Aloha every one, I will be on the beach at the Kaneohe Harbor with family holding hands at 11 am. Please share your experience at your beach on this forum. Mahalo
"Hands Across the Sand" at the beach
 |
Where: the beach (in Haleiwa) |
What: In the wake of the giant BP oil spill, tens of thousands of people are getting together on beaches around the world for a massive event called "Hands Across The Sand." We'll join hands and draw a literal line in the sand to say "yes" to clean energy and "no" to more offshore drilling.
Can you make it this Saturday at 11 am?
Click here for more details and to RSVP:
Replies
The Islands of Micronesia:Captives of U.S. Nuclear Strategy
By Glenn Alcalay
Ed. Note. No treatment of U.S. intervention in the South Pacific would be complete without first examining the overriding U.S. interest in the region. The South Pacific is pivotal in projecting U.S. military power and as a vast testing ground for U.S. nuclear weapons. In this article, South Pacific researcher Glenn Alcalay gives an overview of U.S. nuclear testing in Micronesia.
After the U.S. used the atomic bomb to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki and defeat Japan, they quickly seized the 2,100 islands of Micronesia (formerly known as the Japanese Mandated Islands) as war booty. The U.S. forcibly removed the indigenous peoples of Bikini and Enewetak in order to convert their once‑pristine islands into nuclear weapons laboratories.
In the strategic expanse of the central Pacific Ocean the tiny islands of Micronesia between Hawaii and the Philippines continue to serve the Pentagon. Since 1959, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands has been used as a "catcher's mitt" to perfect the accuracy of incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) shot from Vandenberg Air Force Base (California) and elsewhere. Kwajalein has also served as an anti‑ballistic missile (ABM) testing site and is today considered a vital military site for "Star Wars" and antisatellite (ASAT) development.
Belau, in the western‑most corner of Micronesia (and a mere 500 miles from Mindanao in the Philippines) is viewed by Washington war planners as a prospective Trident submarine base, as well as guerrilla warfare training area and amphibious base, Together with the islands of Guam (which bristles with nuclear weapons), Saipan, Tinian, and Rota, Belau completes a "fallback arc" in the event the critical bases in the Philippines are not renewed beyond the 1991 lease expiration date.
The islands of Micronesia have played, and will continue to play, an important role in consolidating the U.S.'s strategic posture well into the 21st century.
Early Period of U.S. Rule
At war's end, the U.S. took possession of Micronesia (pop. 150,000), comprising of the Northern Marianas, Belau, the Federated States of Micronesia (Yap, Truk, Pohnpei, Kosrae), and the Marshall Islands. In 1947, the U.S. became the administering authority of the United Nations‑sanctioned Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the only "strategic" trust of the eleven U.N.‑supervised territories created after the war. Under Article 6 of the U.N. trust agreement, the US. pledged to "protect the inhabitants against the loss of their Iands and resources," and also to "protect the health of the inhabitants."
On January 24, 1946, the U.S. announced that it had selected Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands for the public spectacle known as "Operation Crossroads" to demonstrate ‑ especially to the Soviet Union ‑ the awesome capability of its new atomic weapon on a fleet of World War II naval ships. Even before the dust had completely settled at Hiroshima and Nagasaki the U.S. ‑with its atomic monopoly ‑was eager to set the post‑war stage in a dramatic way.
Commodore Ben Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshalls, arrived at Bikini by seaplane immediately after the island's church service concluded. Capitalizing on the moment and alluding to the Bible, Wyatt "compared the Bikinians to the children of Israel whom the Lord saved from their enemy and led unto the Promised Land. "
Wyatt told the Bikini people about the bomb and about the destruction it had wrought upon the enemy. In what may be one of the Twentieth Century's greatest swindles, the Commodore further explained that scientists were experimenting with nuclear weapons "for the good of mankind and to end all wars." After some discussion with the village leaders, Juda, the iroij (or chief) of Bikini, replied that:
If the United States government and the scientists of the world want to use our island and atoll for furthering development, which with God's blessing will result in kindness and benefit all mankind, my people will be pleased to go elsewhere.
On March 7, less than a month after the Bikinians learned of the U.S. plan to use their island for nuclear testing the 166 islanders were carted off to uninhabited Rongerik Atoll, 130 miles to the east of Bikini. Rongerik was permanently unpopulated because it was uninhabitable, due to its limited resources that could not sustain a permanent population.
Back at Bikini, Joint Task Force 1 assembled 42,000 military and scientific personnel, 250 ships, and 150 aircraft in preparation for "Operation Crossroads," the first post‑war series of atomic tests. On July 1, 1946, a B‑29 lobbed a 23kiloton plutonium bomb, code‑named "Able," onto a target array of 93 moth‑balled World War II ships. "Baker," the world's first underwater nuclear blast, was detonated on July 25 amid the remaining ships of the target array. The Radiological Safety Section, directed by Col. Stafford Warren, had predicted that if the radioactive column from Baker did not rise more than 10,000 feet, radiological conditions would be "extremely dangerous."
In fact the column from Baker rose to only 6,000 feet and predictably, the entire Bikini lagoon was engulfed in a highly radioactive mist. The contamination was so serious that the third atomic test of the series, "Charlie," was cancelled.
The Baker atomic test was so harrowing that the final report issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff sounded as if it had been penned by Edgar Allan Poe:
Test Baker gave evidence that the detonation of a bomb in a body of water contiguous to a city would vastly enhance its radiation effects by the creation of a base surge whose mist, contaminated with fission products, and dispersed by the wind over great areas, would have not only an immediately lethal effect, but would establish a long term hazard through the contamination of structures by the deposition of radioactive particles.
We can form no adequate mental picture of the multiple disaster which would befall a modern city, blasted by one or more atomic bombs and enveloped by radioactive mists. Of the survivors in contaminated areas, some would be doomed to die of radiation sickness in hours, some in days, and others in years. But, these areas, irregular in size and shape, as wind and topography might form them, would have no visible boundaries. No survivor could be certain he was not among the doomed and so, added to every terror of the moment, thousands would be stricken with a fear of death and the uncertainty of the time of its arrival.
Concurrently, the ex‑Bikini islanders on Rongerik were having severe problems of their own. Several food staples, including some species of reef fish, pandanus, and coconuts proved to contain toxins. The exiled Bikini people remained on Rongerik in spite of increasingly severe food shortages, and in July 1947 a Navy medic visited the islanders and confirmed that they were visibly suffering from malnutrition. An editorial in‑the Honolulu Star‑Bulletin blasted the U.S. for its callousness:
We could spend tens of millions for the Bikini experiment, but we couldn't spend the tiny time and the trivial money to see that 166 natives were properly cared for where we ordered them to go. We were more interested in promoting death than in sustaining life.
Strategic planners in Washington decided to designate Enewetak Atoll as the second nuclear testing site; Bikini was determined to be too radioactive after the dirty Baker test and needed a "cooling off" period. On December 21,1947, the 145 people of Enewetak were forcibly moved to Ujelang Atoll in readiness for "Operation Sandstone," the 1948 series of nuclear tests which led to the development of Edward Teller's "super" or hydrogen bomb. Like their unfortunate neighbors before them, the Enewetak exiles now living in Ujelang suffered severe hardships associated with their move to a much smaller and less hospitable environment.
Kwajalein and the Arms Race
When the U.S. completed its nuclear weapons test program in the Marshalls in 1958, it had been decided to retain Kwajalein (which had supported the Enewetak and Bikini tests) as a military base. With the world's largest protected lagoon, Kwajalein offered the Pentagon war planners an invaluable opportunity to continue the U.S. strategic build‑up.
Serving as a giant "floating target," Kwajalein has been the re‑entry point for all ICBMs and SLBMs in the post‑war period. When atmospheric testing was driven underground with the partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the qualitative edge for nuclear superiority shifted from the blast of the warhead to the accuracy of the missile delivery system. Most of the data about missile accuracy for the U.S. arsenal (known as "circular error probable") have been collected from the more than $2 billion worth of ultra‑sophisticated missile radar tracking stations at Kwajalein.
When President Kennedy entered the White House, the Pentagon pushed hard for the Nike‑Zeus antiballistic missile (ABM) system despite recommendations from the new President's science advisors that the program be scrapped. But because enough of the ABM hardware had been built beforehand, a Zeus rocket launched in July 1962 from Kwajalein was tested on an incoming missile fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; the Zeus rocket was the first to succeed in getting within striking distance of the incoming missile.
With Reagan's strategic defense initiative, or "Star Wars," another dangerous escalation in the arms race was begun. And once again, the people of the Marshall Islands have been forced to sacrifice the integrity of their culture and environment for this newest obsession with the age‑old myth of missile defense. Ebeye Island‑the tiny and treeless 66‑acre island at Kwajalein ‑is known throughout the Pacific as the "ghetto," and is considered a biological "time‑bomb." With approximately 10,000 islanders at tiny Ebeye, the U.S. ingeniously grabbed the largest island at Kwajalein for the site of the American base with 3,000 support personnel.
Apart from testing for missile accuracy and "Star Wars," Kwajalein will allow the Pentagon war planners to practice antisatellite (ASAT) technologies, whereby missiles fired from the ground and air would destroy the Soviet communication satellites that serve as the ‑eyes and ears" for Soviet missiles. An ultra‑modern Altair radar array, which stretches from San Miguel in the Philippines, to Guam, and terminates at Kwajalein, forms the Pacific Barrier ASAT system considered crucial for knocking out Soviet communications satellites in a first‑strike by the US.
The Annexation of Micronesia
In 1962 President issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 145. Under a Freedom of Information Act request, portions of this memorandum have been released, which "set forth as US. policy the movement of Micronesia into a permanent relationship within the US.political framework." Thus document, together with the infamous "Solomon Report" that served as the "master plan" for the implementation of NSAM 145, clearly shows how the U.S. constructed a policy more than twenty years ago to annex the islands of Micronesia in blatant violation of the principles embodied in the 1947 U.N. Trust Agreement. Not surprisingly, most of the Solomon Report is stiff classified.
As the U.S. winds down its longstanding U.N. trusteeship with Micronesia, a dubious legal document known as the Compact of Free Association will nominally replace the U.N. trust relationship. Under the terms of the Compact, the US. will have military options in Micronesia for the next half century. The coveted missile test site at Kwajalein will be used for at least the next 30 years by the U.S. under the Compact for the Marshall Islands, and Belau will be used by the Pentagon for the next 50 years. Having created near‑absolute economic dependency during the four decades of U.N. supervised trus teeship, the U.S. essentially annexed the islands of Micronesia for a strategic foothold in the central Pacific well into the Twenty‑first Century. As Kwajalein Senator Ataji Balos eloquently stated some years ago, "We have the trust, and the U.S. has the territory."
Hayden Williams‑the chief negotiator for the Nixon and Ford administrations in the Micronesian status talks ‑explained to Woodward that the CIA intelligence operation at Saipan was useful "because the Micronesians are tough negotiators." Authors Victor Marchetti and John Marks, in their book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence state that the Asia Foundation, which was headed for many years by Hayden Williams, was established and funded by the CIA. Williams' skill's as a negotiator brought the Northern Marianas into a permanent commonwealth affiliation with the U.S., and with it the strategic islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota lying adjacent to Guam.
1. The island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas was used in the 1950s and 1960s as a CIA training base for Nationalist Chinese guerillas. According to a memorandum from Gen. Edward G. Landsdale, formerly the Pentagon's chief counterinsurgency expert, to Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy's military adviser, "[the] CIA maintains a field training station on the island of Saipan... The installation is under Navy cover and is known as the Naval Technical Training Unit.The primary mission of the Saipan Training Station is to provide physical facilities and competent instructor personnel to fulfill a variety of training requirments including intelligence tradecraft, communications, counterintelligence and psychological warfare techniques. Training is in support of CIA activities conducted throughout the Far East area.
Robert Divine, Blowing in the Wind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p.11.
Ibid., p.12.
"Aspects of Peace and Security in Asia and the Pacific," Arena Bulletin Asian Exchange, Hong Kong, Vol. IV, Nos. 2-3, January 1986,p.38.
Glenn Alcalay, 'The Aftermath of Bikini," The Ecologist [United Kingdom], Vol. 10, No. 10, 1980, p. 347.
U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing of the Committee on Veterans Affairs, 98th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., May 24, 1983,p.326.
Final Report of the JCS Evaluation Board for Operation Crossroads, Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 30,1947,'The Evaluation ofthe Atomic Bomb as a Military Weapon," p. 84.
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 4, 1947.
Stanford Research Institute, "Environmental Impact Assessment of Kwajalein Missile Range Operations," August 1975, p.17.
10. Giff Johnson, Collision Course at Kwajalein: Marshall Islanders in the Shadow of the Bomb, Pacific Concerns Resource Center, 1984, p. 61.This excellent book is available from the author at P.O. Box 14, Majuro, Marshall Islands 96960.
National Security Action Memorandum 145, "New Policy for the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands," April 18, 1962, The White House, Washington, D.C.
Beginning in 1969, political leaders throughout Micronesia began high‑level status negotiations discussions with the U.S. in an effort to terminate the U.N. trusteeship. When the Micronesian leaders began pushing for independence from the U.S., it was learned that the CIA was used to monitor discussions between the Micronesian leaders. According to a frontpage December 2, 1976 Washington Post article by Bob Woodward, "The Central Intelligence Agency has regularly been conducting electronic surveillance against representatives of this country's last colony the Pacific island group of Micronesia."
Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s
Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most
controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon
Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental
movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate
power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple
viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation
from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.
The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial
rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco – which merged
with Chevron in 2001 – spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse
regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a
“death zone” in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth
defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region
contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life.
Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by
“environmental con men” who are seeking to line their pockets with the company’s billions.
The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged
contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate.
And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged
in and out of court, and the case drew attention from an array of celebrities, politicians and journalists,
and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film’s subjects sparked further controversy as they
won a CNN “Hero” award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Shooting in dozens of locations on three continents and in multiple languages, Berlinger and his crew
gained extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond, capturing the drama as it
unfolded while the case grew from a little-known legal story to an international cause célèbre. Crude is a
ground-level view of one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time, one that has the potential of
forever changing the way international business is conducted. While the environmental impact of the
consumption of fossil fuels has been increasingly documented in recent years, Crude focuses on the
human cost of our addiction to oil and the increasingly difficult task of holding a major corporation
accountable for its past deeds.
I will be holding hands in a fishermen lock at Kaneohe Harbor with family memebers at 11 am. Please share ones experience on this forum. Mahalo
Maori To Protest With Beach Fires
By Yvonne Tahana
4:00 AM Saturday Jun 26, 2010
East Coast Maori will light fires to symbolise their historic occupation along the coastline tomorrow in a protest against potential oil drilling by Brazilian giant Petrobras.
This month the Government awarded Petrobras a five-year exploratory permit for 12,333sq km of the Raukumara Basin, which is off East Cape.
Organiser Ani Pahuru-Huriwai from Hicks Bay is hoping that concerned residents from the Eastern Bay of Plenty around the Cape to Gisborne - Whanau Apanui and Ngati Porou heartland country - will turn out in force.
The fires will be supervised, Ms Pahuru-Huriwai said. "We're hoping every beach will have a fire that has been lit by the ahi kaa roa [local Maori]. This is the way we all informed each other, signalled each other way back - through fire. In this case we're saying that it's Petrobras that we're all against."
Given the communities are rural and isolated - Statistics New Zealand estimates 2790 live around East Cape - Ms Pahuru-Huriwai said she had no idea how many would turn up. She reckoned that "on a good day", Hicks Bay and Te Araroa had a resident population of between 600 to 800 and it was a priority to get every one of those people involved.
At the centre of coasties' fears if drilling did occur is a repeat of the massive BP environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but the ecological impact on fisheries also worries Maori.
"Our fears are amplified by that [disaster]. Papatuanuku [Mother Earth] is bleeding, she's purging blood and there's no way of stopping it, no matter how much money they're throwing at it.
"It's a serious threat to us and our kapata kai [food cupboard]. It's not just a Maori thing either - we think every Kiwi has an issue with it. Everyone who is scared of what's happening, they need to be here."
Te Runanga o Ngati Porou chairman Api Mahuika said his iwi was still smarting from the failure of Energy and Resources minister Gerry Brownlee to consult it, even though he had apologised for not giving the iwi the heads-up about the Raukumara announcement.
"We're reliant on the sea," Mr Mahuika said. "I'm still hopeful we'll be able to catch the horse and put it back into the shed because it's going to be so destructive to our ecosystem."
By Yvonne Tahana |