Another activist with Hawai’i ties injured, still detained by Israel

Ken O’Keefe is an ex-marine who was very active in environmental and Hawaiian sovereignty issues when he lived in Hawai’i.  He delivered blistering testimony against the Army’s bombing and desecration of Makua.  What was so powerful about his testimony is that  he attacked the premise of the training.  As a vet, he had the authority to condemn the mission, much the same way that decorated veteran Smedley Butler called it: “I was a gangster for capitalism”.

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http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100604/NEWS01/6040345/Israel+detains+activist+O+Keefe

Posted on: Friday, June 4, 2010

Israel detains activist O’Keefe

Son of Hawaii resident involved in airport scuffle while being deported

By Eloise Aguiar

Advertiser Staff Writer

A man with connections to O’ahu’s North Shore who was among volunteers on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla is still in Israel after a scuffle at the airport during the deportation of the activists to Istanbul, according to his mother.

Pat Johnson, who operates the Hale’iwa shop Deep Ecology, said her son, Ken O’Keefe, was badly beaten in Wednesday’s fray, suffering a gash on the forehead and possibly cracked ribs.

Johnson said she learned about the incident from O’Keefe’s partner, who lives with him in London.

“The general atmosphere was quite chaotic and a scuffle broke out over an injured man who was being manhandled by Israeli officials,” Johnson said. “A number of people got involved, including Ken.”

The Associated Press reported that about a dozen female activists scuffled with security officers at the airport but were quickly subdued by authorities. Israeli officials said no charges would be filed and the women were to be deported as planned.

Israeli commandos took over a six-ship flotilla that was taking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing nine and detaining an estimated 500 people. Israel maintains the commandos opened fire as a last resort after they were attacked.

The flotilla was attempting to break the three-year-old Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel says the blockade is necessary because it prevents missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

O’Keefe and Ann Wright, a retired Army colonel who lives in Hawai’i, were among the detainees. Some 466 people were deported to Istanbul on Wednesday.

Johnson said her son was able to call his partner and tell her that he had refused medical attention and gone on a hunger strike because he was denied access to a lawyer after the airport fray.

Johnson said she is concerned for her son but understands his commitment to support this effort.

O’Keefe, 40, is compassionate and has a passion for the things he does, she said.

While starting the dive shop business with his mother in 1998, his concerns were for the ecology and the sea turtle. He would sponsor reef cleanups and go out to rescue turtles tangled in fishlines and floating debris, she said.

According to his website, O’Keefe was a Marine who served in the 1991 Gulf War but in 2003 he started Human Shield, an effort to stop bombings in Baghdad when the United States was about to invade Iraq. The effort was somewhat successful but on a much smaller scale than he had anticipated.

In fall 2008 he was a captain and first mate with the Free Gaza Movement that sailed two boats into Gaza.

In February 2009 he founded Aloha Palestine in hopes of providing ship service between Cyprus and Gaza.

“He has a great deal of passion … for people and animals that can’t really stand up for themselves,” Johnson said, adding that she’s not sure what will happen now. “I know he’ll stand with his principles above everything. There’s no doubt.”

Henry Noa, who has known O’Keefe for about seven years, said he wasn’t surprised that O’Keefe would be on the ship to Gaza.

His commitment is unwavering and what he does, he does with full involvement, Noa said.

“He believes in justice,”he said. “I believe that his commitment to the Palestinian movement is something that he’s accepted and will continue until there’s some resolve to it. He believes that the Palestinian people are humans and the treatment they’ve been undergoing is below inhumane.”

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.

U.S. troops from Hawai’i to conduct joint training with Indonesian military, despite ongoing human rights abuses

In the article below, the Honolulu Advertiser reports that Hawai’i-based troops will conduct joint exercises with the Indonesian military.   The U.S. cut off military ties and military aid to Indonesia because of the horrible human rights abuses by the Indonesian military in East Timor.    When Indonesian military forces, special forces and militias conducted a scorched earth campaign in East Timor following the vote for independence in 1999, Commander In Chief of the Pacific Command Admiral Dennis Blair turned a blind eye to Indonesia’s atrocities.  (He was appointed to be the Director of National Intelligence by Obama, but was recently forced to resign.) In the aftermath of 9/11/01, Senator Inouye restored funding for training Indonesian military officers if the training took place at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.   Today, the Hawai’i National Guard has a special partnership with the Indonesian military, and Indonesian troops regularly conduct joint training exercises with U.S. troops.   But as Kristin Sundell writes in the East Timor Action Network blog, the U.S. has yet to restore funding for Indonesia’s deadly Kopassus special forces.  However, the Obama administration is seeking to resume military training for Kopassus.

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http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100603/NEWS08/6030320/Some+Hawai+i+troops+will+join+exercises+in+Indonesia

Posted on: Thursday, June 3, 2010

Some Hawaii troops will join exercises in Indonesia

Advertiser Staff

More than 100 soldiers and airmen from Hawai’i will participate in the exercise Garuda Shield 10 in Indonesia, officials said. American and Indonesian forces will train together June 10-25 in Bandung.

“Indonesia is a critical player in the security and peacekeeping operations in the Asia-Pacific Theater,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, which has its headquarters at Fort Shafter.

Mixon said the upcoming exercise “underscores the importance of Indonesia in our fight against international aggression and conflict. The strong military and cultural ties between our two counties dramatically improve whenever we participate in Garuda Shield.”

Staff officers from U.S. Pacific Command, based at Camp Smith; the Hawai’i National Guard; Pacific Air Forces; and U.S. Army Pacific will partner with Indonesian forces “to test peace support and stability operations capabilities,” the Army said.

Army officials said other troops will conduct a field training exercise on United Nations standardized techniques, and engineers will provide humanitarian and civic assistance in Indonesia’s rural communities.

Personnel from 24 other countries, including Japan, Russia and China, have been invited to participate in and to observe the exercise.

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http://etanaction.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-must-not-resume-training-indonesias.html

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

U.S. Must Not Resume Training Indonesia’s Killers

May 5, 2010

Kristin Sundell

There is something unnerving about hearing orders for your execution. Even more unnerving is the news that amid reports of continuing killings and abuses, President Barack Obama wants to resume US training for the Indonesian military unit that threatened my life and enjoys impunity in the killings of countless Indonesians and East Timorese.

On Aug. 31, 1999, I was serving as a UN-accredited election monitor in East Timor, which had just voted to end decades of Indonesian military occupation. Referendum day had gone relatively smoothly, in spite of the Indonesian military’s efforts to derail the ballot through terror and intimidation. In the wake of the vote, the armed forces and their Timorese militia proxies moved to implement their fallback plan — drive out international observers and raze East Timor to the ground.

That morning, a Timorese friend rushed to our house and played an intercepted radio conversation among Kopassus, the Special Forces unit of the Indonesian Army, and local militias:

Kopassus: “It is better we wait for the result of the announcement [of the ballot] … Whether we win or lose, that’s when we’ll react.”

Also Kopassus: “Those white people [referendum observers] … should be put in the river.”

Militia commander (passing the order): “If they want to leave, pull them out [of their car], kill them and put them in the river.”

Kopassus: “They need to be stopped.”

Militiamen: “It will be done.” “I’ll wipe them out, all of them.” “I’ll eat them up.”

We escaped, hitching a ride with United Nations staff as they evacuated. In the following days, East Timor was nearly destroyed, with 75 percent of its infrastructure demolished and more than a thousand civilians killed.

The Kopassus forces were long recipients of extensive US assistance, as were the rest of the armed forces during the reign of President Suharto.

The US Congress finally acted to curb training for the Indonesian Army in 1992, after it was filmed massacring more than 400 East Timorese as they peacefully demonstrated against the occupation. But training for Kopassus quietly continued at US taxpayer expense and without congressional notification.

Eight years later, Kopassus forces directed the Indonesian military’s campaign to subvert East Timor’s independence vote and to destroy the territory. In response, US president Bill Clinton severed military ties with Indonesia in September 1999.

The administration of former President George W Bush resumed many forms of military assistance in the name of counterterrorism, restoring full military ties in 2005. But training for Kopassus remained off limits because of a 1997 law that barred US training for foreign military units with a history of human-rights violations unless the government in question is taking effective measures to bring those responsible to justice.

Now Obama wants to resume training for Kopassus, despite the presence of many soldiers within its ranks who are guilty of severe human-rights violations. After orchestrating the violence in East Timor, the killing of West Papuan traditional leader Theys Eluay and the kidnapping and disappearances of student democracy activists in 1997 and 1998 without adequately holding those responsible to account, Kopassus should clearly be ineligible for US training. When the Bush administration proposed restarting training of Kopassus in 2008, the State Department’s legal counsel ruled that the 1997 law prohibited re-engagement.

And the crimes of Kopassus continue. A recent report by journalist Allan Nairn alleges that Kopassus members helped coordinate an assassination program, authorized by “higher-ups in Jakarta,” targeting members of a political party in Aceh Province. At least eight activists were killed in an attempt to pressure the party not to discuss independence for the province.

The Obama administration says it only wants to train soldiers who were not members of Kopassus at the time of earlier abuses, but this makes no sense in light of the recent killings in Aceh. Restrictions on military assistance provide important leverage for accountability and reform. That’s why Indonesian rights groups support the ban on assistance alongside international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Obama’s family ties and experience living in Indonesia as a boy give him a special connection to Indonesia and its people. Rather than push US training for the military unit that threatened my life, he should support human rights and justice in the nation.

Kristin Sundell served as a UN-accredited observer of East Timor’s vote for independence as part of the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project. She currently lives in Bandung.

Video posted: Army desecration of burials angers Native Hawaiians

Army desecration of burials angers Native Hawaiians from kyle kajihiro on Vimeo.

The Army Stryker brigade expansion in Hawai’i was a 25,000 acre land grab, the largest military buildup since WWII. Many cultural sites were damaged or destroyed by the project despite community protest. Despite warnings that a vast cultural site complex would be harmed by the Army construction, on May 14, 2010, the Army unearthed human remains. Digging continued after the first bone was found. On May 27, 2010, Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners conducted a site visit to survey the desecration site.

Ann Wright returning home after Israeli attack on humanitarian aid flotilla

Ann Wright, who was aboard one of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ships attacked by Israeli commandos,  is safe and will be returning to Honolulu according to a report in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.

She discussed the attack in an interview on Democracy Now!:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, we also have on the line also someone else who was on that boat. Ann Wright is a retired Army colonel, a former US diplomat. She spent twenty-nine years in the military and later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the US mission in Afghanistan. In 2003, she resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq. She was on the Freedom Flotilla and just deported to Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wright, welcome to Democracy Now!

ANN WRIGHT: Hi, Amy, Juan.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened to you?

ANN WRIGHT: Well, I was also on the Challenger 1 with Huwaida. And let me just give a great compliment to Huwaida and all of the Free Gaza Movement. It’s a tremendous, tremendous thing that they have done in creating this movement of boats that had six large vessels that went toward Gaza. And let me tell you how thrilling it was to see all of those boats steaming, those civilians trying to challenge the governments of the world that say there must be a siege to strangle the 1.5 million people in Gaza, and yet the citizens of the world are challenging that with everything they’ve got.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Tell us what you saw and how you were treated by the Israeli soldiers.

ANN WRIGHT: Well, I saw the attack on the Marmara also of the helicopters coming over, the rappelling down of the soldiers, the sailors, the Zodiac boats coming up the side, the spraying of them. Then, with that, the captain of the Marmara told us to go ahead to try to get as far away as we could, because we had the fastest boat. We were—as Huwaida very accurately described, our boat was boarded. People were thrown on the deck. Windows were blown out. Flash bangs were used. One of our journalists was hit with something of an electric shock. I don’t know that it was a taser. She doesn’t know, either, yet. One of the women was hit in the face, in the nose, with one of the liquid-filled balls. They were very excessively rough, excessively forceful, on trying to slow down, stop—actually, we were already stopped. They weren’t stopping us at all. We were already dead in the water, and yet all of this force used on us.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wright, I wanted to get your response to Vice President Biden. He was on the Charlie Rose show last night, and he was questioning what the big deal was getting this humanitarian aid directly to Gaza. This is the Vice President.

    VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not, but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know—they’re at war with Hamas—has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, “Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship, if you divert slightly north, you can unload it, and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.” So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, “I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight—3,000 rockets on my people.”

AMY GOODMAN: That was Vice President Biden last night. Colonel Ann Wright, your response?

ANN WRIGHT: Well, I think our vice president needs to take another look at this thing. The ships were open to inspection beforehand, and I’m quite sure Mossad had their little agents that were all over that place. These groups are humanitarian groups that are bringing in goods that are needed for the people of Gaza. They’ve had plenty of inspections on them.

If you talk about violence, it’s not 3,000 rockets Hamas is putting on Gaza; it’s a twenty-two-day attack that the Israelis did that killed 1,400 people, wounded 5,000, left 50,000 homeless. And here we are a year and four months later, and the Israelis will not let any sort of reconstruction materials in. And then, when reconstruction materials start coming that way, instead of waiting until—if they have a zone that they are trying to protect, let ships come into it and stop them.

But I would say that there are ways that you can stop them without killing people. There are ways you can stop even passenger ship like that ferry boat, and certainly like our little thirty-foot craft. You don’t have to use commandos with—I mean, you can use commandos with excessive force, which they do, but there are other ways to do it, if you want to kind of preserve a sense of civility, humanity, and meeting the international law, quite honestly.

And going outside a boundary, going into international waters, I mean, what they are are pirates. They are pirates. They kidnap people, and they’re stealing stuff. They’ve probably stolen over a million dollars’ worth of cameras, computers, cell phones. I mean, I’m in Istanbul. We just got here early this morning. Some luggage is here. There’s not a thing in it. Everything has been taken. The Israeli military said, “Oh, yes, we have to count this. You know, we have to take it.” Well, what they’ve done, they’ve stolen it. And if we have any friends that are in Israel, I hope that they go down to the black market and see where our stuff is, because somebody is making a killing on this thing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ann Wright, once you were in Israeli custody, how were you and the other prisoners treated?

ANN WRIGHT: Well, in the brand new Israeli prison—nobody had ever been in this particular prison in Barsheba that we were in—the treatment was reasonable. However, when we got out to the airport, I have never seen supposedly professional law enforcement people treat others with such disrespect. They were laughing, giggling, commenting on wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people. And I think what we saw as internationals coming in there is the tip of the iceberg compared to what Palestinians see every single day from those types of law enforcement officials.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Ann Wright, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Istanbul, where she was just deported to. She is a retired US Army colonel, former US diplomat, spent twenty-nine years in the military, later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the lead-up to—in 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the US mission in Afghanistan, in 2003 resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq. She was on the Freedom Flotilla, as was Huwaida Arraf.

Hawaii rally protesting Israeli commando raid

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/Hawaii-rally-protesting-Israeli-commando-raid/TYuDgfAt2UCv_A00H-6aIQ.cspx

Hawaii rally protesting Israeli commando raid

Reported by: Marisa Yamane

Email: myamane@khon2.com

Last Update: 6/01 10:13 pm

A Honolulu woman was among seven hundred activists taken into Israeli custody after soldiers raided a flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza.

The deadly raid also sparked protests across the US today, including here in Hawaii.

Hawaii residents outraged by the deadly Israeli commando raid staged a protest outside of the federal building in Downtown Honolulu Tuesday afternoon.

Sunday, Israeli soldiers stormed a Turkish ship that was leading a six-ship flotilla bringing 10,000 tons of supplies and aid to Gaza.

The Israeli Government said its soldiers boarded the ship to make sure there were no weapons being smuggled in for the terror group Hamas, and that its soldiers opened fire only after they came under assault.

At least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

Hundreds of other activists were taken into Israeli detention, including Honolulu resident Ann Wright.

“I’m glad she’s alive it looked like she was walking and not suffering severe injury she was obviously defiant because her hand was up and she was doing the peace sign. I’m also concerned because she has physical problems in her legs,” said friend Carolyn Hadfield.

Wright is a retired US Army Colonel, and a former State Department official who publicly resigned in protest of the US invasion of Iraq.

This is video of Wright in 2007, protesting the Iraqi War, in front of the White House.

“We are the people that are saying stop this war and stop it now,” said Wright in 2007.

More recently, Wright turned her efforts towards Gaza.

“She said the main reason she became involved in this particular issue because it was so clear the US taxpayers were funding a genocidal regime in Gaza and those were her words,” said Hadfield.

Hadfield helped organize this protest Tuesday afternoon — to not only get the message out, but also in honor of her friend.

“I’m very proud of her. I’m proud of her courage,” said Hadfield.

The Israeli Government said tonight it’ll deport almost all of the activists within the next two days, but will still detain about fifty of them for their investigation.

Japan’s Prime Minister resigns over broken pledge to remove U.S. military base from Okinawa

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/asia/02japan.html?th&emc=th

Japan’s Premier Will Quit as Approval Plummets

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: June 1, 2010

SEOUL, South Korea — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan, who swept into power last year with bold promises to revamp the country, then faltered over broken campaign pledges to remove an American base from Okinawa, announced Wednesday that he would step down.

Mr. Hatoyama faced growing pressure to quit, eight months after taking office, amid criticism that he had squandered an electoral mandate to change Japan’s sclerotic postwar political order.

Since taking office in September, he had come to be seen as an indecisive leader. This image was reinforced by his wavering and eventual backtracking on the base issue, which set off huge demonstrations on Okinawa and drove his approval ratings below 25 percent.

Calls had been rising within his Democratic Party for him to step aside before elections on July 11 that are seen as a referendum on the party’s first year in power.

“Unfortunately, the politics of the ruling party did not find reflection in the hearts of the people,” Mr. Hatoyama told an emergency meeting of Democratic lawmakers, broadcast live on television. “It is regrettable that the people were gradually unwilling to listen to us.”

Mr. Hatoyama is the fourth Japanese prime minister to resign in four years, which is likely to renew soul-searching about Japan’s inability to produce an effective leader and to feed concerns that political paralysis is preventing Japan from reversing a nearly two-decade-long economic decline. Mr. Hatoyama, who was teary-eyed as he announced his departure, was also following the common Japanese practice of leaders’ resigning to take responsibility for failure.

His resignation will not force a change in government, because the Democrats still hold a commanding majority in Parliament’s Lower House, which chooses the prime minister. But it will be a damaging blow to a party that had taken power in a landslide election victory that ended more than a half-century of nearly unbroken one-party control.

Mr. Hatoyama took power with vows to challenge the bureaucracy’s grip on postwar governing and revive Japan’s economy. Instead, his inexperienced government appeared to become consumed by the issue of the Okinawa base and a series of investigations into the political financing of Mr. Hatoyama and his backer in the party, Ichiro Ozawa.

Mr. Hatoyama said Wednesday that Mr. Ozawa, the Democratic Party’s secretary general and its shadowy power broker, would also resign. Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, said the party would meet Friday to choose a new prime minister. Candidates include party veterans Naoto Kan, the finance minister, and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.

The contention over the American base, which dragged on for months, was emblematic of Mr. Hatoyama’s inability to make up his mind, or follow through on ambitious campaign promises.

The Democrats failed to deliver on a number of pledges, from eliminating highway tolls to finding enough savings from cutting waste to finance new subsidies like cash allowances for families with children. Instead, the spending ended up raising concerns that Japan’s ballooning deficit could one day lead to a Greek-style financial collapse.

Mr. Hatoyama had been expected to be a diplomatic personality who would be able to build consensus among the members of his ideologically broad party. He had appeared to be naturally suited to the job, as a political blue blood who hailed from one of Japan’s most powerful families. His grandfather had been a founding member of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose long grip on power Mr. Hatoyama’s Democrats ended last summer.

During the election campaign, he had drawn attention by pledging to end Japan’s postwar dependence on the United States, and to build closer ties with China and the rest of Asia.

M. Amedeo Tumolillo contributed reporting from New York City.

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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100602x1.html

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Hatoyama quits as prime minister

Futenma fiasco, funds scandals proved undoing; Ozawa also out

By JUN HONGO

Staff writer

Ending a turbulent eight months in office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he will step down to take the blame for his Cabinet’s plunging approval rate, brought on by funds scandals and the row over relocating a U.S. base in Okinawa.

Hatoyama also said Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, embroiled in a shady transfer of political funds, will step down from the party’s No. 2 post.

“I apologize for the amount of confusion caused,” Hatoyama told a general meeting of DPJ lawmakers held at the Diet. “I thank you all for letting me lead (the administration) for the duration of eight months. I hope you will be able to create a new DPJ and a new government,” he said.

DPJ members from both chambers of the Diet are scheduled to choose the party’s new leader at a meeting Friday. The DPJ’s new head will be elected prime minister the same day at the Diet, where the party holds a comfortable majority in the Lower House.

Ozawa reportedly said the new Cabinet will probably be formed Monday and he “regrets” he couldn’t fulfill his duty to support Hatoyama.

Despite the slide in the opinion polls to less than 20 percent, Hatoyama was widely expected to remain in his post with only two weeks left in the ongoing Diet session and about a month until a crucial Upper House election.

But during the surprising farewell speech Wednesday, Hatoyama pointed to two blunders that continued to cloud his administration.

“First is the issue over Futenma’s relocation,” Hatoyama said, apologizing for his unsuccessful bid to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa despite months of searching for an alternative.

Hatoyama’s decision to keep the base in Okinawa resulted in the departure of the Social Democratic Party from the ruling coalition, after SDP chief Mizuho Fukushima was sacked as consumer affairs minister for refusing to sign the Cabinet resolution on the base deal.

The prime minister reiterated the importance of keeping Futenma in Okinawa for regional security, but said he hoped Japan “will be able to provide protection for itself” in the future and free Okinawa from the burden of hosting the bases.

Hatoyama also pointed to the continued political funds scandals that dogged his party as a reason for leaving office.

“I never imagined myself” being embroiled in such a scandal, he said, touching on the unregistered donations from his mother to his political funds management body that led to the indictment of his former secretaries.

Ozawa’s case, involving irregularities related to the purchase of a plot of Tokyo land in 2004, also resulted in his aides being indicted. Ozawa quit the DPJ presidency last spring over a separate funds scandal.

In addition to Ozawa resigning his post, Hatoyama urged DPJ Lower House member Chiyomi Kobayashi, also involved in a scandal involving illegal donations, to step down as a lawmaker.

While Hatoyama in his speech highlighted the new child allowance and tuition-free high schools as his Cabinet’s achievements, DPJ members were quick to move on and look toward the party’s future.

DPJ Lower House member Hajime Ishii indicated that Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan is a strong contender to succeed Hatoyama, saying his party doesn’t “have much time” to look around. “There is no question that he is a candidate, since we need to make a quick decision,” the veteran lawmaker said.

But Ishii, who also serves as the DPJ’s election campaign chief, expressed concern over how Hatoyama’s resignation will affect July’s Upper House election. “I’ve always said that changing the cover of a book doesn’t have much effect” on voters, he said.

DPJ Upper House member Koji Matsui, who serves as deputy chief Cabinet secretary, said the time is now right for his party to “regain what it once had, change from within and reform itself.”

Meanwhile, other DPJ members were left in shock about Wednesday’s abrupt announcement by Hatoyama.

“I saw the breaking news alert on television, but it could be a false report,” one DPJ lawmaker said heading into the general meeting of party members. “But a plenary session of the Upper House was canceled, which is a sign that there will be a big announcement.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Hatoyama’s decision was “extremely regrettable,” but added that the government will remain composed and fulfill its duties until a successor administration is installed.

Hirano, who served as a key figure in negotiating the relocation of the Futenma base, said he “felt a sense of responsibility” over Hatoyama’s exit.

Health minister Akira Nagatsuma also expressed regret over the development, saying any prime minister should remain on the job for a certain period to properly govern the state.

“It’s regrettable, but the party must build a strong structure,” Nagatsuma said.

Opposition parties meanwhile were swift to criticize Hatoyama’s move.

“The resignation of the prime minister is merely like changing the costumes in order to trick the public,” Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tadamori Oshima told reporters. Opposition parties were already moving forward to submit a no-confidence motion and a nonbinding censure motion at the Diet.

“We will seek to have the Lower House dissolved now,” Oshima said.

But following his speech at the party meeting, Hatoyama looked like a big weight had been removed from his shoulders.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060100426_pf.html

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigns

By Blaine Harden
Wednesday, June 2, 2010; A07

SEOUL — Having squandered a historic electoral mandate in less than a year, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned Wednesday, leaving his Democratic Party of Japan without a leader before a pivotal July election.

The kingmaker of the ruling party, veteran politician Ichiro Ozawa, also quit Wednesday, after his ties to fundraising scandals had soured voters on the DPJ’s leadership. Sometimes called the “Shadow Shogun,” Ozawa was the political mastermind behind a landslide victory that last August ended nearly half a century of one-party rule in Japan, when the DPJ trounced the Liberal Democratic Party and Hatoyama took control of the government.

Hatoyama’s popularity collapsed, in large measure, because he could not make up his mind. He spent months sending contradictory signals — to Japanese voters and to the Obama administration — over where to put a noisy U.S. Marine airbase on the southern island of Okinawa.

His final decision, which came Friday, pleased the Americans, keeping the Marines and their howling helicopters on the crowded island. But it enraged Okinawans and left most Japanese voters with the impression that Hatoyama was an incompetent and vacillating leader.

“It is unfortunate that people have come gradually to not listen [to my government] and I realize that I am to blame,” Hatoyama said, in announcing his resignation at a meeting of party leaders.

Polls in recent days have shown that support for his government had fallen to 17 percent. A small party — a key to his party’s control of the upper house of parliament — abandoned Hatoyama’s ruling coalition over the weekend.

Hatoyama blamed his handling of the Okinawa issue for his failure as prime minister. But he insisted that Japan needs a strong security relationship with the United States and said that his decision to keep the U.S. base was in the country’s best interest.

“I hope you understand my pained grief that we must sustain trust between Japan and the United States,” he said, noting that the March sinking of a South Korean warship, apparently by North Korea, shows that “security has not been secured in Northeast Asia.”

At some point in the distant future, Hatoyama said, Japan will not need the security umbrella provided by the United States, nor will it have to accommodate the “burden” of hosting tens of thousands of Americans troops. But he said that “is not possible in my era” to secure regional peace without Japan’s partnership with the United States.

When his party won power last year, Hatoyama and the DPJ had insisted that Japan needed to assert more independence from the U.S. government in shaping its foreign policy. His resignation — at a time when North Korea’s unpredictable threat appears to be growing and China’s military power is expanding — suggests that a new Japanese leader will not similarly test the country’s security alliance with Washington.

Hatoyama, a wealthy man and the grandson of a former prime minister, said that his popularity and the support for his party were also undone by the issue of money. He had been linked to financial improprieties in fundraising activities by an aide.

“We strove to bring about politics that is clean,” he said. “But it turned out that I had a former secretary that had violated the law . . . I am very sorry for creating great trouble to everyone, and for forcing the public to come to terms with why the head of the clean Democratic Party of Japan was involved in such issue.”

Money in politics also led to Ozawa’s decision to quit, Hatoyama said. “Everyone knows this issue lies with Ozawa, too,” Hatoyama said. “I consulted with him and said to him, ‘I will resign, and I would like you to resign, too, to make our party clean.’ Ozawa said he understood.”

Hatoyama’s unusual frankness — especially in the murky context of Japanese politics — won a standing ovation from his audience of DPJ lawmakers, many of whom have been demanding in recent days that he quit. Political commentators were also astounded — and impressed — by the candidness of Hatoyama’s remarks.

Thanks to last year’s election win, the DPJ holds a commanding majority in the lower house of parliament, the body that chooses the prime minister and has the greatest say in controlling the government.

But analysts say that the DPJ may lose ground in the July 11 election for the upper house, which could cripple the party’s capacity to pass laws.

Hatoyama, 63, was never a natural politician. Stiff and shy, he has a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University and has said that he spent many hours there wondering what it was that made him avoid human relationships. After he entered politics in the 1980s, his faraway look, an eccentric manner and wooden style of speaking caused him to be nicknamed “the alien” by the press and even by some of his political supporters.

In announcing Tuesday that he was quitting, Hatoyama referred to his odd reputation — but suggested he was merely looking further into the future than more conventional politicians.

“People call me alien but my understanding is that I seem that way because I am talking about Japan in five, 10, 20 years,” he said.

Hatoyama won his party’s nod as prime minister because the DPJ’s longtime leader, Ozawa, had seen his popularity collapse due to questions over his fundraising activities.

In a sense, Hatoyama was a kind of placeholder for Ozawa, who continued to work in background as the party’s chief political strategist. There had been widespread speculation that at some point Ozawa might take over from Hatoyama, but that talk ended when new fundraising abuses were linked to Ozawa and his perceived electability collapsed.

Analysts and diplomats predicted that Finance Minister Naoto Kan could succeed Hatoyama. On a trip to the United States in April, Kan laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery — a visit that one senior diplomat described as a “campaign stop.”

Correspondent John Pomfret in Beijing and special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Hawaii Woman Held By Israelis

http://www.kitv.com/news/23762985/detail.html

Hawaii Woman Held By Israelis

Activist Was On Aid Mission Attacked By Commandos

Dick Allgire KITV 4 News Reporter

POSTED: 3:54 pm HST June 1, 2010

HONOLULU — Retired Army Col. Ann Wright, a Honolulu resident, is reportedly being held by the Israeli government after commandos stormed a flotilla of ships taking aid to Palestinians in Gaza, killing 9 and wounding dozens of others.

Wright is a former state department official who resigned in protest over the Iraq war. She was on one of the ships attempting to take supplies to Palestinians cut off by the Israelis in Gaza.

Wright has been highly critical of Israel.

“They’ve been able to get away with any criminal act and violation of international law, and America protects them,” Wright said in an interview conducted aboard one of the ships just before the attack.

A YouTube video shows a person who appears to be Wright being escorted off one of the boats that had been diverted to Israel.

“It appears from the video that she was walking OK, but people who were deported have reported beatings after they were arrested. They’ve been reporting harsh interrogation techniques, so of course you worry about her,” said Carolyn Hadfield, a friend of Wright.

Protestors gathered at the Federal Building in downtown Honolulu on Tuesday to show support for Wright and criticism of the Israel.

“We’re all worried about getting our people back home, and a little alarmed that the U.S. government seems unconcerned. If you look at all the other nations involved, they’re very angry and demanding Israel return their people. The U.S. is protecting Israel in the United Nations,” said Michael Rivero at the demonstration.

The Israel government said those who are being detained will be released and deported within 48 hours. Friends of Wright hope she comes home safe

“She was a Colonel in the military. She had a very sober understanding of the stakes and knew what was happening to Palestinian people,” Hadfield said.

Honolulu woman detained in Israeli raid on Gaza aid flotilla

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/breaking/95371634.html

Honolulu woman detained in Israeli raid on Gaza aid flotilla

By Star-Bulletin Staff

POSTED: 01:32 p.m. HST, Jun 01, 2010

Honolulu peace activist Ann Wright was one of about 700 people taken into custody by Israeli defense forces after a raid on a flotilla of boats carrying aid to Gaza that left nine people dead, friends of Wright’s confirmed.

Kyle Kajihiro of the American Friends Service Committee, and Arnie Kotler, publisher of a book on Gaza by Wright, said they recognized her in a video of the detainees being led into detention in Ashdod. The video was posted on YouTube and several Israeli newspaper sites.

News reports said all detainees would be deported immediately, reversing an earlier plan to hold about 20 of them on criminal charges.

Joanne Moore, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said it had no information yet about specific Americans who may have been detained.

The raids have met widespread condemnation from the international community.

Wright’s plans to join the flotilla were well-known. She has been active in Gaza issues over the past two years, Kotler said.

Wright published an article Thursday on the website CommonDreams.org describing the trip. She predicted that the Israeli Navy would fire over the bows of the boats, or possibly ram and try to board them.

Israel has said its commandos fired on passengers aboard the lead vessel when confronted by knife- and club-wielding activists, a characterization denied by the activists. The flotilla was organized by a group called Free Gaza.

Local peace groups will be holding a rally outside the Federal Building on Punchbowl Street protesting the Israeli action today at 3 p.m.

SAVAGERY AT SEA: The Flotilla Massacre

Senator Inouye has been a staunch and uncritical supporter of Israel, including military aid to Israel.   Governor Lingle and newly elected Congress member Charles Djou are also a vocal supporters of Israel. Will they condemn Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla?  Will they seek “clarification”?

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SAVAGERY AT SEA: The Flotilla Massacre

By Phyllis Bennis

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phyllis-bennis/from-istanbul-outrage-ove_b_596158.html

ISTANBUL –

Israel has decided that it is better to be perceived as savage than as weak. In its initial attack on the boats carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel’s commandos killed somewhere between nine and nineteen human rights activists and injured perhaps as many as eighty or more. All those aboard the ships, which were attacked pirate-style in international seas far beyond the legal limits of Israel’s own territorial waters, were seized, then arrested and/or deported.

Hours later, during one of the first protests that rose in outrage against the assault on the boats, Israeli troops used tear gas with such force against protesters at the Qalandia crossing between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, that at least one international supporter, a 21-year-old American woman, was reported undergoing surgery to remove her destroyed eye. In Turkey, home to most of the dead and injured among the international activists, 10,000 people here in Istanbul marched from the Israeli consulate to the city’s main square, while thousands more took to the streets in Ankara, expressing outrage and demanding international accountability and immediate action to end the blockade of Gaza.

Maybe someone in the Israeli intelligence services or in the military really believed that the high profile threats that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla would “not be allowed” to reach Gaza shores would somehow convince the 700+ human rights defenders to simply give up. That they would agree to turn their 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid over to the Israeli military in the hope that the IDF, which has enforced an illegal and crippling siege against the 1.5 million Gazans for more than 3 years, would abide by their claim that they would send the aid on to Gaza… a Gaza that Israel continues to assert is not facing the humanitarian catastrophe that has been documented by the United Nations, by Amnesty International, by every Israeli and Palestinian and international human rights organization working in the region.

But anyone who knew anything about the Gaza boats knew that wasn’t going to happen. No one disputed that Israel has the military power to assault and overpower the boats, to force them away from Gaza’s shores and to arrest the hundreds of activists on board. Decades of uncritical U.S. support – including consistent use of the Security Council veto to protect Israel from being held accountable for its crimes in the United Nations, and most recently the Bush-initiated and Obama-implemented commitment of $30 billion in military aid to Israel – has insured that military power, nuclear and conventional, remains unchallengeable in the region and beyond. U.S. complicity in the massacre is beyond question.

No government, anywhere in the world, supported the Israeli assault. Weak responses came from some important U.S. allies, including Britain and Germany, but even the most anemic reactions, those that parroted old U.S./Israeli propaganda of the Israeli commandos’ “right of self-defense” (as if special forces attacking a civilian ship in the dark of night in the middle of the Mediterranean in international waters somehow have the same rights as the civilian passengers on their target ship) bemoaned the casualties and called for some kind of international investigation.

Questions do remain, however, regarding how other countries are responding. Turkey took the lead, with its government calling the attack a “massacre” and Prime Minister Erdogan referring to it as “state terrorism.” Ankara imposed a series of appropriately severe measures, including withdrawing Turkey’s ambassador from Tel Aviv, cancelling planned Turkish-Israeli military exercises, and indicating that the attack (most of whose victims were Turks) may lead to “irreparable” damage to the once-close Turkey-Israel relationship. Arab states, responding to outrage in the street, were predictably harsh. Perhaps more significantly in terms of a real diplomatic shift that may be afoot in the wake of the attack, the European Union and a number of European governments issued harsh condemnations.

The United Nations Security Council failed to condemn the Israeli attack, pressured by U.S. opposition. A powerful Council resolution would have not only condemned the attack but created a powerful international investigation, leading directly to an International Criminal Court referral to hold Israeli political and military officials accountable. There were efforts towards such a goal; Turkey’s ambassador called for condemning the attack “in the strongest terms” and called for an “independent international investigation.” Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the attack “banditry and piracy” on the high seas, and said that the dead activists were victims of “murder conducted by a state.” But the language was qualitatively weakened under U.S. pressure, and no resolution was passed at all. Instead, the Council issued a presidential statement, an act that does not carry the force of law. The statement simply condemns “those acts” resulting in deaths, without identifying Israeli responsibility. And crucially, it failed to hold Israel accountable by creating an immediate international, UN-controlled investigation, instead calling politely for an investigation “conforming to international standards” without even stating who should conduct such an investigation.

While several Council members stated their belief that the statement did refer to a UN-run investigation, and urged Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon to initiate the process, it remains far from clear that the vague language commits the UN to anything at all. The Council decision was another indication that so far, the Obama administration remains committed to protecting Israel from being held accountable for its war crimes and other violations. That defense of Israel remains far stronger than any commitment to international law, human rights and the principle of accountability.

The U.S. on its own, facing the possibility of global anger at its refusal to hold Israel accountable for the massacre of the boats and for its continual refusal (through use or threat of a veto) even to stand aside and allow the rest of the world to impose consequences, still refused to condemn the attack. In the first 24 hours, the Obama administration limited itself to expressions of concern and regret for the loss of life, and a polite request to Israel for “clarifications” regarding the event. Clarifications? Really?

Israel itself, having publicly anticipated a PR disaster following its planned assault, turned the blame on the victims. During weeks of open threats, Tel Aviv had announced that journalists would be allowed onto their naval attack ships to counteract the expected bad press resulting from film of the assault that would be produced by the numerous journalists – from al-Jazeera producers to a host of bloggers – already on board the ships of the humanitarian flotilla. After the attack, Israel’s domestic and international spin-shops went into high gear, focusing on the commandos alleged “right of self-defense” – as if heavily armed special forces jumping from hovering helicopters to seize a civilian ship in international waters, reportedly firing as they hit the deck, have any right of “self-defense.”

Israel is now claiming a new international law, invented just for this purpose: the preventive “right” to capture any naval vessel in international waters if the ship was about to violate a blockade – in this case, the illegal, Geneva Convention-violating unilaterally imposed (though U.S.-backed) Israeli siege of 1.5 million Gazan civilians. That one just about matches George Bush’s claim of a preventive “right” to attack Iraq in 2003 because Baghdad might someday create weapons the U.S. might not like and might use them to threaten some country the U.S. does like…even if they didn’t really have any WMDs at all and the U.S. knew it all along.

The human toll has been very high in these last days, for the international civil society activists and movements who continue to fight for human rights and international law for Palestinians. The human cost may grow higher still, as we still don’t know the extent of the injured and the numbers (let alone the names) of the dead. The costs are high. They remain high as well, on a daily basis, for the millions of Palestinians, living besieged in the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip, living under military occupation throughout the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, living as stateless refugees and longtime exiles in the Middle East and around the world.

But it may be that the horrors of the Flotilla Massacre will lead to some serious changes. Already the diplomatic realities are shifting. Israel’s war against Gaza last year lead to a wide-spread transformation of public discourse across the world, but most powerfully in the U.S. The massacre of international human rights activists at sea is likely to have similar or even more powerful results at the level of public discourse, but perhaps as well at the level of international diplomacy and shifts in power. Israeli fear of delegitimation is real – it is rapidly losing what the Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls the “war of legitimacy.”

The Obama administration so far is protecting Israel from accountability. But the backlash from the massacre meant, among other things, that Netanyahu had to cancel his White House meeting this week – the tete-a-tete with Obama designed to celebrate the renewal of strong ties after putting the settlement-related bickering behind them. The UN Security Council didn’t pass a strong resolution, but the anger expressed by virtually every member state, including U.S. allies, was unusually harsh. Governments – especially of the 32 countries whose nationals were among the activists now dead or injured or held incommunicado in Israeli detention camps – face powerful pressure from outraged citizens, and the cost of defending Israel is rising. Every NATO country, except for the U.S., is acknowledging in some form that a civilian ship of NATO partner Turkey has been wantonly attacked; the pressure to redefine NATO’s till-now cozy relationship with Israel will rise. Turkey, NATO’s only Muslim-majority country, is breaking its ties with Tel Aviv, and that break may be permanent.

International pressure currently led by civil society, through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, will continue, but increasingly governments will show new willingness to hold Israel accountable. Civil society has pressured national judicial systems to use the principles of universal jurisdiction to bring accused Israeli war criminals to justice. Palestinian and global civil society have taken the lead with BDS because governments and the United Nations failed to provide protection for the Palestinian people. Civil society activists, from around the world and from inside Palestine, have paid in blood for that commitment. Perhaps the Flotilla Massacre will change that equation.

For now, we mourn for our friends and colleagues, we continue to demand information on the victims and demand that the surviving activists and their ships with all their humanitarian cargo be immediately released so they can join the rest of the Flotilla already underway and continue to Gaza.

And as we mourn, our full demands must be for the immediate lifting of the criminal blockade of Gaza – the end of the blockade, not simply allowing a few additional items in under Israeli control. And then we must demand full international accountability, including criminal liability, for the Israeli officials, both political leaders and military commanders, who are responsible for the Flotilla Massacre. The United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and every national government should be prepared to investigate and to arrest those responsible.

_________________________________

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

New website highlights Guam’s marine biodiversity: guamreeflife.com

The proposed U.S. military expansion in Guam will destroy 71 acres of coral reef in the Apra Harbor to create room for nuclear aircraft carriers.  This new website will give people a sense of the incredible marine treasure that is threatened by this expansion. Raise your voices to stop the military destruction of Guam!

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From: David Burdick

Date: Fri, May 28, 2010 at 4:26 PM

Subject: announcing guamreeflife.com

Hafa adai friends, colleagues!

First of all, apologies for the mass email – it’s not something I do that often. But I’m finally ready to unveil my little labor of love, guamreeflife.com (http://www.guamreeflife.com), and this seems to be the best to way to get the word out. Guamreeflife.com is a website dedicated to raising awareness of Guam’s marine biodiversity through the distribution of thousands of images of marine life from Guam and lots of information about Guam’s coral reefs. I’ve told quite a few people about it already, and it’s been getting a fair number of hits in recent months, but now that I’ve completed (or at least nearly completed) some important sections of the site I thought I’d make it official.

Filling the void

I developed the site after realizing how few images of Guam’s reefs are freely available for outreach/education and other non-commercial uses. I’ve taken thousands of photos of Guam’s reefs over the last several years, so all I needed was a vehicle to deliver the photos to end-users.

It’s been quite an undertaking, as it’s required processing and organizing thousands of images, not to mention trying to identify species of many different taxa. It also required a lot of tinkering with HTML code to figure out how to build the site. Which reminds, me…I apologize for how bulky and slow the site is. Any design suggestions are welcome. I’m hoping to streamline it in the near future so that those with slower internet connections can access it more easily. I’m also hoping to throw together a DVD so it can be distributed to places with really slow internet connections. And FYI…the site seems to work best with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. 95% of the site works with Internet Explorer, but for some reason the slideshows in the reef tour section don’t work with that browser.

Content

The meat and potatoes of the site is the images section, with images arranged two ways: 1) my favorite images arranged by general category (e.g., coral, fishes, etc.) for those who are interested simply in decent quality pictures of marine life, reefscapes, and reef stress and 2) by taxa for those interested in identifying marine species. In the “organism ID” section, you’ll notice that it’s heavy on corals and opistobranchs (i.e., nudibranchs and sea slugs), but I’m continuously beefing up the pages for other taxa. Also note that a list of recently added species will be added to the “organism ID” front page (http://www.guamreeflife.com/htm/identification.htm) so you can quickly see what new additions there have been since you’re last visit.

Another big part of the site is the “reef tour” section, where you can click on a map or browse a list of reef sites around Guam to view reefscapes from these sites. The idea is to give people a sense of what each of these sites looks like from a diver’s/snorkeler’s perspective, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some of you may be particularly interested in the photos from marine resource surveys of the reef area in Apra Harbor planned for dredging (http://www.guamreeflife.com/htm/reeftour/cvn_survey_sites.htm).

Here are a few of the site’s highlights:

– Over 9200 photos of more than 1500 marine species from Guam

– Over 3200 photos of more than 130 reef sites around Guam

– Lots of information about reef management and conservation on Guam

– Links to dozens of helpful websites

I’d also like to mention that while I haven’t yet incorporated Chamorro names for various reef life into the site, that is definitely is high on my list of things to do.

Photo use

For those interesting in using photos for more than just home use (e.g., desktop wallpaper, screensaver, etc.), all I ask is that you send me an email with a list of photos and what you intend to use them for. The intent is that they be used primarily for non-commercial use, mainly outreach and education activities, but I won’t rule out using photos for commercial activities. These images are copyrighted, so please do not use them without my express permission. I don’t want to have to say this, but I need to: I reserve the right to refuse requests.

Spread the word

I hope you all enjoy the site and pass word to anyone who you think might be interested. I’m particularly keen on getting this site into the hands of educators and students, so any help with that would be greatly appreciated. Also, please check back regularly, as I will be posting new images and new information – probably on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Help out

I appreciate any input people can provide on the site, from design recommendations, help with species identification, and help to make the reef conservation section more informative and more accurate.

Along those lines, I have a special favor to ask of the professional and amateur taxonomists and naturalists: could you assist me in correctly identifying marine species with which you are most familiar? I did my best to take a first stab at identification, but I came up short on quite a few and am probably wrong on many others.

Thanks and enjoy!

Dave

David R. Burdick

Biologist/Coastal GIS Specialist

Guam Coastal Management Program