Category: Pacific

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DoD eyeing more Chamorro land

http://www.kuam.com/bm/news/dod-eyeing-chamorro-land-trust-property.shtml

DoD eyeing Chamorro Land Trust property

By Clynt Ridgell

While most of the island is not a party to the specifics regarding the U.S. Department of Defense’s plans to buildup the military on Guam, it’s apparent now that the governor too has been left in the dark. In an interview with KUAM News Felix Camacho revealed a major decision being crafted without the input of Guam’s highest elected leader.

What’s even more disturbing is that this decision involves land.

Governor Camacho is making it clear that he and the people of Guam need a seat at the table when the feds plan the immense military buildup that will bring an estimated 40,000 new people to the island. “As decisions are made, we are simply advised of it not consultedm” he shared. One of these decisions that has sparked the governor to speak out is related to a very touchy subject on Guam.

He continued, “The question was asked will there be sufficient lands for this endeavor. They said, ‘Absolutely, we have enough land in our inventory and within our footprint on Guam to make this a success’. I believe decisions are now being made that they need to acquire more land and this would have to be to accommodate the firing range.”

The DoD and the Joint Guam Program Office officials have all said repeatedly that they would not need additional lands for the buildup the governor now says they are eyeing some Government of Guam property that is supposed to be used by the island’s indigenous people.

“They would like to consolidate their property up north and have one contiguous operation we certainly have lands in between that that are Chamorro Land Trust lands,” said Camacho.

The governor further says that he wants to protect the assets of the people, adding that giving additional land to the feds is something that shouldn’t be done without first consulting the people. But it’s not only the land issue that the governor has a problem with he’s concerned about the lack of funding needed to beef up the island’s infrastructure. “Guam does not have the resources nor do we have the capacity either financially or personally to build our infrastructure to the level that we must,” he told KUAM News.

This need for a rapid buildup of infrastructure is due to the rapid buildup of the military one in which our population will also rapidly increase by over 20%. The governor says although the feds have instructed GovGuam to get with different federal agencies like the EPA, the Federal Highway Administration, the Department of Transportation and others. Only one of them have offered a helping hand.

“We have gone to Office of Management and Budget; we have made our case we’ve requested for monies in 2010. I’ve not seen anything come out of it. In fact, the only agency that came to bat for us is the Department of the Interior, which requested roughly $168 million, but every other agency failed to do so.”

The governor says he understands that this buildup may be the way that DoD operates, but he also says that if they want to maintain goodwill, Guam needs a voice. “We as an unincorporated territory with no voice and no vote in Congress would be first on the chopping block when it comes to budget,” Camacho said. “So where is the support for Guam where is this commitment other than verbal?”

Camacho still believes that this move can be beneficial to Guam it’s just a matter of getting the finances necessary to ensure that the island’s people are not overburdened. “There’s a change in administration. I’m hoping there will be a change in leadership. I think that JGPO, however well intentioned they, are doesn’t have enough fire power to get this thing going,” the governor concluded. “I don’t believe they have enough resources committed to it because it is a major initiative it is a major undertaking and between the DoD and all the other agencies.

“They are going to have to get their act together.”

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Nuclear survivors of Rongelap

http://counterpunch.org/johnston11212008.html

Weekend Edition
November 21 / 23, 2008

The Voices of Rongelap
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

By BARBARA ROSE JOHNSTON
and HOLLY M. BARKER

John Anjain, Alab of Rongelap, Marshall Islands:

Early in the morning of March 1, 1954, sometime around five or six o’clock, American planes dropped a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. Shortly before this happened, I had awakened and stepped out of my house. Once outside, I looked around and saw Billiet Edmond making coffee near his house. I walked up and stood next to him. The two of us talked about going fishing later in the morning. After only a few minutes had passed we saw a light to the west of Rongelap Atoll. When this light reached Rongelap we saw many beautiful colors. I expect the reason people didn’t go inside their houses right away was because the yellow, green, pink, red, and blue colors which they saw were such a beautiful sight before their eyes.

The second thing that happened involved the gust of wind that came from the explosion. The wind was so hot and strong that some people who were outside staggered, including Billiet and I. Even some windows fell as a result of the wind.

The third thing that happened concerned the smoke-cloud which we saw from the bomb blast. The smoke rose quickly to the clouds and as it reached them we heard a sound louder than thunder. When people heard this deafening clap some of the women and children fled to the woods. Once the sound of the explosion had died out everyone began cooking, some made donuts and others cooked rice.

Later some men went fishing, including myself. Around nine or ten-o’clock I took my throw net and left to go fishing near Jabwon. As I walked along the beach I looked at the sky and saw it was white like smoke; nevertheless I kept on going. When I reached Jabwon, or even a little before, I began to feel a fine powder falling all over my body and into my eyes. I felt it but I didn’t know what it was.

I went ahead with my fishing and caught enough fish with my throw-net to fill a bag. Then I went to the woods to pick some coconuts. I came back to the beach and sat on a rock to drink the coconuts and eat some raw fish. As I was sitting and eating, the powder began to fall harder. I looked out and saw that the coconuts had changed color. By now all the trees were white as well as my entire body. I gazed up at the sky but couldn’t see the clouds because it was so misty. I didn’t believe this was dangerous. I only knew that powder was falling. I was somewhat afraid nevertheless.

When I returned to Rongelap village I saw people cooking food outside their cook-houses. They didn’t know the powder was very dangerous. The powder fell all day and night long over the entire atoll of Rongelap. During the night people were sick. They were nauseous, they had stomach, head, ear, leg and shoulder aches. People did not sleep that night because they were sick.

The next day, March 2, 1954, people got up in the morning and went down to get water. It had turned a yellowish color. “Oh, Oh” they cried out and said “the powder that fell down yesterday and last night is a harmful thing.” They were sick and so Jabwe, the health-aide, walked around in the morning and warned the people not to drink the water. He told them that if they were thirsty to drink coconuts only.

. . . At three o’clock in the afternoon of March 2, 1954 a seaplane from Enewetak Atoll landed in the lagoon of Rongelap and two men came ashore. Billiet and I asked them why they had come to Rongelap and they responded by saying they had come to inspect the damage caused by the bomb. They said they would spend twenty minutes looking at all the wells, cement water catchments, houses and other things. The two men returned quickly to their plane and left without telling anyone that the food, water, and other things were harmful to human beings.

Everyone was quite surprised at the speed with which the men surveyed everything in the island and then returned to their plane. People said maybe we’ve been really harmed because the men were in such a hurry to leave. Although they said they would look around for about twenty minutes, they probably didn’t stay here for more than ten minutes. So in less than ten minutes after their arrival on Rongelap, the two men had already taken off.

. . . On that day we looked at the water catchments, tubs and other places where there was a great deal of water stored. The water had turned a strong yellow and those who drank it said it tasted bitter.

On March 3, early in the morning, a ship and a seaplane with four propellers appeared on Rongelap. Out of the plane came Mr. Oscar de[Brum] – and Mr. Wiles, the governor of Kwajelein Atoll. As their boat reached the shore, Mr. Oscar cried out to the people to get on board and forget about their personal belongings for whoever thought of staying behind would die. Such were the words by which he spoke to them. Therefore, none of the people went back to their houses, but immediately got on the boats and sailed to board the ship that would take them away. Those who were sick and old were evacuated by plane.

. . . At ten o’clock in the morning we left Rongelap for Ailinginae Atoll and arrived there at three in the afternoon. We picked up nineteen people on this atoll and by five o’clock we were on our way to Kwajalein.

On March 4, we arrived on Kwajalein and met the Admiral who then sent us to where we were to stay. A day later, Dr. Conard and his medical team arrived. The doctors were very thorough in checking and caring for our injuries and showed much concern in examining us. The Admiral was also very concerned about our situation and took us in as if we were his own children. His name was Admiral Clark.

Ever since 1954 Dr. Conard has continued to examine the fallout victims on a yearly basis. These visits are very important for all the people on Rongelap and others in the Marshall Islands. These medical examinations are also of great importance for men throughout the world.

. . . From 1959 to 1963 and 1964, after the Rongelapese had returned to Rongelap from Majuro, many women gave birth prematurely to babies which looked somewhat like animals. Women also had miscarriages. During these years many other strange things happened with regard to food, especially to fish in which the fertilized eggs and liver turned a blackish color. In all my forty years I had never seen this happen in fish either on Rongelap or in any of the other places I’ve been in the Marshall Islands. Also, when people ate fish or [arrowroot] starch produced on Rongelap, they developed a rash in their mouths. This too I had never seen before.

. . . I, John, Anjain, was magistrate of Rongelap when all this occurred and I now write this to explain what happened to the Rongelap people at that time.

[In 1954] the people of Rongelap stayed on Kwajalein for three months and the DOE [Atomic Energy Commission] people removed the Rongelap people to Majuro. The people lived in Majuro for three years and in 1956 the DOE, Trust Territory government and the UN came to Majuro and I went with them to attend a meeting with them at the school in Rita. And they told me that it is time that we go back home. And I asked “are we really going home while Rongelap is contaminated?” And the answer that they give me is that “it is true that Rongelap is contaminated but it is not dangerous. And if you don’t believe us, well then stay here and take care of yourself.”

. . . In 1957 the people returned to Rongelap and the DOE promised that there wouldn’t be any problems to the Rongelap people. However in 1958 and 1959 most of the women gave birth to something that was not resembling human beings. There was a woman giving birth to a grape. Another woman gave birth to something that resembles a monkey. And so on. There was a child born at that time and there was no shell covering the top of that child’s head.

The American doctors came every year to examine us. Every year they came, and they told us that we were not sick, and then they would return the next year. But they did find something wrong. They found one boy did not grow as fast as boys his age. They gave him medicine. Then they began finding the thyroid sickness.

My son Lekoj was thirteen when they found his thyroid was sick. They took him away to a hospital in America. They cut out his thyroid. They gave him some medicine and told him to take it every day for the rest of his life. The same thing happened to other people. The doctors kept returning and examining us. Several years ago, they took me to a hospital in America, and they cut out my thyroid. They gave me medicine and told me to take it every day for the rest of my life.

A few years after the bomb, Senator Amata Kabua tried to get some compensation for the people of Rongelap. He got a lawyer, and the lawyer made a case in court. The court turned our case down. The court said it could not consider our case because we were not part of the United States. Dwight Heine went to the United Nations to tell them about us. People from the United Nations came to see us, and we told them how we felt. Finally, in 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a bill. The bill gave us money as a payment for our experience. Some of the people spent all their money; some of them still have money in the bank. After we got the money, they began finding the thyroid sickness.

In 1972, they took Lekoj away again. They said they wanted to examine him. They took him to America to a big hospital near Washington. Later, they took me to this hospital near Washington because they said he was very sick. My son Lekoj died after [I] arrived. He never saw his island again. He returned home in a box. He is buried on our island. The doctors say he had a sickness called leukemia. They are quite sure it was from the bomb.

But I am positive.

I saw the ash fall on him. I know it was the bomb. I watched him die.

***

Statement of Almira Matayoshi to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, Marshall Islands (2001):

I was pregnant when they dropped the bomb [Bravo]. I was flown off of Rongelap with the other pregnant women and elderly people. The rest of the people left on the boat. I gave birth to Robert on Ejit, and he was normal. The child I had after Robert, when we had returned to Rongelap, I gave birth to something that was like grapes. I felt like I was going to die from the loss of blood. My vision was gone, and I was fading in and out of consciousness. They emergency evacuated me to Kwajalein, and I was sure I was going to die. After the grapes, I had a third child. It wasn’t like a child at all. It had no bones and was all skin. When I gave birth they said, “Ak ta men en?” [What is that thing?]. Mama said uror [a term denoting exacerbation]. It was the first strange child that people had seen. I was the first. That time was the worst in my life. I feel both angry and embarrassed.

***

What words can possibly communicate what it is like to see and survive such sights? To become increasingly fearful that the intense beauty of your world-the water, the sand, the plants, the soil, the sea, and all the creatures within-has been fundamentally transformed by invisible, untouchable, all-encompassing poison? After years and years of living in a radioactive laboratory as the subject of scrutiny and study, what does it mean to find your fears confirmed-that your favorite foods are taboo, that your loved ones grow old before their time and your children fail to thrive? What does it mean to “survive” downwind from the the United States proving grounds – where nuclear war was practiced and perfected by Cold War warriors?

In 1946, after evacuating the people of Bikini and nearby atoll communities in the Marshall Islands, the United States detonated two atomic weapons: the same type of bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. In 1947 the United Nations designated the Marshall Islands a United States Trust Territory. Over the next eleven years, this U.S. territory played host to another sixty-five atmospheric atomic and thermonuclear tests. The largest of these tests, code named Bravo, was detonated on March 1, 1954. This 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was purposefully exploded close to the ground. It melted huge quantities of coral atoll, sucking it up and mixing it with radiation released by the weapon before depositing it on the islands and inhabitants in the form of ash, or radioactive fallout. The wind was blowing that morning in the direction of inhabited atolls, including Rongelap and Utrik, some 100 and 300 miles from the test site at Bikini. The Marshallese communities on Rongelap, Ailinginae, and Utrik atolls, U.S. servicemen on Rongerik Atoll (weathermen who were monitoring winds and fallout), and the twenty-three-man crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon) received near-lethal doses of radiation from the Bravo event.

International protests and calls for a ban on nuclear weapons testing prompted the U.S. government to publicly acknowledge the incident and accept liability. The Marshallese filed an April 20, 1954, complaint to the United Nations Trusteeship Council:

We, the Marshallese people feel that we must follow the dictates of our consciences to bring forth this urgent plea to the United Nations, which has pledged itself to safeguard the life, liberty and the general well being of the people of the Trust Territory, of which the Marshallese people are a part.

. . . The Marshallese people are not only fearful of the danger to their persons from these deadly weapons in case of another miscalculation, but they are also very concerned for the increasing number of people who are being removed from their land.

. . . Land means a great deal to the Marshallese. It means more than just a place where you can plant your food crops and build your houses; or a place where you can bury your dead. It is the very life of the people. Take away their land and their spirits go also.

In response to this petition the United States assured the General Assembly of the United Nations:

The fact that anyone was injured by recent nuclear tests in the Pacific has caused the American people genuine and deep regret. . . . The United States Government considers the resulting petition of the Marshall Islanders to be both reasonable and helpful. . . . The Trusteeship Agreement of 1947 which covers the Marshall Islands was predicated upon the fact that the United Nations clearly approved these islands as a strategic area in which atomic tests had already been held. Hence, from the onset, it was clear that the right to close areas for security reasons anticipated closing them for atomic tests, and the United Nations was so notified; such tests were conducted in 1948, 1951, 1952 as well as in 1954. . . . The question is whether the United States authorities in charge have exercised due precaution in looking after the safety and welfare of the Islanders involved. That is the essence of their petition and it is entirely justified. In reply, it can be categorically stated that no stone will be left unturned to safeguard the present and future well-being of the Islanders.

The United States promised the Marshallese and the United Nations General Assembly that “Guarantees are given the Marshallese for fair and just compensation for losses of all sorts.”

These guarantees worked: the United States was able to continue its atmospheric weapons testing program in the Marshall Islands through 1958 and at its Nevada test site through 1963, when the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union finally signed on to a limited test ban treaty.

The United States has not, however, fully lived up to its promises to the United Nations or the Marshallese people to safeguard their well-being. Atmospheric weapons testing in the Pacific resulted in considerable human and environmental harm.

Atmospheric nuclear weapons tests released numerous radioisotopes and dangerous heavy metals. An estimated 2 percent of the radioactive fallout was iodine-131, a highly radioactive isotope with an 8-day half-life. The nuclear war games conducted by the United States in the Marshall Islands released some 8 billion curies of iodine-131. To place this figure in broader context, over the entire history of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Proving Grounds, some 150 million curies of iodine-131 were released, and varying analyses of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster estimate an iodine-131 release of 40 to 54 million curies. Much of the iodine-131 released in the Marshall Islands was the by-product of the March 1, 1954, Bravo test detonation of the hydrogen bomb. Designed to produce and contain as much radioactive fallout in the immediate area as possible, in order to create laboratory-like conditions, Bravo unleashed as much explosive yield as one thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs. Communities living downwind from the blast, especially the Rongelap community, were acutely exposed to its fallout.

Evacuated three days after the blast, the people of Rongelap spent three months under intense medical scrutiny as human subjects in Project 4.1. They spent three years as refugees and were returned to their still-contaminated atoll in 1957 with assurances that their islands were now safe. They lived on Rongelap for another twenty-eight years and as the closest populated atoll to the Pacific Proving Grounds, they were exposed to additional fallout from another series of nuclear tests in 1958. While living on Rongelap, the community was visited annually, and later biannually, by U.S. government scientists and medical doctors conducting follow-up studies begun under Project 4.1. Researchers collected fish, plants, soil, and human body samples to document the presence of radioisotopes deposited from sixty-seven tests, the movement of these isotopes through the food chain and the human body, and the adverse health impact of this radiation on the human body.

The community left Rongelap in 1985 after receiving information from some U.S. scientists that confirmed their long-held fears that their ancestral homeland was contaminated with radiation at levels that posed a serious risk to their health. Today, the Rongelap community lives in exile, largely on borrowed or rented lands in Kwajalein and Majuro atolls. Recent efforts to remediate fallout hazards on areas of some islands and to rebuild homes and community structure on the island of Rongelap suggest that the community may, someday soon, have the choice of returning home. Whether or not remediation is successful and people decide to return remains to be seen.

The people of Rongelap are not the only nuclear nomads created by the actions of military and nuclear powers over the past six decades. They are, however, one of the most studied communities.

Following their acute exposure in 1954 the people of Rongelap enrolled in a medical research program sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission. The program was designed to document the movement of radiation through the atmosphere, food chain, and human body, with the goal of understanding the long-term effects of human exposure to ionizing radiation.

Over the years, U.S. scientists added to the research program “control” subjects, including people on Rongelap who were not present during the Bravo test, people on the nearby atoll of Utrik, people on Likiep (another populated atoll in the northern Marshall Islands), and people on Majuro. Control subjects were typically selected to match the acutely exposed by age and sex, and scientists studied these people in many instances for four decades. Comparative studies documented increases in thyroid disorders, stunted growth in children, and increases in many forms of cancer and leukemia, cataracts, and other radiation-related illnesses.

For four decades, U.S. government scientists returned to the Marshall Islands to conduct exams and collect blood, tissue, bone marrow, teeth, and other samples. These studies generated a broad array of scientific findings, including the recognition that not only can acute exposures to radiation stimulate short-term effects but that late effects can emerge years and decades following the initial exposure. For example, by studying the Marshallese population, scientists found that radio-iodine-131 adheres to and accumulates in the thyroid, stimulating the production of benign and cancerous nodules and interfering with the production of hormones, leaving pregnant women and children especially vulnerable. They also discovered that people who were not exposed to an acute level of ionizing radiation but were exposed to low-levels on a daily basis because they lived in an area contaminated by fallout also developed thyroid and other radiogenic problems. The lessons learned by scientists included an awareness of the many complicated ways that radiation adversely affects the human body.

The Rongelap study was structured in ways that required the involvement of children from other atolls, especially children in the southern part of the nation. Such involvement extended over decades. Control subjects were selected at the direction of authorities. Being singled out resulted in social stigmatization (people were shunned because of the social perception that all people studied by the medical survey team were damaged by radiation). Control subject experiences included thorough examinations with photographs and x-rays; measurement of internal radiation with whole-body counters; the sampling of blood, bone marrow, skin, and other tissue; and, on a number of occasions, the injection of radioisotopes, vaccines, and other nonexplained substances. The experience of serving as a research control was intrusive, painful, and potentially harmful to the health of the participant.

The research agenda was shaped to meet U.S. military and scientific research objectives rather than the personal health needs of the affected population. The pressing question for the U.S. government was how to document and interpret the Marshallese experience in ways that might predict the consequences for U.S. troops or U.S. citizens exposed to radiation in the event of nuclear war. Marshallese health concerns, especially worries that radiation from fallout remained in their environment, poisoning their food and their bodies, were often ignored.

The classified nature of this research had profound effects within the Marshall Islands and within the broader scientific research community. Research protocols, data, and findings were restricted to those with security clearance. Patients, and later the Marshall Islands government, were denied access to medical records generated by this research.

This biomedical research was conducted by Brookhaven National Laboratory with monies appropriated by the U.S. Congress for the health of the Rongelap people. However, rather than investments in local health infrastructure, funds were used to periodically transport medical staff and supplies from the United States to the Marshall Islands for brief examinations of the “exposed” and “control” populations; to analyze the samples that were collected; to occasionally treat conditions that were defined as radiogenic in nature; and, in later years, to acquire and supply a ship with the necessary technology to conduct whole-body counting, x-ray, and other laboratory procedures. Some of the residents who developed thyroid tumors and other radiogenic conditions were brought to the United States for study and surgical removal of the thyroid gland.

When the U.S. government states that it has provided millions of dollars to the Marshall Islands for issues related to the weapons testing, it does not mention that enormous portions of this money went into advancing U.S. scientific interests, not into services for the people.

The culture of secrecy that characterized biomedical research in the Marshall Islands facilitated efforts to shape public opinion on the safety of the nuclear weapons testing program. Scientific findings were cherry-picked: those studies released to the public were carefully selected; conclusions were carefully worded to support the contention that exposed communities suffered no lasting effects from their exposure and that their exposure presented no threat to the health of subsequent generations. Manipulated “findings” were used to counter calls within the United Nations to establish a ban on nuclear weapons testing; to calm local and regional complaints that exposure to radiation was producing a wide array of untreated health effects, especially reproductive effects; and to reduce the economic liability of the U.S. government in meeting its obligations to its former territory.

As the decades passed, people experienced a growing incidence of adverse health effects, most notably the late onset of thyroid cancer and stunted growth and retardation in children in “exposed” as well as “control” populations. These health problems fed concerns that Rongelap Atoll was still dangerously contaminated and posed a significant hazard to occupants, a fact that became evident in the restudy of radiological conditions in the northern Marshall Islands in 1978. The results of this survey and the input of a few independent foreign experts led the Rongelapese to evacuate their homes in 1985, with the assistance of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior on what proved to be its final voyage in the Pacific. The evacuation of Rongelap occurred without the assistance or approval of the U.S. government. The restudy confirmed that much of the northern Marshall Islands was indeed still contaminated and that some areas would not be habitable without extensive remediation for at least twenty-five thousand years.

In 1986, after years of negotiations and the threat of some $7.1 billion in damage claims making their way through the U.S. court system, the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association, releasing the U.S. government from pending legal claims through the establishment of a compensation trust fund. The Compact of Free Association requires the United States to continue efforts to adequately address the full range of damages and injuries resulting from the testing program. Section 177 of the compact outlines responsibilities for monitoring the environment and human health effects of radiation from the nuclear weapons tests in the northern Marshall Islands (Bikini and Enewetak, the two ground-zero locations and Rongelap and Utrik atolls, the two communities enrolled in the Project 4.1 biomedical study). An additional provision of section 177 enables the Republic of the Marshall Islands to petition the U.S. Congress for additional compensatory funds should conditions change or new information come to light. Congress set aside $150 million to fund the provisions of the initial compact, which established a compensation trust fund with funds administered through a Nuclear Claims Tribunal that receives claims and issues awards for personal injury and property damage.

When the Compact of Free Association was negotiated and the Nuclear Claims Tribunal established much of the scientific record was classified: The Marshallese were never fully briefed on the nature of the nuclear weapons testing program and the full extent of its damages. This inequitable access to fundamental information has severely hampered Marshallese efforts to achieve a meaningful and comprehensive remedy. For example, to this day, the United States acknowledges in its compensatory programs the obligation to address nuclear-weapons-related damage to property and people in only four atolls: Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik. The U.S. documentary record tells another story: a 1955 survey, declassified in 1994 and released to the RMI in 1995, reports fallout from the 1954 Bravo test occurring at hazardous levels on twenty-eight atolls throughout the Marshall Islands. The entire nation, not simply the four atolls, is downwind, and the whole country has been adversely affected by nuclear weapons.

Today, the Rongelap community lives in exile, largely on borrowed or rented lands in Kwajalein and Majuro atolls. Recent efforts to remediate fallout hazards on areas of some islands and to rebuild homes and community structure on the island of Rongelap suggest that the community may, someday soon, have the choice of returning home. Whether or not remediation is successful and people decide to return remains to be seen.

The Marshallese have suffered more illness, death, and grief than any population should endure, and historical wrongs resulting from the nuclear weapons testing program have been compounded by inadequate and underfunded medical assistance. Despite the seriously elevated cancer rates in the Marshall Islands, as of this writing there is no oncologist in the country. There is no ability to provide chemotherapy or radiation treatment. Perhaps worst of all, there is no ability to undertake a nationwide screening for cancer to catch the illness in its early stages and provide patients with the greatest chance for survival and an improved quality of life.

A minimalist approach to health care has been provided through the Compact of Free Association (177 Agreement): Some seventeen thousand people receive health care through the 177 Health Care Program established to address the radiogenic health issues of the people of Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap, and Utrik islands. This system is woefully underfunded and lacks comprehensive cancer treatment capability. Many people have filed personal-injury claims with the Nuclear Claims Tribunal and, with their compensation, moved to Hawaii and the continental United States seeking, among other things, better health care. The NCT has ordered millions of dollars in compensation for personal-injury claims, but many more people have been found eligible than originally anticipated. Thus the majority of awards have yet to be paid in full to victims or their surviving families. And while a compensatory payment provides assistance at one level or another, in no way does it provide the means to restore overall health.

What is clearly lacking in the Marshall Islands, and sorely needed, is a high-quality medical care program that would address direct and indirect health problems caused by U.S. activities during the nuclear test period, and build the capacity of the Marshall Islands to address these needs.

The story of Rongelap is one of systemic injury, and inadequate and at times abusive response on the part of the U.S. government. U.S. government activities in the Marshall Islands resulted in profound consequences for the entire nation, unmet U.S. obligations, and an intergenerational responsibility. Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. government views its responsibility to its former territorial possession, and those people adversely affected by the nuclear weapons testing program, as a set of limited obligations that have in large part been addressed.

Political administrations come and go, but radiogenic contamination and disease present protracted, ulcerating, intergenerational problems. The toxic and radioactive contamination of soil, water, terrestrial and marine biota, and human life that is the legacy of nuclear war games in the Marshall Islands is difficult and expensive to monitor, let alone remediate. The health complications of radiation exposure for individuals and their offspring are similarly expensive to monitor and treat. Nevertheless, just as the U.S. government continues to appropriate billions of dollars for the cleanup of the plutonium processing plant in Hanford, Washington, and as it continues to make appropriations to provide full compensation to people living downwind from the Nevada Test Site, so too must it honor commitments to the inhabitants of the former trust territory, who deserve the same level of health care and cleanup as U.S. citizens.

In today’s world-where uranium mining occurs at historic levels, where depleted uranium is widely used in military training and war, and where nuclear power and weapons production are again on the agendas of the world’s nations-these lessons have currency. The experiences of the people of Rongelap, whose lives were transformed not only by acute exposure but also by chronic exposure to low-level radiation, should be read as a timely, cautionary tale.

This essay is excerpted from The Consequential Dangers of Nuclear War: the Rongelap Report

Barbara Rose Johnston is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology, and a member of the expert advisory group for UNESCO’s Water and Cultural Diversity Project. She is the co-author of The Consequential Dangers of Nuclear War: the Rongelap Report. Her documentation of dam legacy issues in Guatemala is available in Spanish and English at http://www.centerforpoliticalecology.org/chixoy.html. She can be reached at: bjohnston@igc.org

Holly M. Barker served as the advisor to the Republic of the Marshall Islands Embassy for 18 years and now teaches anthropology as a full-time lecturer a the University of Washington. Her latest book is Consequential Damages of Nuclear War – The Rongelap Report, by Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly M. Barker (Left Coast Press 2008). She can be contacted at hmbarker@u.washington.edu.

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Nuclear Sub leaked radioactive water for months

August 1, 2008

CNN: Nuclear sub leaked radioactive water in Pacific for months

From Jamie McIntyre and Mike Mount
CNN Pentagon Unit

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Water with trace amounts of radioactivity may have leaked for months from a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine as it traveled around the Pacific to ports in Guam, Japan and Hawaii,Navy officials told CNN on Friday.

The USS Houston arrives in Pearl Harbor for routine maintenance, during which the leak was found.

The USS Houston arrives in Pearl Harbor for routine maintenance, during which the leak was found.

The leak was found on the USS Houston, a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, after it went to Hawaii for routine maintenance last month, Navy officials said.

Navy officials said the amount of radiation leaked into the water was virtually undetectable. But the Navy alerted the Japanese government because the submarine had been docked in Japan.

The problem was discovered last month when a build-up of leaking water popped a covered valve and poured onto a sailor’s leg while the submarine was in dry dock.

An investigation found a valve was slowly dripping water from the sub’s nuclear power plant. The water had not been in direct contact with the nuclear reactor, Navy officials said.

Officials with knowledge of the incident could not quantify the amount of radiation leaked but insisted it was “negligible” and an “extremely low level.” The total amount leaked while the sub was in port in Guam, Japan and Hawaii was less than a half of a microcurie (0.0000005 curies), or less than what is found in a 50-pound bag of lawn and garden fertilizer, the officials said.

The sailor who was doused, a Houston crew member, tested negative for radiation from the water, according to Navy officials.

Since March, the Houston had crisscrossed the western Pacific, spending a week in Japan and several weeks in both Guam and Hawaii, Navy officials said.

The Navy on Friday notified the Japanese government of the leak, the officials said, and told them it was possible the ship had been leaking while in port in Sasebo, Japan, in March.

While Japan has agreed to allow U.S. nuclear-powered ships in Japanese ports, the decision was a not popular in Japan.

The Houston incident comes at a time when the Navy is trying to smooth over a problem with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

The USS George Washington was due to replace the aging, conventionally powered USS Kitty Hawk this summer as the United States’ sole carrier based in Japan.

While en route to Japan this May, a massive fire broke out on the George Washington, causing $70 million in damage. The fire was blamed on crew members smoking near improperly stored flammable materials.

There was no damage or threat to the nuclear reactor, but the ship was diverted to San Diego, California, for repairs. It now is expected to arrive in Japan at the end of September.

The Navy this week fired the captain and his deputy, saying an investigation into the fire led to a lack of confidence in the leadership of both men.

Just two weeks ago, thousands of Japanese protested the pending arrival of the George Washington.

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B-52 crash is the fourth incident in the past year

A B-52 strategic bomber crashed in Guam. Here’s an excerpt from an AP article:

A US air force B-52 bomber has crashed off the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, the US coastguard has said.

The aircraft carrying six crew members went down while on its way to conduct a flyover in a parade to mark Monday’s anniversary of Guam’s 1944 liberation from Japanese occupation in the second world war.

Below is an article from KUAM news.

Today’s B-52 crash is fourth military aircraft incident in past year

by Ronna Sweeney, KUAM News
Monday, July 21, 2008

This latest incident, that remains under investigation, is the 4th accident involving a military aircraft that occurred on Guam over the past year. Back in March, a B-1b Lancer strategic bomber rolled independently at the Yigo base colliding with a group of emergency response vehicles. There were no injuries or fatalities as a result of the accident.

On February 23, the billion dollar B-2 Spirit stealth bomber crashed just after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base making global headlines. Both pilots ejected from the aircraft prior to the crash that occurred on the Yigo base’s runway.

In June, an Accident Investigation Board revealed its findings into the crash and stated that a computer miscalculation was to blame for the incident.

On February 12, a Navy Ea-6b Prowler attached to the U.S.S. Kittyhawk strike group went down about 20 miles to the Northeast of AAFB. According to news files, the four-crew members on board were able to eject before the aircraft crashed in the water.

Copyright © 2000-2008 by Pacific Telestations, Inc.
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”Guam Remains Functionally a US Colony”

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43244

Q&A

”Guam Remains Functionally a US Colony”

Interview with Julian Aguon, Chamoru activist

MELBOURNE, Jul 21, 2008 (IPS) – The tiny island of Guam – officially an unincorporated territory of the United States – is soon to be inundated with thousands more U.S. military personnel as the world’s superpower realigns its forces. In this first of a two-part interview, indigenous Guamanian activist Julian Aguon spoke with IPS on issues surrounding the build-up.

Located in the western Pacific Ocean, Guam has a long history of being invaded. Spain first claimed the island in 1565, but it was not until a century later that colonisation began. During this time the indigenous Chamoru were decimated, declining from an estimated 150,000 to 3,000 people, 100 years after settlement.

The U.S. wrested control of Guam from Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War. After being occupied by Japan during the Second World War – the U.S. re-took the island in 1944 – Guam became an unincorporated territory of the U.S in 1950.

Now, with military bases already taking up one-third of the island – currently around 14,000 defence personnel, including dependents, call Guam home – 8,000 U.S. marines are to be transferred from the Japanese island of Okinawa to Guam as the island becomes a rapid response platform.

The U.S. also intends to add to its air surveillance capabilities and set-up a ballistic missile defence taskforce on Guam, as well as upgrade its docking facilities so that the island is able to host nuclear aircraft carriers.

While some among Guam’s population of 170,000 are excited about the economic opportunities they hope will accompany the build-up – it is anticipated that some 20,000 extra construction workers will also be required – others, such as Julian Aguon, are actively campaigning against it.

Aguon spoke with IPS writer, Stephen de Tarczynski, when he visited Australia on a month-long speaking tour.

IPS: What is the current situation with the military build-up on Guam?

Julian Aguon: In 2005 the governments of the United States and Japan made a bilateral agreement to relocate some 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa to Guam, as well as their dependents, and support staff and their dependents. And it’s more recently been announced that the true outside population being relocated to Guam from elsewhere in Asia, most notably from Okinawa, is actually 55,000 people. That, of course, has lots of human rights considerations, given the fact that Guam remains one of only 16 non-self governing territories – that’s a fancy way of saying internationally recognised colonies – in the world.

We have an inherent and still-unexercised human right to self-determination. We remain functionally a colony of the United States, and that’s highlighted by the way the military build-up of Guam right now is actually happening. It’s unilateral and for all intents and purposes, non-transparent. The U.S. government basically decided to flood our ancient homeland with this many people, this many nuclear submarines, all of this destruction basically, without one bona fide public meeting, without any semblance of true consultation of the entire indigenous population of Guam. And the fact that there is an internationally recognised resistance movement among the indigenous Chamoru people [means the lack of consultation] is just so insulting, so vulgar, so depraved and so illegal under basic human rights tenets.

IPS: But Guamanians have representation in the U.S. congress, right?

JA: Kind of correct. Just to be precise, the people of Guam are considered U.S. citizens, but we’re second-class U.S. citizens, if not third-class U.S. citizens, because we actually cannot vote for the U.S. president. In addition, we have representation in the U.S. congress. However, that representation is misleading because we only get one non-voting representative to congress. So, even our congressional representative is without a meaningful vote.

IPS: How does that make you feel?

JA: More important than that, because of course it makes us feel wronged and violated, it also helps. Especially [we] activists always remain clear that what is happening – I mean that whole system – is nothing more than an illusion of inclusion because we don’t much matter to the United States, and that much is very clear.

IPS: What is it that you want? Do you want independence for Guam?

JA: We want to exercise the supposedly most fundamental of all human freedoms, and that is self-determination. We’re not even saying ‘we want to be independent’. Of course, a lot of us want independence, not everybody, but independence is actually only one of the internationally recognised options for decolonisation. We can choose even U.S. statehood if we wanted to, but we could also choose a sort of interim status known as free association.

But that’s the key. The Chamoru people of Guam, our people, are non-entities. So, of course, we can’t even be at the table. We’re non-persons at that table. The military build-up has at least done a wonderful job of making that point very clear, that we aren’t people to even be negotiated with.

We want accountability, we want transparency. We want the U.S. military – the same military now expanding its presence in Guam exponentially – to clean up the widespread contamination of our island.

IPS: Why is Guam contaminated?

JA: We actually are still reeling from radiation exposure from the U.S. nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands. Between 1946 and 1958, the US dropped 67 hydrogen and nuclear weapons on the people of the Marshall Islands, and Guam, being 1200 miles from the Marshall Islands chain, is directly in the downwind patterns. We have been exposed to radiation there and that’s already proven.

We actually have proof that the U.S. aircraft and ships that were used to clean up the radiation contaminants in the Marshall Islands were actually re-routed to Guam and flushed out. It’s a depraved situation because the U.S. military is still convinced that it can convince the people of Guam that it has our best interests at heart. And I think that’s a sobering reality and it’s so lamentably far from the truth.

IPS: Can you tell me how you regard such terms as “the tip of the spear” and “the unsinkable aircraft carrier”, which some people in the U.S. military are using to describe Guam?

JA: I think that phraseology is very important because it demonstrates the lack of visibility of people. An unsinkable aircraft carrier, the tip of the spear [are] wonderful phrases because they don’t bring to human consciousness that there are people on that landmass, and that’s the problem.

In my personal opinion, the situation on Guam perhaps serves one of the greatest indictments to U.S. democratic legitimacy. It in fact mocks the idea of U.S. democratic legitimacy. And yet, it hasn’t made the radar. It hasn’t even really become a blip in the radar because people don’t conceive that there are people on Guam – let alone an indigenous people that are heirs to a civilisation born two thousand years before Jesus – and that we’ve been actively struggling at the UN decolonisation level to exercise self-determination. And of course, that’s by design. Dominant media, even in the U.S., are participators in this. The politics of distraction [are] alive and well in the United States. Even American citizens, of course, don’t know much about Guam. Guam is actually conceived of as nothing but a military base or military outpost.

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Resisting the Empire

Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Resisting the Empire

Joseph Gerson | March 20, 2008

Editor: Emily Schwarz Greco

Victories are within sight for people in a growing number of nations where communities that host U.S. foreign military bases have long fought to get rid of them.

Ecuador’s decision not to renew the U.S. lease for the forward operating base at Manta (see Yankees Head Home) is the culmination of just one of many long-term and recently initiated community-based and national struggles to remove these military installations that are often sources of crime and demeaning human rights violations. A growing alliance among anti-bases movements in countries around the world, including the United States, is preventing the creation of new foreign military bases, restricting the expansion of others, and in some cases may win the withdrawal of the military bases, installations and troops that are essential to U.S. wars of intervention and its preparations for first-strike nuclear attacks.
The Challenge

Of course, there is still plenty of bad news. The Bush Administration is currently negotiating what is, in essence, a security treaty with the Maliki puppet government in Baghdad to secure one of the principle Bush-Cheney war aims: permanent military bases for tens of thousands of U.S. troops. The goal is to transform Iraq into an U.S. unsinkable aircraft carrier in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East. Unfortunately, the plan for Iraq is only one part of the vast and expanding U.S. infrastructure of nearly 1,000 military bases and installations strategically scattered around the world.

Across Asia, in Japan, another Marine has raped an Okinawan school girl, traumatizing yet another life and temporarily shaking the foundations of the U.S.-Japan military alliance. Under the guise of a “Visiting Force Agreement,” U.S. troops have returned to the Philippines where they are deployed from “temporary” and unconstitutional military bases. In the Indian Ocean, Chagossian people were removed from Diego Garcia to make way for massive U.S. military bases; they have won all of their legal appeals but still can’t return home. In Central Europe, the Bush Administration is pressing deployment of first strike-related “missile defense” bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russia has countered by threatening to target the bases with nuclear weapons, and opposition to “missile defense.” In response to this renewed Cold War, opposition to “missile defense” weaponry is building in public squares and in parliaments throughout the region. And, as he recently traveled across Africa, President George W. Bush was met with near universal opposition to his plans for further military colonization of the continent in the form of moving the Pentagon’s Africa Command headquarters from Europe to the oil and resource-rich continent.

The Bush Administration and Pentagon are “reconfiguring” the U.S. global network of more than 750 foreign military bases to impose what Vice President Dick Cheney termed in a New Yorker interview as “the arrangement for the 21st century.” This imperial “arrangement” is increasingly being met with opposition in “host” nations and the United States alike, and victories by allied movements are within reach.
How We Got Here

For more than a century, the United States has been building an unrivaled global structure of nearly foreign fortresses. Located on every continent and at sea, these military bases and installations provide an infrastructure from which invasions and nuclear wars can be launched. They enforce an unjust and often violent status quo, influence the politics and diplomacy of “host” nations, secure privileged access to oil and other natural resources, encircle enemies, “show the flag,” and more recently have served as prisons operating outside the restrictions of U.S. and international law.

These bases violate democratic values in other ways. When the United States was founded, the Declaration of Independence decried the “abuses and usurpations” caused by King George having “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies.” Since then, “abuses and usurpations” inherent in the presence of foreign “Standing Armies” have become far more dangerous. Their demeaning and disruptive impacts include:

* Undermining the sovereignty of “host” nations
* Militarizing and colonizing the “host” nation’s culture
* Assaulting democracy and human rights
* Seizing people’s private property and damaging their homes
* Violently abusing and dehumanizing women and girls
* Causing life-endangering military accidents and crimes that are rarely punished
* Terrorizing low-altitude training flights and night-landing exercises
* Polluting with military toxics

Since the Cold War ended, U.S. presidents and the Pentagon have worked to “reconfigure” the architecture of this military infrastructure to address changing geopolitical realities, technological “advances,” and growing resistance to the presence of foreign bases. With agility, flexibility and speed being given priority in U.S. military operations, bases are being transformed into hubs, forward operating bases, and “lily pads” for invasions and foreign military interventions.

The other axis of reconfiguration is geographic. As U.S. forces have been forced out of Saudi Arabia, and with U.S. geostrategic priorities turning away from Europe and toward China, Washington has concentrated its military build up elsewhere in the Persian Gulf nations, Asia and the Pacific.
Tipping Points

In a number of countries, the reconfiguration has not proceeded as smoothly as anticipated:

Iraq

As Major General Robert Pollman explained in 2004, “It ma[de] a lot of sense” to “swap” U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia for new ones in Iraq. U.S. command and air bases located near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina incensed many Muslims and were among Osama Bin Laden’s professed reasons for the 9-11 attacks. In the lead up to the 2003 invasion, many of the functions of these bases were moved to Qatar and Kuwait, and after the conquest, 110 bases were established across Iraq. To limit their political and military vulnerability, the Pentagon has been spending more than a $1 billion a year to consolidate them into 14 “enduring” and massive Air Force, Army and Marine bases in Baghdad and other strategic locations, In addition to helping secure U.S. control over Iraq, these bases contribute to encircling Iran, and they can be used for attacks across the Persian Gulf region and into oil-rich Central Asia.

The Bush administration’s plans to saddle its successor with these bases and the continuing occupation by negotiating an agreement with the Maliki government hit unexpected road block. In addition to popular Iraqi opposition, U.S. peace movement organizations joined Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) to prevent the unconstitutional imposition of what is essentially a treaty. The Delahunt hearings about the proposed commitment to defend the Baghdad government from internal and external enemies, the bases which are permanent in all but name, and privileged access to investment opportunities (read oil) for U.S. corporations forced Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to rhetorically back away from the open-ended security commitment to Baghdad. But his promises that the bases are “not permanent” are less credible.

Nothing is officially “permanent,” of course. Not even the bases in Japan and Korea, which have been there for more than six decades, and not the Great Wall of China, or the pyramids of Egypt, which are slowly decaying.

With opposition to the treaty and the permanent military bases now a defining issue between Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. peace movement has an important opening to press its demands for the immediate and total withdrawal from Iraq.

AFRICOM

U.S. planners anticipate that by 2015 Africa will provide the U.S. with 25% of its imported oil. With Islamist political forces operating across northern Africa, the continent is also seen as an important front in the misconceived “war on terrorism.” So, to “promote peace and stability on the continent” the Bush Administration and the Pentagon want to augment the U.S. military presence in Africa, beginning with the transfer of the Africa Command, AFRICOM, from remote Germany to an accommodating African nation. As President Bush learned during his recent ill-fated African tour, the continent’s leaders are understandably reluctant to accept renewed military colonization. Ghana’s President John Kufuour put it bluntly when he met with Bush, saying, “You’re not going to build any bases in Ghana.”

Africa is not free of bases. France and Britain still have bases scattered there. The U.S. has bases in Djibouti and Algeria, access agreements with Morocco and Egypt, and is in the process of creating a “family” of military bases in sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Sao Tome, Senegal and Uganda.) And, although Bush responded to African fears about AFRICOM’s possible relocation by saying that such rumors were “baloney” and “bull,” he also conceded that: “We haven’t made our minds up.”

With a growing No AFRICOM movement in the United States that’s that is allied with anti-colonialist forces in Africa, this is one U.S. threat that can be contained.

Diego Garcia

In the mid-1960s, in a quintessential act of European colonialism, all of Diego Garcia’s 2,000 inhabitants were forcefully removed from their homeland by British authorities to make way for massive U.S. air and naval bases. In an act of legal fiction, the island was separated from Mauritius on the eve of that island nation’s independence.

Located in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia’s two-mile long runways have since been used to launch B-1 and B-52 attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan. Its stealth bomber hangars have recently been upgraded for possible strikes against Iran, and its submarine base is being refitted to serve Ohio-class submarines that can be used for both missile attacks and to secretly deploy Navy SEALS in Iran and other Persian Gulf nations.

The Chagos people of Diego Garcia want to return home, ending their exile in Mauritius’ slums, where up to 90% are unemployed and live desperate lives. The base rests on colonial constructions. With the help of allies in London and around the world they attempted to return, but have been halted on the high seas. But their plight and struggle has wide and sympathetic media attention, especially as they have won one challenge after another in the British courts. The British House of Lords is to make a “final ruling,” but an end run in which Diego Garcia would be returned to Mauritius’ authority and the “rented” to Washington remains possible. Education about the plight and struggle of the people of Diego Garcia, beginning with the spring speaking tour of Chagos leader Olivier Bancoult, is the best way to prepare for the next round of this compelling struggle.

Okinawa

Since its 1945 bloody conquest in 1945, Okinawa has served as the principle bastion of U.S. military power in East Asia – even after its 1972 reversion to Japan. Sixty years after the end of World War II, nearly 45,000 U.S. troops, civilian staff, and their families are based on Air Force, Navy, Marine and Army bases that occupy 27% of the island prefecture. Okinawans have suffered nearly every imaginable military abuse: One quarter of its people were killed during the 1945 battle, many by Japanese soldiers. U.S. nuclear weapons have fallen off ships and into coastal fishing grounds. Shells and bullets from live fire exercises have slammed into people’s homes. Children, their grandmothers, base and service workers have suffered rapes that are too numerous to count. Land has been seized, and military accidents – including helicopters and their parts falling into students’ schools – are not uncommon.

To pacify the nationwide outrage that followed the 1995 kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan school girl in 1995, Washington and Tokyo agreed to reduce, not remove, the size of the U.S. footprint on Okinawa. With the U.S.-Japan alliance hanging in the balance, the Status of Forces Agreement was revised to accord the Japanese courts greater authority over crimes by G.I.s, and a plan was developed to move half of the 16,000 Marines – the greatest source of G.I. crime – to Guam largely at Japan’s expense. Several bases were consolidated and Washington agreed to move the Futemna Air Base, in Ginowan’s city center, to a more remote part of the island. This leaves the massive Air Force, Naval and Marine bases still occupying a quarter of the prefecture.

Inspired by respected elders, the people of Henoko, the coastal site to which Futnema’s functions were to be transferred, have put up a stiff resistance. To prevent the militarization of their community and the destruction of the reef on which the new air base is to be built, they have built alliances with peace activists and environmentalists around the world. Their focus has been to prevent destruction feeding grounds for dugongs (large, gentle sea mammals similar to manatees) that became the symbol of their movement. They have also conducted months-long sit-ins and taken their case to court. A California appeal court recently confirmed their environmental claims, and the relocation process stalled.

Within weeks of this court victory, Marines raped a 14-year-old Okinawan school girl and a Filipina woman sparking renewed outrage across Okinawa and Japan. In the “Message from the Women of Okinawa” that followed, the U.S. military and the world were notified that the days when “so many rape victims…told no one and wept silently in their beds…are now over.” Their message is clear, “Go back to America. Now.”

With Washington and Tokyo focused on “containing” China, it will be years before the last G.I. returns from Okinawa. In the meantime, we can provide critical support to women and men who are courageously and nonviolently campaigning to defend their lives, their families, their communities, and nature itself. The base at Henoko must not be built. The base in Futenma must be closed. It is past time to bring all the Marines home.

Guam

Guam is not home. Located in the North Pacific and conquered by the United States from Spain in 1898, it has long served as a U.S. stepping stone to Asia. Nominally it is not a U.S. colony, but an “unincorporated territory” with a nonvoting delegate in Congress. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. air and naval bases occupied the island’s best agricultural lands, water sources and fishing grounds. Now the abuses and usurpations are becoming much worse.

Since the nonviolent 1995 Okinawan uprising, the Pentagon has been preparing for the day when it is finally forced to withdraw from Okinawa and Japan. Thus Guam is being transformed in to a military “hub.” Already large enough to accommodate B-52 and stealth bombers, Andersen Air Force Base is being expanded to serve as “the most significant U.S. Air Force base in the Pacific region for this century.” More submarines are being homeported in its harbor, and the Navy is considering homeporting an aircraft carrier strike force there is well. Then, there are those Marines from Okinawa. Understandably, Guam’s tiny Chamorro population feels besieged. In the traditions of U.S., Israeli and South African settler colonialism, it is “cowboys and Indians all over again.” We have a responsibility to prevent this cultural genocide.

Europe

The Cold War never really ended in Europe. An estimated 380 U.S. nuclear weapons are still based in seven European nations, and most of the 100,000 troops deployed across Western Europe remain there. But Pentagon campaigns to deploy misnamed “missile defenses” in the Czech Republic and Poland and to expand the Aviano Air Base in Italy are leading hundreds of thousands of Europeans into the streets.

The missile defense system is ostensibly modest. A missile tracking radar is to be installed in the Czech Republic, and ten interceptor missiles are to be sited in Poland, reportedly to defend Europe from Iranian missiles that have not been deployed. In fact, this is the tip of the iceberg. Russia properly fears that, once deployed, the missile defense system will be greatly expanded with the goal of neutralizing Moscow’s missile forces, leaving Russia vulnerable to U.S. first strike attacks. In response, President Vladimir Putin has menacingly threatened to target nuclear weapons against the Czechs and Poles.

Opinion polls indicate that most Czechs oppose the missile defense deployments and want to hold a referendum to block them. Many NATO leaders are angry that the U.S. circumvented the European Union’s decision-making process, and protests spearheaded by the U.S. Campaign for Peace and Democracy greeted Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek when he recently visited the United States. With many leading congressional Democrats also opposed to these dangerous deployments, missile defenses can be stopped.

Finally, there is Italy where, unexpectedly, hundreds of thousands of citizens turned out to protest the expansion of the U.S. Air Base at Aviano (which also hosts U.S. nuclear weapons.) Dissent over the base expansion nearly toppled the Prodi government in 2007, and it will remain the focus of European and U.S. anti-bases campaigns.
Resistance

In response to popularly based movements to win the withdrawal of unwanted U.S. foreign military bases, an incipient U.S. anti-bases movement is emerging. It includes organizations as diverse as the American Friends Service Committee, and the Southwest Workers Union, the United for Peace and Justice coalition, and scholars who are moving from studying military bases to working for their withdrawal.

Four increasingly integrated U.S. anti-bases networks have developed in recent years, spurred in part by the development of the global “No Military Bases Network” in World Social Forums and the global Network’s formal inauguration in Quito, Ecuador at a conference last year that brought together four hundred activists from forty nations. The U.S. networks are currently organizing April speaking tours featuring Olivier Bancoult from Diego Garcia, Terri Keko’olani from Hawaii, Jan Tamas and the Czech Republic, and Andreas Licata from Italy. And a national U.S. “No Foreign Military Bases” conference is in its early planning stages.

Joseph Gerson, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is director of programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England. His books include The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases, (South End Press, 1991) and Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World (Pluto Press, 2007).

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NATIVE HAWAIIANS & CHAMORRO (GUAM) WARN AUSTRALIA OVER TALISMAN SABRE 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2007

NATIVE HAWAIIANS & CHAMORRO (GUAM) WARN AUSTRALIA OVER TALISMAN SABRE 2007

Two indigenous Native Hawaiian activists and a Chamorro (GUAM) activist visiting Central Queensland expressed their shock and outrage at the destruction being inflicted on the local environment by the Talisman Sabre US/Australian joint military exercises.

” We are appalled that there will be live firing, bombing and sonar testing on the Great Barrier reef and in the habitat of endangered dugong, whales and green turtles,” said Terri Keko’olani of DMZ Hawai’i Aloha ‘Aina.

Terri Keko’olani & Leimaile Quitevis from DMZ Hawaii Aloha ‘Aina and Fanai Castro from Guam (GUÅHAN) are in Australia to support the protest against the 30,000 strong US/Australia war games.

“We are also appalled at the complete indifference of the Australian Department of Defense in asserting that the war games will not be interrupted simply because 7 peace activists are occupying the military danger zone,” said Leimaile Quitevis

“The demands of the peace protestors include: stop the war games, no more military exercises, close the Shoalwater Bay base, and return the land to the indigenous people,” said Denis Doherty, national co-ordinator of the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, one of the peace protest organizers.

” In 1976 I occupied the island of Kaho’olawe to stop live bombing by the US military, said Terri Keko’olani. ” My heart goes out to June Norman, a 66 year old grandmother who is presently occupying the Shoalwater Bay training area to stop live bombing of an environment considered to be a world heritage treasure. ”

Fanai Castro of the Organization of People for Indigenous Rights (OPI-R) added, “There is no justification for the toxic contamination of our lands and waters, therefore we uphold the actions demonstrated here to protect these precious resources.” She continued, ” This Peace action is significant in that it brings together a diversity of people who believe that, beyond war, another world is possible.”

For further information, please contact:
Denis Doherty on 0418 290 663 or Dr Hannah Middleton on 0418 668 098.
Terri Kekoolani, Leimaile Quitevis and Fanai Castro can be contacted on either of these numbers.

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GUAM AND HAWAII BRING WARNING ABOUT MILITARY EXERCISES

PEACE CONVERGENCE – MEDIA RELEASE – 20 JUNE 2007
GUAM AND HAWAII BRING WARNING ABOUT MILITARY EXERCISES

Three international guests arrived in Yeppoon – Rockhampton on Wednesday to add their voices to the protest of over 500 Australians concerned about the Australian-US Talisman Sabre 2007 military exercises at Shoalwater Bay Training Area near Yeppoon, central Queensland.

Coming from Guam and Hawaii, the three women carry warnings about the social, political, Indigenous rights, health and environmental price paid by small communities when their homelands become militarised.

A Welcome Ceremony was held at the Rockhampton Airport by the Fitzroy Basin Elders. They were also welcomed by the Peace Convergence which is protesting the military exercises. The Guam and Hawaiian visitors responded with chanting and the giving of gifts.

The guest from Guam is Fanai Castro from the Organisation of Peoples for Indigenous Rights. OPIR campaigns for the Indigenous right to an act of self-determination and opposes the expansion of US militarisation of their small island.

>From Hawaii, Terri Keko’olani and Leimaile Quitevis represent the Demilitarize Zone Hawaii Aloha ‘Aina, a pan-Hawai’ian movement for demilitarisation and Indigenous rights.

All three women are Indigenous rights activists in their respective countries and identify militarisation as one of the manifestations of ongoing colonialism.

“Our guests have firsthand experience of the impact of militarisation on people’s lives. They bring a timely warning about the real price paid by local people when their home communities become militarised,” Dr Zohl de Ishtar from the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland. Dr de Ishtar is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

“It is an honour to receive such a welcoming from the Indigenous elders, since it is with us Indigenous peoples that the atrocities of colonialism first made its mark. In these days it seems that militarisation is the new colonialism,” said Fanai Castro a Chamoru (Indigenous) social justice activist from Guam.

“Shoalwater Bay Training Area is the only facility in the north-western Pacific which provides such extensive air-land-sea live-fire training capacity to the US military. Many of the planes, ships and submarines participating in the exercises come are homebased in or transit through Guam. Hawaii is the headquarters of the Pacific Command under whose jurisdiction the Talisman Sabre exercises fall,” said Dr Zohl de Ishtar.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Dr Zohl de Ishtar, Phone: 0429 422 645
Australia Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland

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U.S. Ramps Up Missile Tests in the Pacific

June 3, 2007

U.S. Ramps Up Missile Tests in the Pacific

by John Lasker

Earlier this year, when China blasted one of its satellites into thousands of little floating pieces, it was condemned by Washington as a provocative act.

But some arms-control experts believe Beijing was baring its teeth to send the White House a different message. They say that China, which has consistently opposed the weaponization of space, is hoping to negotiate an arms treaty that would rein in both nations’ growing arsenal of so-called “space weapons.”

Just days later, on Jan. 27, Beijing seemingly had its answer. On the western shore of Hawaii’s Kauai Island, the U.S.’s ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, shot down a dummy ballistic missile over the southern Pacific as it skirted the edge of space roughly 110 kilometers high.

Analysts say the George W. Bush administration is turning its back on any new space weapons treaty because it would ground many parts of the U.S.’s emerging missile defense shield. One such treaty is PAROS, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space – a treaty China initiated at the United Nations in 1985 and has pressed for ever since.

The existing international regime, known as the Outer Space Treaty, entered into force in 1967 and critics – who include experts like Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector – say it is hopelessly outdated.

However, Washington has made it clear that the U.S. has no intention of endorsing new restrictions.

“Arms control is not a viable solution for space,” a U.S. State Department official told Space News on Jan. 19. “For example, there is no agreement on how to define a space weapon. Without a definition you are left with loopholes and meaningless limitations that endanger national security.”

Pentagon officials insist the U.S. is not seeking to put weapons in Earth’s orbit. Its space research, which is funneling billions to aerospace contractors such as Lockheed Martin, is strictly for defense, they say.

But arms control experts suggest that this rhetoric has failed to assuage China’s anxieties.

“So many defensive capabilities have inherent offensive applications as well,” said Theresa Hitchens, a space weapons expert at the Center for Defense Information, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington.

China’s ASAT, or anti-satellite test, may have also been a response to the US’s new National Space Policy doctrine released in late 2006, wrote Hitchens in a recent issue of the Air Force’s High Frontier Journal.

The new “NSP” states: “The U.S. considers space capabilities vital to its national interests. The U.S. will preserve its freedom of action in space [and will] dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights, and take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities.”

Hitchens says there is a more “aggressive tone inherent in this policy” and that it “rejects any limits on U.S. actions in space.” She adds, “This strategy, this policy, more aggressively articulates a space war fighting strategy.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to intensify its focus on the Pacific Rim, where it has dispatched a very strange-looking, very high-tech ship.

The vessel is actually a revamped oil-drilling platform, and centered on its top, roughly 20 stories above the ocean, is its most striking feature — a white globe so immense it could engulf the middle of a soccer field.

Hidden inside the inflated white ball is the clue to this ship’s ultimate mission: A radar dish so powerful it can decipher a real ballistic missile from a dummy missile, claims the U.S. military.

The vessel is actually a new and important piece in the growing arsenal that is the US’s missile defense program, which is now run by the MDA, or Missile Defense Agency. Some have dubbed the agency the “Son of Star Wars,” a 1980s-era program to deploy missiles in space, and the strange ship is the MDA’s billion-dollar Sea Based X-Band Radar.

Last year, the Sea Based X-Band Radar was witnessed off the coasts of Hawaii. It was taking part in an unknown number of missile defense tests, said the MDA. Space weapons experts suggest it could also decipher space debris from a “killer” micro-satellite.

Indeed, all sorts of missile defense tests are on the rise around the Islands, say Hawaiian peace activists, who believe they are intended to intimidate Asian “Tigers” such as China and North Korea.

“The increasing missile defense tests are a destabilizing factor,” said Kyle Kajihiro, director of the Honolulu-based DMZ Hawaii. “The tests are provoking an arms race in the region between nuclear powers.”

Since being recently relocated from a New Mexico desert, the MDA’s ground-based THAAD has a perfect “hit to kill” ratio.

But it is the ship-based “Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System” that is creating more tension for China. Since 2004, the MDA and the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor have launched missile-like “interceptors” to obliterate at least eight dummy ballistic missiles in space or in the atmosphere.

What is so unnerving for Beijing is that Japan has spent millions to arm several of its own battleships with this missile defense.

Ships with the “Aegis” technology have tremendous reach, say experts, thus exposing more satellites to a shoot-down. In Greek mythology, “Aegis” is the name of the shield used by Zeus.

The U.S. Air Force is also researching ground-based lasers. On a summit of Mount Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, the Air Force helps run the Maui Space Surveillance Site. The military contends the site is for astronomical research, and has powerful telescopes that can detect rogue asteroids.

“I’m not buying any of it,” said Kajihiro. Lasers that can “paint” satellites – so to guide interceptors to their target – are being tested there as well, he told IPS.

However, Greg Kulacki, an expert on the Chinese military at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the theory that China’s ASAT test was a call for a space-weapons arms treaty “is just not true.”

Kulacki has spoken to Chinese scientists who work for the military’s defense labs. They told him the ASAT test was a “20-year-old end-result to an ASAT program that began in the mid-80s.”

Even though China is spending more and more on its military, says Kulacki, Beijing no longer subscribes to the theory the U.S. may someday contain China’s growing thirst for oil by “choking off its sea lanes.”

Nevertheless, many still believe U.S. forces positioned around China could deny its people resources in the event of war. And as missile defense tests are ramped-up in the Pacific, one expert says such tests makes many Chinese even more worried about the eagle’s shadow.

“The Chinese don’t like America’s offensive posture in the Pacific; they don’t like it one bit,” says University of Hawaii professor Oliver M. Lee, who was born in Shanghai, and studies Sino-American relations.

He says most Chinese believe “the U.S. Navy controls the Pacific Ocean.” They also feel that China’s military build-up is for defense. only, he says.

For the last several years, Lee, Kajihiro of DMZ Hawaii and many others have been fighting a plan by the Pentagon to bring 300 U.S. Army Strykers to the Islands.

The Stryker uproar reflects Hawaii’s internal debate over its militarization, says Kajihiro.

Why would the islands need hundreds of armored vehicles that are loaded with exotic weapons and also easily transported by plane?

“That’s the forty-thousand-dollar question,” says Kajihiro. “We’ve asked that over and over again, and no good explanation was ever given.”

(Inter Press Service)

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Hawai’i representatives participate in Demonstrations against Talisman Sabre

June 2007

DMZ Hawai’i/Aloha Aina Head to Australia to Particpate in Solidary Actions Opposing Talisman Sabre 07 – OZ/US Joint Military Exercises

Operation Talisman Sabre is scheduled to taking place over a six week period from the end of May to 2 July 2007. According to the Public Environment Report released October 2006 it will involve approximately 13,700 US personnel and 12,400 Australian personnel. Indigenous Chamoru and Hawaiians arrived in Australia to demonstrate solidarity with Indigenous Darumbal elders and to raise awareness within the Peace Convergence – a week of activities protesting the Australian-US military exercises called Talisman Sabre.

For more information on the actions, visit the following Australia-based websites:

Shoalwater Bay

Peace Convergence

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