A GORY BUSINESS

A GORY BUSINESS: While some might say it's practically oxymoronic we've been been on a quest lately with a holy grail of being nicer and kinder to others.

But yesterday's letter to the editor from that slime ball masquerading as a human being, Ron Agor, was so insulting that all bets are off today.

Agor's defense of apparently-fired Kauai District Archaeologist and SHPD Deputy Director Nancy McMahon on the heels of an onslaught of Kanaka Maoli activists who successfully testified against her appointment to the county's Historic Preservation Commission, was to call the Native Hawaiians "savages" in practically every other paragraph.

Real sensitive to the host culture, Ron- especially from a member of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources. What, heathen and pagan weren't strong enough?

But his screed defending McMahon seems kind of appropriate for these two-peas-in-a-pod, since for the past few years every time some kind of outrageous treatment of`iwi kupuna (bones) burials occurred, the names Agor and McMahon seemed to come up every time.

Agor's rant begins by praising McMahon for her actions as state archeologist in trying to:

compromise with private property owners where the burials are respected and the private property owners have reasonable use of their properties.

Nancy McMahon during her tenure as the qualified state’s archaeologist always did her job in making sure the above mentioned compromise came to fruition on every project subjected to this process.

And compromise the `iwi she did.

In actuality McMahon's cavalier attitude has led to blatant abuse of her position to favor developers, ignoring the wishes of the Kaua`i Burial Council to the point where, during the court battle over the Brescia property cemetery debacle, she was singled out for blame in the fiasco by 5th Circuit Court judge Kathleen Watenabe for, among other things, ordering the `iwi be permanently encased in concrete.

That's what made this statement from Agor all the more removed from reality

It is interesting to know that recently the courts have recognized the practices and procedures of DLNR as reasonable and have often rendered decisions in favor of private property owners when they followed their permit conditions imposed by the State.

Here's what a letter from a group called Kānaka Maoli Scholars Against Desecration- signed by a list of notable scholars as long as your arm- said about McMahon's actions in the Brescia case

The SHPD’s own rules empower the island Burial Council to determine the disposition of previously known burials. The island Burial Council’s decision on this issue is supposed to be binding. Yet, SHPD deputy administrator Nancy McMahon sanctioned the use of vertical buffers and concrete caps on the burials to make way for installing the footings of Brescia’s house. Her authorization for such an intrusive "preservation" measure is a fundamental repudiation of the power allocated to all of the island Burial Councils.

By ignoring the decision of the island Burial Council, her actions undermine both the very concept of historic preservation and the reason for the founding of the island Burial Councils. Tragically, before a court could intervene, and based on McMahon’s unauthorized agreements, Brescia’s team managed to install massive house foundations on a portion of the cemetery.

In another incident almost exactly a year ago on May 12, 2010 the headline of a PNN news story pretty much summed up what happened in saying:

Three Burials Unearthed By Cows At Lepeuli Unceremoniously Reburied By SHPD's McMahon Without Burial Council Notification.

You might want to read the article and followups- it's actually even worse than that with McMahon attempting to cover up the discovery of a Hawaiian house site by another local archeologist.

So how did McMahon get away with this stuff for so long- stuff including many unproven accusations from burial protectors of taking home `iwi and even stealing artifacts from sites and offering them for sale?

Well. many times it was Agor's position on the all powerful BLNR that made it possible.

Agor has been a Republican Party mainstay for many years and so when Republican Governor Linda Lingle took over she appointed him as the lone Kaua`i representative.

Now you'd think that with all the other BLNR members one single rep wouldn't be able to insure things go the way he wants. But the "tradition" on the board is to defer to the single neighbor island reps on matters on their island.

For instance when Lepeuli rancher Bruce Lymon tried to lie his way into a conservation district use permit (CDUP) it was Agor who convinced the board to grant it without examining the facts- a decision that was reversed later after the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, OHA and others set the record straight and the permit was rescinded.

As for Agor his tenure has been marked by deceit and misrepresentation to members of the community, often telling people he would assure the BLNR would vote a certain way only to do exactly the opposite according to the minutes of the meeting, as he did with the Koke`e leaseholders and other cases during his tenure.

One thing became clear to us today in reviewing our coverage of the Agor and McMahon- they deserve each other. Their actions go way beyond the usual racism and promotion of monied American interests to, not just being active participants in the continuing genocide of na kanaka, but being leaders in the theft of the land and culture.

And there's nothing nice or kind about that.

We now return you to the "trying very hard not to be mean anymore" Parx.

POISON `IWI

POISON `IWI: We're still cussin' like a sailor every time we try to use the county's newfangled webcast site but since Ho`ike is, as usual, woefully inept at getting the meetings on the "air"- much less the schedule of council meetings posted on-line- we tuned to the MP3 audio today to get an aural gander at the section on Nancy McMahon's application to serve on the county's Kauai Historic Preservation Review Commission.

And never- we repeat never- in over 35 years, have we seen a steadier stream of people come to the hot seat to talk stink about a nominee.

McMahon, as Joan Conrow wrote last month,

was the former Kauai district archaeologist and SHPD deputy director who approved the burial treatment plan that allowed Joe Brescia to build on top of iwi kupuna. Pua Aiu signed off on the plan after it was rejected by the Kauai Niihau Island Burial Council, thus setting the precedent that capping iwi in concrete and building over them is compatible with a determination to “preserve in place.”

As a matter of fact it was McMahon's actions that were singled out for the wrath of Judge Kathleen Watenabe in the matter as Conrow reported earlier saying

But that irritation was tempered by the good news that Nancy McMahon, the state archaeologist whose misdeeds created the Bresica boondoggle – to quote Judge Watanabe: “The heart of this case is the failure of the state to follow procedures put in place to protect cultural practitioners, the general public and the rights of landowners.” — has been placed on indefinite administrative leave without pay. Her suspension followed a National Park Services inquiry into and state legislative hearings on the screwed up mess that is the State Historic Preservation Division.

It seems like every time there was some kind of pilikila regarding burials McMahon was in the forefront.

Our headline and lede last May said it all:

THREE BURIALS UNEARTHED BY COWS AT LEPEULI UNCEREMONIOUSLY REBURIED BY SHPD’S MCMAHON WITHOUT BURIAL COUNCIL NOTIFICATION.

PNN) -- Three burials that were disinterred by Bruce Laymon's cattle operation on Waioli Corporation property at Lepeuli (Larsen’s Beach) and were unceremoniously moved and reinterred by State Historical Preservation Division (SHPD) Archeologist Nancy McMahon, according to a letter from McMahon to Hope Kallai of Malama Moloa`a.

McMahon's nomination despite the outrageous conflict of interest in serving on a commission that essentially would review her work, was one of those "council only" appointments where the mayor picks three, the council picks three and the body picks the last one. But the problem has been getting people to serve so the commission hasn't met in ages because they don't have a quorum.

So when McMahon put her name forward she was somewhat of an automatic nominee, according to councilmembers.

The only question really for council members was whether to reject McMahon outright yesterday as the oodles of outraged onlookers had demanded or take 60 days, as Chair Jay Furfaro requested, to "investigate" some of the charges.

After much wrangling, somewhat surprisingly since it had appeared there were only going to be three votes to kill the resolution during discussion, the council voted to kill it right then and there.

As a side note, the main thing the council apparently wanted to look into was one charges that many made, as we heard in an email earlier this week.

Apparently McMahon's educational background had been thrown into question because when her opponents checked with University of Hawai`i-Manoa they discovered her degree was "in anthropology, not archeology."

Seemingly they weren't the only ones who didn't know that archeology is more properly called "physical anthropology," as opposed to cultural anthropology. No one gets an undergraduate degree in "archeology" but rather studies both branches of anthropology and is awarded the appropriate degree.

We don't know what's wrong with this woman- she's apparently a glutton for rejection. First she ran and finished last in the 2008 election for council. Then a steady stream of charges- including one by a Kaua`i massage therapist that she was "filthy dirty" (ouch) - were telecast with such vile tossed in her direction that would bring a normal person to tears.

It's hard to say anyone deserves that but in McMahon’s case she's practically begged for it.

And, with twisted aloha, the community has once again granted her request.

LICENSE TO DRILL

LICENSE TO DRILL: Atrocious English notwithstanding, today's local newspaper report of the state's latest desecration of kanaka `iwi along the beach in Wailua gave us that old familiar feeling that you know so well.

The article says that apparently, that old black magic was being performed by "(c)ontracted archaeologist Jim Powell, of Scientific Cultural Surveys, (who) also found artifacts associated with ancient Hawaiian burials" according to cultural activist Ka`iulani Edens Huff.

“These guys are all over the place,” Edens said of Powell’s company, which also surveyed Joe Brescia’s property in Naue, on Kaua‘i’s (sic) North Shore. “They are dirty and they are everywhere bones are desecrated.”

Edens of course has been put through hell for daring to try to defend the `iwi against Brescia's graveyard mansion in Wainiha.

But what caught our eye was this citation in the article:

Title 13, Chapter 300 of the Hawai‘i Administrative Rules states that it is “unlawful for any person to remove from the jurisdiction of the state, any human skeletal remains over 50 years old, or any associated burial goods, without prior written authorization” from DLNR.

That's a long way to go to say today's post is a Best of Parx (okay it's a re-run) from July 1, 2008 when we first discovered that there was such a thing as "prior written authorization from DLNR" to desecrate Hawaiian graves.

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HEY- THAT’S MY SACRED DOG DISH: After falling out of our chair this morning we got to thinking about the latest statement from developer Joe Brescia who still wants to put his house atop a kanaka graveyard despite a police warning that to do so would violate state anti-desecration laws.

The local paper reports that he told them:

“The law was obviously designed to punish those persons who desecrate burials without authorization.”

Sometimes there are so many different government departments, divisions and offices we can’t keep track of them all. And obviously we missed the one Brescia must be referring to.

We’re pretty sure never-say-die Brescia’s telephone call went something like this:

Hello, Office of Desecration Authorization and Permitting.

Yes I’d like to perform some desecration. Have I reached the right person?

You sure have. What can I help you defile today?

Well it seems like I have these old bones on my property and those jerks put them right where I want to put my obscenely obtrusive illegal vacation rental....

Are they Hawaiian bones?

Yes – they aren’t even white people!

Well nonetheless you have to have a permit to commit sacrilege in this state even against those godless Hawaiians. Now how many are buried there?

There’s at least 30 sets of them.

Oh. my- 30, eh. Well that means you will need a Comprehensive Desecration Permit and don’t qualify for the two-graves-or-less provisions where I could just issue you a Minor Insult Permit today. Now exactly how many people have had their sensibilities outraged?

Well, I’m not sure- there were at least a hundred protesters out there when I....

Hold it right there sir- do you have the names and contact information for those you want to offend?

Well, no but...

Well you must document the names of the persons you’d like to disrespect and provide us with the specific ways each would be likely to observe or discover your actions in order to get authorization to perform your sullying. That involves notifying the specific persons affronted and calculating the level of offensiveness each experienced so you can file your form FU-13 Defilement Filing.

File my defilement filing?...

Yes. Then of course you’ll be publishing your Public Notice of Intent to Desecrate and hold a public hearing....

Public hearing?...

Yes how else can the Desecration Commission tell whether it’s a true sacrilege or just an imposition upon the culture. Now how exactly do you plan to despoil these bones?

I just want to put a house on top of them.

Oh- a house, eh. Then you’ll need to fill out a special GH-100 Spiritual Retaliation Waiver form releasing the Commission of all future liability for ghostly events and apparitions - you know, night marching warriors, fireballs, crying aumakua- you probably know them better as specters, phantoms, poltergeists and the like. It’s all quite common....

Well it’s all quite daunting if you ask me but I suppose I’ve manipulated and paid off so many offices and officials that, well, what’s one more?

Fine sir- we’ll send you our 150 page pamphlet, “So you want to Desecrate Our Host Culture”. Where shall we send it?

Just address it to the biggest jerk in Wainiha. I’ll get it.

Are you sure? I hear there’s a lot of them lately?

Hey- I’ve fought hard for that title. If I know anything it’s how big an a-hole I am..

Very well sir- Is there anything else we can help you thumb your nose at today?

No, I’ve done enough damage for now.

Thank you sir and have a very blasphemous day.

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UPDATE: Although our investigative report about abuses in the ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifice of Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri Carvalho was greeted with a collective shrug, to our amazement Councilperson Dickie Chang's lack of recusal in the matter of the obscene $150,000 grant for the Kaua`i Marathon yielded this from the council's May 4 agenda

C 2011-135 Communication (04/28/2011) from Councilmember Chang, providing written disclosure on the record of a possible conflict of interest and recusal on Bill No. 2404 (An Ordinance to Appropriate $150,000 to the Kaua'i Marathon Grant), because he is the Owner of Wala'au Productions which tapes and aires (sic) footage of the Kaua'i Marathon and also he serves as an emcee for the Kaua'i Marathon at several pre and post events.

MOTHER HUBBARD’S LAMENT

MOTHER HUBBARD’S LAMENT: Government bureaucrats have never been known for their competence or honesty.

But with the way some are being ridiculed by judges lately you’d think people like Honolulu County clerk Denise Decosta and Chief Elections officer Kevin Cronin would show some integrity or at least shame- and resign.

Cronin’s penchant for making it up as he goes along- as pilloried by an administrative judge last week was- surpassed by Decosta in her convoluted attempt to keep a citizen initiative against rail in Honolulu off the ballot because even though it was legally submitted to qualify for the general election the petitioners mentioned a special election in their preface.

Judge Karl Sakamoto’s now “instant classic” ruling yesterday that “(t)he voice of the people should not be suffocated by the erroneous readings of the law by its own government" was apparently part of a new spate of recent rulings by judges asking government officials “what am I an idiot?” in light of their intentional administrative twistings of the law.

The actual Honlulu City Charter provisions- which trumps the confusing special ordinance and administrative rules- says:

Any petition for proposed ordinance which has been filed with the council at least ninety days prior to a general election and which has been certified by the clerk, shall be submitted to electors for the aforementioned general election."

So how old is Decosta? Six? When they read her the actual prevailing rules of the game she apparently pointed to an out of context phrase, showed us what her mommy said, put her fingers in her ears and yelled “You said it- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah- I can’t hear you- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.”

But on Kaua`i we’ve apparently got a new judge for whom the answer to what am I an idiot? is an unqualified “yes” when it comes to abuses of administrative a-holes

But what do you expect? Firth Circuit Court judge Kathleen Wantanbe came straight from the government bureaucracy to her perch on the bench and seemingly her rulings don’t just give the benefit of the doubt to government officials but they consider complaints about it to be a nuisance- just like her bureaucratic brethren .

Yesterday’s hearing in Joe Brescia’s genocide and desecration case was punctuated by a distinct flavor of telling the government that they can do no wrong if press reports are accurate.

First she ruled that only the reportedly allegedly corrupt Kaua`i State Archeologist Nancy McMahon could testify but not archeologist Dr. Michael “No Pun Intended” Graves who represented the aggrieved iwi and their descendents.

Independent reporter Joan Conrow described it this way this morning

Before the proceedings got to that place, Watanabe refused to qualify Dr. Michael Graves, a witness called by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., as an expert in Hawaiian archaeology. Never mind that he spent 21 years at UH teaching undergraduate and graduate students in archaeology and served as head of the department.

Since that prohibited Graves from discussing whether the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) acted properly in its treatment of the Naue burials, much of the hearing was devoted to Kauai state archaeologist Nancy McMahon defending her decisions regarding the burials there.

What a surprise- a career government lawyer deciding that self-serving government officials’ testimony is expert- even one whose job is in jeopardy, being under fire for not knowing what the heck she is doing, what the law really says and lying to both the Kaua`i Burial Council and Planning Commission- and denying a private sector university professor with no bone to pick, so to speak.

And what they were arguing about puts the meter on Wantanabe’s “what am I an idiot?” rating in the red zone.

As Star-Bulletin reporter Tom Finnegan said today

The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.. argued that the state archaeologist reversed the decision of the Kauai Ni`ihau Burial Council when she allowed Brescia's contractors to build the home and cap seven grave sites with concrete.

Chandler's lawyers blame state Historic Preservation Division archaeologist and Kauai County Council candidate Nancy McMahon for pushing through both the permits at the county level and the burial council's plan to keep the burials in place. Then, the lawyers argued, she approved the contractor's plan without returning to the burial council for its input.

McMahon, who testified yesterday, said that... no evidence has been found that would make anyone believe the area was a cemetery, rather than 30 individual graves. (emphasis added)

However, Alan Murakami, Chandler's lawyer, said that the burial council wanted to preserve the burials as a unit, and McMahon took it on her own to interpret its ruling.

By allowing the house to be built atop the graves, rather than preserving them, "the state has disemboweled the burial council," Murakami added.

Oh- well, that explains it all- it’s just a coincidence. Those stupid Hawaiians just threw their dead all over the place and randomly and independently decided to inter their dead there in a concentration that exponentially outstrips most other nearby locations of “iwi kupuna”

Apparently there was no actual plan to screw poor Joe Brescia 500 years in the future by burying all the bodes in one place bodies there.

Well, we’d better pull our tongue out of our cheek long enough to ask if McMahon’s contention exposes anything but the depth of depravity of the administrative scope of genocide that continues to percolate through the Hawai`i State apparatus.

If she contends that despite the concentration of 30 full sets of remains in an 18,000-square-foot beachfront property it was not purposefully done as what westerners would call a cemetery she obviously presumes that the pre-western contact Hawaiians were too dumb to coordinate a place to inter their dead.

After all those brown skinned people are akin to a bunch of animals who have no capacity to concentrate their burials in a certain area with any intent..

Because as we all know a concentration of trees is not forest- unless you look at a dictionary.

The significance of this is that McMahon has used this as the premise- in addition to using tortured readings the law- to take away authority from the burial council to preserve the area.

And so Wantanbe acceded to this shibai by accepting the “30 burials do not a cemetery make” postulate in allowing construction to continue at least until the hearing continues weeks from now, saying essentially the only reason she wasn’t dismissing the case was that "I understand the community is split... I understand the need for finality and ... some closure." according to Finnegan.

This is the same judge that, for example, refused to allow public examination of the minutes of a Kaua`i County Council Executive session minutes as the OIP called for because it was “impossibly intertwined” with the material OIP had suggested be redacted when the rest was released.

What is it with Kaua`i judges? Well maybe it’s that “once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat”.

With Wantanbe and ex-politician Randall Valenciano- he of the famous refusal to hear the challenges to the Superferry after the Supreme Court remanding to a similar court on Maui- filling the bench over here we can expect any tortured reading of the law that allows political manipulation of people’s rights to be upheld.

If Decosta and Cronin finally do get canned we have a feeling that they’d always have a job on Kaua`i where our government functionaries can just make up the law as they go along and get their former cronies, now on the bench, to uphold them.

BONEHEADED

BONEHEADED: All’s quiet on the northern front it seems- for at least another week..

As detailed on the front pages of the local and two Honolulu newspapers
and excellently reported by Kaua`i Eclectician Joan Conrow today all it took was a linked chain of defenders to stand up for justice in order to get a week reprieve in construction at the Naue graveyard owned by genocidal-maniac and illegal-vacation-rental-baron Joe Brescia until next Thursday when the case will be heard in court.

Belying the constant press reports that repeat the lie that Brescia is just a businessman who wants to build his house, his string of non-VDA vacation rentals- also cited as illegal by the State DLNR for their commercial activity in a conservation area- he continues to use his millions to slap the host culture in the face and buy administrative and judicial actions by corrupt self-serving boards, commissions and assorted government lackeys and legislators.

For Brescia this is no longer about building a house. It’s about a line in the sand to insure that money talks and people don’t matter in a cesspool of corruption like Hawai`i and specifically Kaua`i.

But an article accompanying the excellent on-site story by Blake Jones in the local paper provided coverage of the Kaua`i Burial Council meeting being held simultaneously with the north shore events and contained information that helps explain “how the heck did this guy get this far” in trying to build his pseudo-hotel in a graveyard.

The “new”- or new to us- fact reported was not what happened at the meeting but who chaired it- none other than the man cited recently here and in the pubic eye as the chief defender if corruption on Kaua`i- functionaries Mark Hubbard. .

Hubbard, as we previously detailed, is the former Grove Farm honcho whose own ethically challenged actions as head of the Kaua`i Ethics Board has led to establishment of a body that refuses to enforce the primary conflicts-of-interest laws on Kaua`i because he would have to leave his position if they did so.

Grove Farm- one of the largest land owners on Kauai-has had numerous projects stopped by discovery of iwi kupuna- bones of the dead of kanana maoli- and his presence on the council is as conflicted as conflicted can be.

The incident’s conclusion- the stand down by police and the establishment of a “people’s injunction” in place after the local judge refused to stop it- is driving the western property-rights nut-cases and self-absorbed, juvenile troll crowd up the wall because the police stood down and avoided a confrontation, presumably at the behest of new chief Darryl Perry.

Perry has again garnered, if not full support, at least respect from many in the community that have criticized the militarization of the local police force they fear will be used against non-violent civil disobedience such as yesterday’s direct action or the Superferry protests last year, including the harassment of the head of the Hawaiian sovereignty group Nation of Atooi. who was arrested and is bring tried in connection with the Superferry events.

It’s fun to watch steam coming out of the ears of some western invaders as they call for Perry’s head for this with their pathetic little bleatings of “death to all who would get between a rich man and his desires” and use the “rule of law” to call for more desecration.

But the problem is that genocide isn’t against the law because the one with the most money gets to say what the law says. Seems a couple of hundred years ago that attitude on the part of “the authorities” caused quite the little protest on the very mainland they come from and whose laws they cherish so.

Sorry to inform you but justice doesn’t come from laws. Laws are supposed to come from the concepts of justice.

Theoretically a governance by laws in a “nation of laws” provides justice. But it does not in the US these days.

The laws are written by corporate thieves and administered by corrupt petty bureaucrats like Hubbard and State Archeologist Nancy McMahon who lie as to what the law says and manipulate the system to make sure that justice is only for those who hire the most lawyers and have the right connections.

When that happens actions like those in Naue yesterday are not only understandable and predictable but are imperative. Despite what the self-obsessed maniacs of the property-rights movement try to tell us in their ratings and support for Brescia’s asinine behavior, the people have the real rights..

And when the law is flouted and manipulated and turned on its head they have every right to stand up to the law... to stand up for justice, not just adjudication.

The rule of law is subject to the consent of the ruled and when the other golden rule- he who has the gold, rules- is the law of the land, the ruled withdraw their consent and it can’t be blamed on those who will not follow the law but on those who do not join them is violating it..

If defenders of Naue are arrested next time, inappropriate questions like “what are you doing in jail” will be answered with the Thoreau retort of “what are you doing out there?”

When the law fails to provide justice and the ability to change the law is subject to others’ paying for their own versions of the laws, it’s time for revolutionary acts such as those in Naue yesterday.