extinction, to Hudson Valley Seed Library trying to create a viable business as a local organic seed company. ...