US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM, PACIFIC
OCEAN, EAST ASIA, AFRICA
OMNI NEWSLETTER #8. Nov. 8, 2013. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace. (#1
May 8, 2012; #2 August 22, 2012; #3 Nov. 25, 2012; #4 Jan. 12, 2013; #5 March
27, 2013; #6 July 5, 2013; #7 August 12, 2013).
See US Westward Imperialism, Continental, Newsletter. See this film link to Westward Expansion,
Continental US:
Time of Fear (PBS), WWII Japanese-American Internment Camps in Arkansas, Citizens and
Constitution Injured by the War
Write or Call the White House
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Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for opposition to
empire, militarism, and wars. Here is the
link to the Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/ See: Continental US Westward Expansion,
Genocide, Indigenous People of Americas, Pentagon,
US Imperialism,
and more.
My blog:
It's the War Department
WHO TELLS THE STORY?
“. . .the dominant interpretation of the past often enjoys
its status not because of its superior historical accuracy but because of its
proponents’ social power.” Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the
Violence of History (p. 276).
THE CHINA
THREAT
“Percentage of Americans who say China ‘can’t be trusted: 68.” (“Harper’s Index” January 2013). Where do you think that fear came from? US
encirclement of China would
not happen without the majority of people first having been persuaded by the
warriors to believe China is
an enemy, just as with Vietnam
and the “Axis of Evil.” Who’s next? --Dick
Nos. 3, 4, 5
at end
Contents #6
Dick: From Plymouth
and Pequots to Across the Pacific
Taylor: Eurasia: US Westward
Bases Meet US Eastward Bases Meet China’s
Westward Bases Meet. . . .
San Juan: Philippines
Genocide, Continuing Struggle
San Juan, US
Empire in and from Philippines
and Filipina Political Prisoners
Fackler: Japan Abandoning Pacifism
Jeju Island, New Film Purchased
Jeju Island Reported in The Nuclear Resister
Southeast
Asian Bases: Singapore
Gerson:
Peace Movement and Pivot
Beifus:
Transpacific Partnership (TPP)
Glazebrook: Empire Westward or Eastward? Africa
Contents #7
Occupied
Pacific
Vitchek,
Missile Test Site, Kwajalein
Dibblin,
Marshall Islands
and Nuclear Testing, NYT Rev. by Mitgang
Occupying
E. Asia Surrounding China
Reed,
Ring Around China
NYT Editorial, Vandenberg AFB Missile Intercept Failure
Dick,
Commentary on NYT Editorial
Vandenberg
Protest Case Goes to US Supreme Court
Flowers
and Zeese, TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership (see earlier newsletters)
Jones,
T-PP and TAFTA
Hightower,
T-PP
Contents #8
TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, US Economic Empire (also see
reports in #7 and before)
Dick, US Tests Missiles Vandenburg to Kwajalein
US Control of Micronesia, Over a Million Square
Miles
Dick, Sixteen Reports on “The Pivot” from One Number of Space Alert!
Roots Action, Pagan
Island in the Northern
Marianas: Stop Another
Vieques
San Juan, US/Philippines Security Ties
Increasing
Founding Fathers’ Principles
SEVERAL ON
TPP
MOYERS & Co. (Nov. 3, 2013)
Interviews of Yves Smith, “Naked Capitalism” Blog
Dean Baker, “Beat the Press” Blog
TPP has all the liabilities of NAFTA: not a free trade agreement because it
weakens worker protection regulation, decreases jobs, strengthens property
rights and profits (patents), weakens Dodd/Frank legislation, and weakens or
removes regulation of financial sector.
TPP is for corporations not people.
Also, like NAFTA, it will harm the environment.
And it is anti-China, it isolates China.
Obama campaigned in 2008 to reform NAFTA, but he did
not. Why? O. is a “very conservative,” that is,
pro-corporate economist. –Dick
Bill
Moyers, Moyers & Company: Some
vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership
negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who
join Moyers & Company this week.
Global Justice Advocates: Spectacle Actions Continue in Washington, DC
to Expose Secret Trade Agreement
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 24, 2013
3:18 PM
|
CONTACT: Global Justice
Advocates
|
Spectacle Actions Continue in Washington, DC
to Expose Secret Trade Agreement
WASHINGTON - September
24 - A fourth day of action will take place today as energy builds to expose
the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and pressure Congress to vote
“no” on granting Fast Track (Trade Promotion Authority) to the President. Fast
Track would allow the President to negotiate and sign the TPP without
Congressional hearings or amendments on the full content of the text and
without full consideration of the impact the TPP will have on laws that protect
consumers, workers and the environment.
·
104
comments
·
6
days ago
The TPP Is
Another Job Killing Trade Deal - So Why Are Both Parties Supporting It? By Natalie Pompilio, Yes! Magazine 31 August 13
Factory owners in the United
States say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership—which is being
negotiated this week in Brunei—will
force them to lay off workers. Yet opponents in Washington are few and far between.
Document Actions
posted Aug 28, 2013
TPP negotiators at the 19th ministerial in Brunei.
Photo by DFATD / Flickr.
igwam Mills has been making socks in Sheboygan, Wis.,
for more than 100 years. This is quality footwear sold at sporting goods stores
and specialty outlets, not the cheaper, flimsier items you might find at a big
box store. Wigwam has more than 200 skilled and semi-skilled workers-some of
whom are second- or third-generation employees.
The company is a rarity, a survival
story that inspires flag-waving. It endures in an industry that has seen
similar plants close or move overseas where labor and real estate is cheaper
and environmental regulations less stringent. It's a holdout from a time when
the United States
dominated the sock market.
That wasn't so long ago, says Robert
Chesebro Jr., Wigwam's president and CEO. He points out that in 1990, less than
10 percent of socks sold in the United
States were imported. Today, it's the
opposite: 90 percent are imports.
The small percentage of the sock market
still supplied by U.S.
manufacturers could decrease even more if the United States joins the latest
global trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The partnership, which
has been called "NAFTA on steroids," would establish a free-trade
zone between the United States
and 11 other countries, including Vietnam,
Australia, and Singapore.
Japan
will also join the agreement, meaning TPP countries will account for nearly 40
percent of global gross domestic product and about one-third of all world trade.
Critics say that if the TPP is approved,
the United States
will lose jobs as even more major companies move their operations overseas.
Bringing it home
Michael Stumo, CEO of the advocacy group
Coalition for a Prosperous America, said that of the Americans who lose their
jobs as a result of the TPP, about one-third will never work again, one-third
will find lower paying positions, and only one-third will eventually find a
comparable position.
"There will be much more poverty,
meaning your infrastructure suffers and the divorce rate goes up. This puts
stress on kids and causes social problems," he said. "If you want to
have a successful economy, you want to capture as much of the value in the
supply chain as you can."
That means bringing manufacturing back
to the United States
and supporting products made in this country.
Mitch Cahn, owner and founder of
Unionwear, a uniform manufacturing company in Newark, N.J.,
says both can be done. In 1992, he took over an empty factory in a
crime-blighted neighborhood. Today, his building stands on what he calls
"one of the safest blocks in Newark."
He has 115 employees, about 75 percent of whom have been there for 10 years or
more. There are only 15 parking spaces on site, but that's not a problem: Most
of the employees walk to work or use public transportation.
"From our factory rooftop, we can
see dozens of houses where our employees live. We can see their kids playing
outside. We can see them walk home from school," Cahn said.
A former Wall Street money mover, Cahn decided
to open his manufacturing company because he "wanted to add value and
create value instead of just moving it around." He rents out sections of
his 75,000-square-foot building to businesses related to uniform manufacture,
like screen printers and a sewing contractor. That reduces his transportation
costs and carbon footprint.
Still, he says, products made in the United States
are often more expensive than their foreign counterparts. Many of his company's
products are sold to labor unions, government departments, and those in the
anti-sweatshop crowd, like nonprofits and universities.
"Right now, no one buys a made in
the USA
product by accident. It's still more expensive, about 25 percent more
expensive," he says.
Buying American
Mark Andol, whose two New York stores sell only American-made
products, says customers recognize that the quality of his products makes up
for the price. When Andol opened his first store in tiny Elma, N.Y.,
in 2010, he had 50 products he could boast were American-made, including the
packaging. Today, Andol's stores stock more than 5,000 items produced by 350 U.S. companies, and his Made in America
stores have become tourist destinations.
"We try to lead with quality.
Everyone else leads with price," Andol said. "Most businessmen are
about making money and I'm about making livelihoods."
Andol knows firsthand what can happen
when companies take their businesses overseas. He ran his own general welding
and fabricating business from 1989 until 2007, when a major customer decided to
give its business to a Chinese company that was marketing the same products for
$3 less per piece. Andol had to lay off 38 of his 69 employees, including
family members and three friends he'd known since kindergarten.
"Nobody realizes what is lost when
one product goes overseas. It's not just my people. It's the guys who made the
boxes for me and the company who made the staples and labels," he says.
A bipartisan secret deal
The TPP's specifics
have been hammered out during closed-door conferences held throughout the world
over the past five years.
The 18th round took place in Malaysia
in July. Leaked chapters of the agreement have caused concern among a diverse
group of critics including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and numerous U.S.
labor unions. The agreement will give unprecedented powers to multinational
corporations and affect individuals in member countries in ways that are both
unexpected and undesirable.
Yet surprisingly, the TPP has supporters
on both sides of the political aisle.
"On health care, on transportation,
on abortion, on just about any significant policy issue, the Republicans and
Democrats are at a complete stalemate," said Auggie Tantillo, a strategic
consultant to the National Council of Textile Organizations, a lobbying group
dedicated to the welfare of the U.S.
textile industry. "On trade, there is an odd and convenient
bipartisanship. You have these huge retailers and importers that are supporting
the TPP on both sides of the aisle."
Curt Ellis, communications director for
the American Jobs Alliance, put it more bluntly: "Both Democrats and
Republicans have been captured by the financial elite on Wall Street and are
doing their bidding. Both parties are collaborating on the economic destruction
of this country," he says. "We can expect [U.S. House Speaker John]
Boehner to hold Obama's hand as they push us over the cliff."
Of course, some would benefit from the
TPP. During one round of negotiations, Chesebro said, one U.S. retailer argued that the TPP
could save consumers money on socks-approximately 63 cents a pair. "How
many people will be positively impacted by paying 63 cents less for a pair of
socks?" he asked.
And to get those savings, product
quality will likely suffer, says Tantillo. More importantly, working conditions
in certain countries may worsen. Environmental concerns will be further
ignored. Still, Tantillo doesn't think many American shoppers will care.
"We've created a
consumer mindset that has almost no social conscience," he says. "If something goes on
within U.S.
borders, we're quick to react to it and rightfully so. If it happens outside
the United States, such as the disastrous factory collapse in Bangladesh, we're like, 'Whatever,'
as if there's no connectivity."
President Obama said
he wants to see the TPP made law by October. He may get that wish if Congress
grants fast-track authority allowing him to sign the agreement without
pre-approval by Congress.
Taking a stand
Like other hometown American factories,
Wigwam Mills is likely to take a hit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even
though Sheboygan, Wis.,
2,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean, is far
from the international meetings where free trade deals are arranged. In the
1990s, this town of 50,000 was named "The Best Place to Raise a
Family" by Reader's Digest magazine. Sheboygan
is known for its bratwurst, and this year's 60th annual "Brat Days"
featured carnival rides, a footrace, and an extreme eating competition.
Wigwam Mills factory employee Sue Procek
is a Wisconsin native. She applied for a job
at the company more than 30 years ago after seeing an ad for a sock pairer. Of
course, she'd heard of Wigwam. Everyone here knows Wigwam.
"I heard it was a nice place to
work and family-friendly and all that so I put an application in," she
said. She got the job. Procek is now a work distributor, divvying up product
among workers-"the girls," she calls them-who add finishing touches.
The position is considered semi-skilled, and Procek, 56, also serves as
secretary/treasurer for the local union. "I thought I could make a career
here," she said, "and I was right."
Procek and her colleagues on the factory
floor only learned about the TPP a few months ago. Chesebro, their boss, has
long followed TPP negotiations, and he alerted employees to possible
ramifications of its passage. "If this were to go through and increase our
costs, we could lose 20 people," Procek said. "That's just us. One
small place. Add 10 other plants and that's 200 people. This could affect a lot
of people."
The key to defeating
the TPP at this point is to employ a "vampire strategy," according to
Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign: Drag it out of
the shadows and into the sunlight, then watch it burst into flames.
If the American public
knew the details of the TPP-which Stamoulis calls the "biggest corporate
power grab so far this millennium"- they would not stand for it. There
would be a popular uprising, he said, similar to the one against the World
Trade Organization in 1999, at the so-called "Battle of Seattle."
"People's
movements have stopped corporate power grabs like this time and time again. The
more people learn about them, the more upset they become," Stamoulis says.
"It's up to us to spread the word from the bottom up."
“AIR FORCE LAUNCHES MISSILE IN TEST FLIGHT.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Sept. 23, 2013). Comment by Dick.
Imagine China or North Korea launching “test” intercontinental
ballistic missiles 4000 miles eastward toward the US several times a year to a
designated target. From Shanghai
the missile would reach at least to Midway Islands west of Hawaii.
You can hear the din of patriotic indignation from Washington
and all around the super-security sick USA against such acts of war.
Well, China and NK
would only be repeating what the US
has been doing for years from Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles. The latest missile sped 4,200 miles to
Kwajalein Atoll, under the threatening Air Force Global Strike Command. Do
our leaders wish to guaranty retaliatory, arms-race preparation? Oh no, they are lobbing strike weapons into
the Pacific because they are acting in defense—the Defense Department you know.
The
Air Force, the report says, wants “to verify the weapons system’s accuracy and
reliability.” Several times a year? And aimed at China—well a little south. To strike Kwajalein Atoll. Remember where that is? The Marshall Islands—Bikini Atoll,
H-bomb “tested” over 60 times during the 1950s.
The little nation is under our trust, so what does it matter we are
sending missiles to one of their islands in the middle of their other
islands? The missiles are not armed, and
our military is only testing. It’s not
as though this is 1984 and the US is Oceania
bombing itself to keep its population under control.
What was the result of the test?
The Strike Command “did not include results of the test.” Why didn’t the newspaper acquire the
information for its readers? You guessed
it: “Calls and an email were not
immediately returned.” The test
failed? Better keep that a secret. Doesn’t matter: the threat is still there, and the US
controls the Pacific!
MICRONESIA
the
Human Rights page of Al Jazeera English.
|
|
|
Micronesians in Hawaii face
uncertain future
|
COFA Agreements provide US
regional control in exchange for limited access to America.
|
|
Tommy Esang Remengesau, President of Palau, addresses
the 68th session of the General Assembly at United Nations headquarters,
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013. [AP]
|
When the bloodiest Pacific battles of
World War II were over, the United States
found a new use for the small islands of Micronesia: open-air nuclear
testing. Between 1946 and 1958, the US
conducted at least 67 nuclear weapons testsin the Marshall Islands, unleashing the equivalent
of over 7,200 Hiroshima-sized bombs in the Marshall Islands. The largest
test, carried out in March 1954, had a yield of 15 megatons, over 1,000
times the strength of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Once idyllic atolls were transformed into radioactive craters and local
people were forced to relocate, sometimes to islands previously considered
uninhabitable. With no knowledge of nuclear weapons, Marshallese and other
Pacific Islanders became unwitting atomic
guinea pigs. America's
nuclear tests spawned a legacy of stillborn babies, birth defects,
sterility, cancer and other maladies. When it came time to "clean
up" after the tests, the US recruited hundreds of
Micronesians who worked in highly contaminated areas, allegedly without
adequate protection.
The United States, which administered
the UN mandated Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, used this
unchallenged control over the region to advance it's own military and
political agenda, but was also charged with the economic development and
care for over a thousand small islands and their people.
In 1986 the US signed agreements called
the Compact of Free Association (COFA) with two newly independent Pacific island nations: the
Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall
Island (RMI). A similar compact was entered with the Republic of Palau
in 1994. These compacts gave the US greater control and exclusive access to
over a million square miles of the Pacific, allowing for additional military and weapons testing at facilities
like the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall
Islands, a critical support for the US's Space Surveillance Network.
In exchange for US claims of "strategic denial" (exclusive
territorial control), citizens FSM, RMI and Palau
(also called Belau) were
granted the right to live permanently or come and go at will in the United States.
What often goes unmentioned is the fact that under the compacts the US will maintain strategic denial and use of
military sites like Kwajalein for decades even
if economic assistance and other defense provisions are not renegotiated.
As legal residents (but not citizens), COFA residents can work, study,
receive medical treatment and are required to pay local, state and federal
taxes. In return, they were initially eligible for most of the same public
benefits as Americans. That changed during 1996 federal welfare reform when Congress restricted access to
a broad range of programs to certain non-US citizen residents including
COFA migrants. The result was many COFA patients were cut off from the very
health care system their tax dollars were supposed to support.
In 2009, blaming a downturn in the economy, former Hawaii
governor Linda Lingle's administration notified COFA residents of
drastically reduced health care access. Many complained they were given
inadequate notice and without explanation in their own language. COFA
patients visited their doctors only to find they no longer had the health
care they relied on for cancer treatment, dialysis, medication and other
life-saving treatment and medication.
The cuts resulted in a class action lawsuit which won a preliminary
injunction in federal district court that would ensure access to essential
health services. To date, the case remains on appeal in the 9th Circuit
Court.
As tax payers, COFA migrants pay for social service programs like SNAP
(food stamps), Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and
federally subsidized education loans, yet do not fully benefit from all
programs.
The exact number of COFA migrants reside in Hawaii today is difficult
to determine as they can move fluidly between their home nations and the US
without a visa or Green Card. Current estimates range from 12,000 to 18,000
migrants in Hawaii with additional communities on the West Coast, Guam and
as far away as Arkansas. As many as
one-fifth of COFA nationals may live outside their home countries.
Assimilation to Hawaii's Polynesian-based society would appear natural for
Pacific Island migrants who share cultural and historical parallels, but
despite Hawaii's reputation as an ethnic and cultural melting pot and
famous ‘Aloha Spirit', Hawaii's newest
wave of migrants face discrimination and continued restricted access to
federal and state benefits.
Fight for the right
In response to this discrimination, the Japanese American Citizens League
in Honolulu
produced a short documentary to
educate the public about COFA migrants. Appearing in the video was William
Hoshijo, executive director of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. Hoshijo
said, "Hawaii residents from COFA
nations have been scapegoated and described negatively as a burden and
drain on resources, but for those who care about fairness and justice in Hawaii, it's our
responsibility to speak out to support our brothers and sisters in their
struggle against discrimination."
Along with employment and education, health
care is a top concern for many COFA migrants who suffer elevated rates
of thyroid, colon and other cancers, ostensibly
stemming from nuclear testing. Furthermore, the rapid urbanization and an
interruption of their traditional diet based on of subsistence fishing and
farming has contributed to higher incidences of diabetes, heart disease and
strokes.
Speaking about problems faced by Hawaii's
newest migrants, Wayne Tanaka, an administrator for Healthy Pacific, an online repository for
COFA health care-related information resources calls it a "health care
and justice issue." He says that racism is perpetuated by people who
are unable to make national and ethnic distinctions between the diverse
backgrounds of COFA migrants.
That racism manifests itself in the education, health care and criminal
justice systems says Tanaka. It appears as offhand remarks, belittling
jokes, and as graffiti like "Return my tax dollars"
scrawled angrily on the side of a Micronesian food store in Honolulu.
Tanaka works with attorney Dina Shek, director of the Medical-Legal
Partnership for Children in Hawaii.
Nearly 80 per cent of her clients are Micronesian, most of them from the Chuuk Islands in FSM.
Micronesians aren't Hawaii's
first group of immigrants to be the target of discrimination, just the
latest, Shek says. "Now that [Micronesians] have become a more
identifiable group, they become an easier target." What's different is
that COFA migrants have a more complicated immigration status.
Shek explains, "There are these weird perceptions that they're not
paying taxes. Actually, it's the opposite. [COFA migrants] are paying all
the same taxes…yet they are not benefiting from those taxes because there
are so many limitations on certain services and programs."
Masters and slaves
Like many COFA migrants, Innocenta Sound-Kikku, a native of Chuuk, came to Hawaii for better
health care - not for herself, but for her father. Sound-Kikku, vice chair
of the Micronesian Health Community Network has lived in Guam, Saipan, American Samoa
and Hawaii, but returned to Honolulu in 2007 to
care for her ailing father who is receiving dialysis treatment not
available in Chuuk.
Although the number of Micronesians has grown in Hawaii over the last three decades, they
remain misunderstood says Sound-Kikku. She points out that while the Marshall Islands were ground
zero for nuclear testing, surrounding islands were also impacted and continue to suffer the effects
of military pollution in the form of oil-leaking sunken ships and unexploded bombs and ammunition,
a legacy of World War II.
When basic health services are denied to COFA residents, Sound-Kikku says it
feels like her community is being singled out. That, coupled with bullying
at school and being the butt of cruel jokes, Sound-Kikku says, begs the
question, "If I'm looking at it from a Western perspective they would
say, ‘they are better off than if they were not even here.' But in whose
lenses are we looking through?"
Sound-Kikku fears Micronesian migrant children are losing their cultural identity, language and
values, as she concedes Western influence in Micronesia has shifted values
away from more traditional systems, giving more status to those with money.
"Money has become more valuable than our culture. One of our elders
said, ‘we used to be masters of the currents of the Pacific but today we
are slaves to the currency of the United States.'"
COFA contributions http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/10/micronesians-hawaii-face-uncertain-future-201310191535637288.html
Joakim Peter, also Chuukese, is a Micronesian community advocate in Honolulu. Formerly
director of Chuuk's campus of the College of Micronesia, Peter specializes
in helping migrant families with health and disability issues. He sees COFA as a symbol of the
relationship between the United
States and the Pacific islanders who
have sacrificed environmental sovereignty in order to accommodate US
security demands.
He says the exchange between the US and COFA nations is an
attempt to balance a relationship in which both parties have given much.
"[We] want to participate in the American dream no more, no less, than
anyone else," Peter says, noting that the relationship affords America
exclusive access to the islands, skies and waters. "Exclusive,"
Peter repeats for emphasis. "Nowhere else in the world do we have
[such] a relationship with any other country but the US."
COFA migrants, Peter points out,
have sacrificed much for the US
and have the highest volunteer rate per capita in the US's
military as well as a casualty rate higher than any US state. Furthermore,
Micronesian migration, Peter says, contributes to America's diversity,
introducing dozens of cultures and languages and dialects like Yapese,
Marshallese, Puluwatese and Pohnpeian spoken in some 100 different islands.
Peter, who encourages sharing traditional knowledge with outside cultures,
adds that Micronesian celestial-based ocean navigation has been studied for
decades by scholars in the US,
including scientists at NASA.
Despite past and present difficulties, Peter remains optimistic. By working
at the community, school and church level, wrong information can be
corrected, negative stereotypes eliminated and Micronesians can be better
integrated into American society, he says.
‘For the Good of Mankind'
The Pacific Proving Grounds, where the bulk of America's nuclear tests were
conducted in the 1940s and 50s were in the Marshall Islands which
Marshallese poet and writer Kathy
Jetnil-Kijiner calls home. When Jetnil-Kijiner's parents took her and
her brother from their home on Majuro to Hawaii for work and educational
opportunities, she couldn't speak English but she learned the language even
as she lost her ties with her own native tongue.
In 2012 Jetnil-Kijiner represented the Marshall Islands at Poetry Parnassus, an
international gathering of poets akin to a literary Olympics. There she
recited a poem called "History Project" in which she
recounts her own experience researching the Marshall Islands' nuclear
history.
Reading her poem, her voice builds from conversational to a painful
intensity, describing the shame of unexplained miscarriages and birth of
"jelly babies," and how the Marshallese were told that allowing
their atolls be used as atomic testing was "for the good of
mankind."
She reads, "…at 15 I want megatons of TNT, radioactive energy and a
fancy degree, anything and everything I could ever need to send ripples of
death through a people who put goats before human beings so their skin can
shrivel beneath the glare of hospital room lights three generations later
as they watch their grandmother, their mother, their cousin's life drift
across that same black screen. Knots of knuckles tied to steel beds cold
and absent of any breath, but I'm only 15…" Through her poetry she
evokes the raw pain of graphing her people's death "through cancer and
canned-food diabetes."
Recalling a visit to Kwajelein Atoll when she was 10-years-old,
Jetnil-Kijiner speaks of the beauty of the island and how she felt
encountering "Restricted Access" signs.
"I remember thinking this island was so beautiful, so sculptured. It
just seemed tragic to me. I don't agree with it at all. I don't see why we
need to be giving away our islands like this."
(Not quite) Nuclear-free
The third Micronesian nation to reach an agreement with the US was the Republic of Palau.
Richard Salvador, an English teacher and organizer with the COFA Community
Advocacy Network was born and raised in Palau
and first came to Hawaii
in 1989 as a student. He explains that Palau's
agreement, signed during the Clinton
administration, took the longest to reach largely due to Palau's constitution which proclaimed the island nation
as nuclear free.
"We said if the US
wants to use any part of Palau
for military purposes, it can, but we don't want any nuclear materials
there," recalls Salvador.
The United States, which
follows a policy of neither confirming or denying the presence of nuclear
weapons on some naval vessels pressured Palau to abandon its commitment
to being nuclear free. As a result negotiations dragged on for nearly two
decades while the US continued to push for and fund referendums with an
increasingly lower threshold for giving up its no nukes policy.
In order to accommodate the compact, Salvador
explains that Palau
is essentially overlooking its stated goal of being "nuclear
free" for as long as the compact persists.
Under the US-Palau compact, Salvador
says the nation of 21,000 has seen many of it citizens migrate to the US
in search of education and employment opportunities or to volunteer in the
military. This loss of much of its own workforce has led to Palau importing guest workers from Southeast
Asian nations, according to Salvador.
One aspect of COFA that gets little attention is that, along with Israel, Palau,
FSM and RMI are the United States'closest allies at the United
Nations, voting alongside the US even when other staunch
allies do not.
Rising seas
But for all the financial support COFA nations receive from the US, they
remain among the world's most vulnerable to climate change and sea level
rise and, like other small islands, the people already face the reality
that, as when pushed aside for nuclear tests, they may once again be forced
to leave their island homes as rising seas and increased flooding and drought threaten their livelihood.
"However remote you are in the Pacific," Salvador says, "the fate of these
islands is affected in so many ways by people on big continents."
Over seven decades, the unfulfilled
promises of COFA which can be seen in the lack of economic development
and self-sufficiency, along with unemployment and inadequate health care
options in Micronesia make it likely that in years ahead, Hawaii will see
more COFA migration, not less.
How Hawaii's newest residents will be
welcomed to America's
only Pacific island state remains an unanswered question with which
advocates like Dina Shek still struggle. "There's so much more than
the simplistic, ‘these people are taking advantage of this open travel
provision.' I think there is a linkage to Obama's Asia-Pacific build up…Why would the US want to let go of this
region? There are certainly reasons to retain power and military control
over this region," Shek says. "It's not a simple narrative that
they're all coming here to take these benefits. It was the US
that pushed for COFA nations to have unlimited travel access."
Considering Micronesians who have left their home, either by choice or
necessity, Jetnil-Kijiner, the young
Marshallese poet, continues to tell the story of people who have figuratively or
literally lost their home.
"I don't think people understand how important land is to Marshallese
people. To completely lose your atoll, your home island like that, it's
heartbreaking. You lose all your ties because land is life."
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Source:
Al Jazeera
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links to a NYTimes article about Marshallese
in Arkansas,
too:
GLOBAL
NETWORK AGAINST WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR POWER IN SPACE, SPACE ALERT! (FALL 2013.) By Dick Bennett.
The newsletter
gives 16 reports relating to US Pacific/E. Asian expansion, named “The Pivot”
by the Obama Administration. This euphemism for widening and hardening US
domination of the area, clearly repeating the old Sovietphobic “Cold War,” can
only bring conflict and grief. Instead,
we could initiate the opposite policy, and define “The Pivot” to repeat US cooperative and supportive policy toward Chiang
Kai-shek and his Nationalist Government of China, the Kuomintang, 1928-1949,
and afterward in exile in Formosa. Our China
policy is as ideologically belligerent as is our Iran
policy (see Iran
newsletters or blogs).
Sixteen Reports:
- p. 2 “Seeing the Pivot Up Close” Bruce Gagnon’s report of his Pacific
tour Summer 2013: Hawaii, the Philippines, and Australia. Gagnon is founder and Coordinator of the
Global Network.
- 2. p. 3
“Oliver Stone Goes to Jeju.” After
speaking at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 6 and 9, Stone joined protests against the US/S. Korean naval base
under construction on Jeju Island, S. Korea.
- p.8 “MD Radar in Japan.” US plans to deploy another “missile
defense” radar to watch China’s
missile launches.
- p. 8 “No Drones for Mindanao.” Some indigenous resistance: The mayor of Davao
City says no to US request to use an old
airport as a military base.
- p. 9 “Pine Gap’s Secrets Revealed.” The massive, 14-antennai US/Aus Joint
Defence Facility Pine Gap, 20 km southwest of Alice
Springs, began in 1970 as a satellite tracking station. Now it “is likely connected to US
drone strikes.”
- p. 10 “Hawaii
MD Testing.” “…these Aegis-based MD
systems could also serve as destabilizing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.”
- p. 10 “Obama Pivot Good for Weapons Biz.” The “Pivot” opens huge opportunities to
US
weapons industry for arms sales to US friends in the region.
- p. 10. “Global Strike Test.” Plans for an unmanned “hypersonic”
vehicle to travel 5 time speed of sound to strike a target anywhere in the
world being developed at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii.
- p. 10. “Japan
Moves Further Right.” The
government’s moves to strike Article 9 of the Japanese constitution
forbidding foreign wars and to deepen its military prepartions with the US vs. NK and China.
- p. 10. “Pivot—Not Just the Navy.” “…the US Air Force will dramatically
expand its military presence across the Pacific this year”—including Thailand, India,
Singapore, and Australia.
- p.
12. Photo of Gagnon and Australins
protesting at Darwin, Australia, where Obama is
sending US marines and Air Force warplanes.
- p.
12. Photo of US Navy Aegis
destroyer at Subic Bay in the Philippines, as part of the
increasing warship visits since the Pivot began.
- p.
13. Cartoon of Obama surveilling
the planet, and photo of one Carrier Battle Group.
- p.
14. “Alaskan Drone Testing Draws
Organizing.” The Joint Pacific
Alaska Range Complex is planning to expand its present 100,000 square land,
air, and sea miles for war-gaming.
- p. 14.
“Pentagon Deploys THAAD Into Guam.” Another MD system “that has been
testing with some success is the Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense.” Guam
is “one of the Pentagon’s largest Pacific staging areas.”
- “Pushback
Against the ‘Cyber Industrial Complex.”
Describes an article pub. in China-US
Focus about opposition tohe US race to achieve “cyber superiority.”
The caption to the cartoon
and photo p. 13 sums up Global Network’s attitude: “The Pentagon is now moving 60% of its
military forces into the Asia-Pacific as part of Obama’s announced ‘pivot’ into the region. This containment
of China
will be an expensive and destabilizing strategy that could easily create
miscalculation and ultimately war. The US is
dragging an expanding NATO into the region as well to help share the
costs.” What’s missing in this analysis
is the pressure of the corporate-congressional-White House-mainstream media to
maintain the militarized economic expansion.
Don't Destroy This Island
RootsAction Team info@rootsaction.org via uark.edu
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info@rootsaction.org
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The U.S. military nearly destroyed the island of Vieques,
in Puerto Rico, by using it as a bombing
range for decades. But the people of Vieques demanded that the bombing
stop.
The people of Pagan Island
in the Northern Marianas don't want their paradise to be next.
Click here to tell your
representative, senators, and president not to destroy this island or any
other.
The U.S. Marine Corps has
found a rich and beautiful island, falsely called it "desolate and
uninhabitable" (despite the fact that many species live there,
including homo sapiens),
and proposed to make it the new Vieques.
Pagan Island is an ancient home to the
Chamorro people (some of whom live there and many of whom wish to return
there) and the habitat of unique animals and plants, many of them
endemic, rare and endangered. Every
natural and cultural resource is threatened by the planned live-fire
training ground.
Click here to save this
island!
A transfer of our major resources from war-making to environment-saving
is the clearest path to survival and prosperity. Let's take this
opportunity to build a bridge between peace activism and environmental
activism.
In the long run, a way to stop future missile strikes into Syria
or anywhere else is to stop the testing of such weaponry on an island
paradise that some people consider expendable and other people, animals,
insects, birds, and fish consider home.
Stop the bombing range
before it starts! Save Pagan Island!
Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.
-- The RootsAction.org team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim
Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn
Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S.
Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many
others.
P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate.
Background:
SavePaganIsland.org
Helen Jaccard and David
Swanson: Vieques 10 Years After the Bombing Stopped
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SPEAKING
FREELY
Philippines under the neo-colonial boot
By E
San Juan Jr
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you are interested in
contributing.
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's visit to Manila in August and the
proposal for a semi-permanent "rotational" stationing of US
troops and military hardware in the Philippines are harbingers of a
new Cold War in Asia. The Philippines
is serving as a precarious lever in Washington's
"pivot" towards Asia, a bid to restore the US's
eroding hegemony over the planet.
A classic US
colony from 1898 to 1946, the Philippines today
remains a semi-feudal neo-colony ruled by holdover oligarchs led
today by president Benigno Aquino III. Resisting the US
behemoth in the 1899-1913 Philippines-American War, 1.4 million
Filipinos perished in the name of US "manifest destiny".
Ever since, including after achieving independence, the Philippines has functioned as a
strategic springboard for projecting US power throughout the
Asia-Pacific. This has become more crucial with the recent
"pivot" of US military resources - where 60% of total US
naval assets are destined to be based in the Asia-Pacific by 2020 -
amid intensifying territorial disputes among China, Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
US-assisted state terrorism has long thrived in the Philippines. Tutored and
subsidized by the US Pentagon, the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) are the two state
agencies leading the US-designed counterinsurgency plan known as
"Oplan Bayanihan" against the Communist-led New People's
Army (NPA) guerillas and other revolutionary groups led by the National
Democratic Front.
They are aided by government-established "force
multipliers" such as civilian volunteer organizations, police
auxiliary units, and the notorious Citizens' Armed Forces
Geographical Unit, whose members double as agents of local warlords.
Aquino's coercive surveillance and enforcement apparatus strictly
obeys the privatization-deregulation ideology of US-led global
capitalism, resulting in severe unemployment, rampant corruption,
widespread poverty and brutal repression at home.
US
imperial hegemony manifests itself in the use of Philippine territory
by US warships and military through the 1999 Visiting Forces
Agreement and other treaties. This rotational agreement has allowed
hundreds of US Special Forces, Central Intelligence Agency and other
clandestine agencies to operate in helping the AFP-PNP
counterinsurgency campaign, which at times doubles to brutally
suppress indigenous communities that have protested mining by foreign
corporations and other state-backed seizures of their land.
From 2001 to 2010, the US
provided over US$507 million worth of military assistance to the Philippines.
More recently, the US
has significantly raised those annual disbursements, including to
assist in the acquisition of patrol boats against Chinese incursions
in the disputed Spratly
Islands. Part
of the disbursements have also been earmarked for so-called
"civic action" projects, reminiscent of the US-CIA
pacification schemes deployed during the anti-Huk guerrilla campaign
in the 1940s-50s, including under Ramon Magsaysay's presidency.
While these past US
interventions are by now well-documented, Washington's
current involvement in the Philippines' various
ongoing civil wars is less appreciated. Prominent are the thousands
of cases of unresolved extra-judicial killings, torture and abuse of
political prisoners, warrantless detentions, enforced disappearances
or kidnappings of dissenters by government security forces funded in
part by Washington.
These actions, all in the name of national security, have engendered
a culture of impunity that effectively silences the voices of those
who would most strongly oppose the planned heightened US
military presence in the country.
State crimes
To keep the country underdeveloped, secure for investments by
multinational corporations, and safe from strikes and political
dissent, the US supports a tiny group of political dynasties and
their retinue whose victory in periodic "democratic"
elections guarantees the perpetuation of a society polarized into an
impoverished majority and a privileged minority.
Violence and a corrupt court system underwrite the maintenance of a
status quo for corporate profit-making and legitimization of torture,
kidnappings, assassinations, and other state crimes against citizens
who oppose this neo-colonial order.
Since the fall of the US-propped Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in
1986 and its destruction of constitutional processes and civil
liberties, the volume and scope of human rights violations have
jumped to staggering proportions.
In 2011, for instance, Amnesty International stated that "More
than 200 cases of enforced disappearances recorded in the last decade
remain unresolved, as did at least 305 cases of extrajudicial
execution (with some estimates ranging as high as 1,200). Almost no
perpetrators of these crimes have been brought to justice."
Even the US State Department's 2011 country report on human rights in
the Philippines confirmed the persistence of "arbitrary,
unlawful, and extrajudicial killings by national, provincial, and
local government agents" including "prisoner/detainee
torture and abuse by security forces, violence and harassment against
leftist and human rights activists by local security forces,
disappearances, warrantless arrests, lengthy pretrial detentions, overcrowded
and inadequate prison conditions".
The local rights monitoring group Karapatan recently documented
Aquino's abysmal human rights record from July 2010 to April 2013. It
found 142 victims of extrajudicial killings, 164 cases of frustrated
killing, and 16 victims of enforced disappearances. In that vein, the
high profile murders of Father Pops Tenorio, Dutch volunteer Willem
Geertman, botanist Leonardo Co, and environmentalist and journalist
Gerry Ortega remain unsolved under Aquino's watch.
Meanwhile, military officials like ex-General Jovito Palparan, Major
Baliaga, and others linked by courts to the kidnapping of Jonas
Burgos, Sherley Cadapan and Karen Empeno and other crimes against
humanity remain at large.
Karapatan chairperson Marie Hilao-Enriquez noted that the victims of
state terror are generally those who challenge inequality and
oppression, those who were displaced by logging and transnational
mining companies, and those branded as sympathizers of the NPA by the
Oplan Bayanihan counterinsurgency campaign, which to date is
responsible for at least 137 extra-judicial murders and thousands of
suspects detained on dubious legal grounds.
Female victims
Women stand out as particular victims of the Aquino regime and more
generally of the country's patriarchal authority structure. They are
discriminated and inferiorized by virtue of their gender, caste,
class and ethnicity. In 2011, half of the 78 political detainees
arrested by the Aquino regime were women. Since 2001, 153 women have
been targeted by extrajudicial assassins allegedly sponsored by the
AFP-PNP, according to local human rights groups.
The Center for Women's Research (CWR) has claimed that women
political prisoners suffer twice the violence experienced by men;
they "are more vulnerable to intimidation, sexual harassment and
abuse, as well as torture," CWR said in a report. A significant
number belong to ethnic or indigenous communities where US-sponsored
counterinsurgency campaigns are underway. They languish in jail as "enemies
of the state," charged with rebellion and other fabricated
criminal charges. Some have suffered from torture and sexual assault
while in detention.
Many of them are human rights defenders or activists involved in
advocacy for national sovereignty and genuine economic development
for the poor and marginalized. Because they work for deprived sectors
of peasants, workers, urban poor, youth, and indigenous communities,
they are frequently accused of being supporters of the communists
(the NPA is labeled a "terrorist" organization, like the
Abu Sayyaf, as per US State Department doctrine) to justify their
illegal arrest and continued detention in horrible conditions.
This is only the tip of the iceberg of the cruel and inhumane
punishment inflicted by Aquino's and previous administrations'
US-backed neo-colonial order. Every day, warrantless arrests and
torture of activists are occurring while national living conditions
stagnate or deteriorate.
With the extra-judicial killing on March 4 of Cristina Morales Jose,
a leader of Barug Katawhan (People Rise Up!), an organization of the
survivors of the typhoon Pablo in Davao Oriental province, it now
seems probable that instead of adding to the country's overcrowded
prisons and detention centers the Aquino regime is resorting to the
outright extermination of grassroots protest leaders.
All of these crimes may be attributed broadly to the US-supported
"national security state" in the Philippines. This state
of affairs is epitomized in the Department of National Defense and
Department of the Interior and Local Government's Joint Order No.
14-2012, which lists the names of alleged communist leaders and
offers massive peso rewards for their capture - a potential bonanza
for AFP and PNP bureaucrats and officials.
Under this order, Estelita Tacalan, a 60-year-old peasant organizer
and rural health worker in Misamis Oriental was kidnapped by AFP-PNP
agents on April 27 this year. On May 7, the PNP announced that they
had detained Tacalan for being listed in the Joint Order and
spuriously charged her with murder and arson. Countless arrests and
detentions have since been made pursuant to this broad and dubious
order.
The Philippines'
"national security state" under Aquino has effectively
criminalized activism against this neo-colonial order, notably at a
time Manila and Washington plan to significantly
boost their strategic ties, including through a greater presence of
US soldiers on Philippine soil. Now as in the past, these
state-sponsored violations hide behind the US-promoted false concepts
of free markets, democracy, liberty and justice for all.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please
click here if you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers
to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same
editorial standards of Asia Times
Online's regular contributors.
E San Juan, Jr is
emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies, English and Comparative
Literature; former fellow at the WEB Du Bois Institute at Harvard
University and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. He
was previously a Fulbright professor of American Studies at Leuven University, Belgium. His recent books
include In the Wake
of Terror (Lexington Books), Critique and Social
Transformation (Mellen
Books), and US
Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave).
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Get this from a friend? Join to receive our free geopolitical intelligence reports
directly from us!
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U.S. Foreign Policy from the Founders' Perspective
By George
Friedman
Last week I discussed how the Founding Fathers might view the American debt
crisis and the government shutdown. This week I thought it would be useful
to consider how the founders might view foreign policy. I argued that on
domestic policy they had clear principles, but unlike their ideology, those
principles were never mechanistic or inflexible. For them, principles
dictated that a gentleman pays his debts and does not casually increase his
debts, the constitutional provision that debt is sometimes necessary
notwithstanding. They feared excessive debt and abhorred nonpayment, but
their principles were never completely rigid.
Whenever there is a discussion of the guidelines laid down by the founders
for American foreign policy, Thomas Jefferson's admonition to avoid foreign
entanglements and alliances is seen as the founding principle. That seems
reasonable to me inasmuch as George Washington expressed a similar
sentiment. So while there were some who favored France
over Britain
during the French Revolutionary Wars, the main thrust of American foreign
policy was neutrality. The question is: How does this principle guide the United States
now? Read
more »
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Write or Call the White House
President Obama has declared his commitment to creating the most
open and accessible administration in American history. That begins with taking
comments and questions from you, the public, through our website.
Call
the President
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments:
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Switchboard:
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TTY/TTD
Comments:
202-456-6213
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Office: 202-456-2121
Write a letter to
the President
Here are a few simple things you can do to make sure your
message gets to the White House as quickly as possible.
1. If possible, email us!
This is the fastest way to get your message to President Obama.
2. If you write a letter,
please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper. If you
hand-write your letter, please consider using pen and writing as neatly as
possible.
3. Please include your
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address, please consider including that as well.
4. And finally, be sure to
include the full address of the White House to make sure your message gets to
us as quickly and directly as possible:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Contents #3, Nov. 25,
2012
Dick: Jeju Island
Obama Focuses on Asia-Pacific
Burns on Panetta: Transferring Forces to China “Threat”
Letman (via Global Nework and VFP): Hawaii, Head of PACOM
US Fear of Chinese Port Management
Andre Vltchek, Oceania, Western Imperialism S. Pacific
Contents #4 Encircling China, Pacific Resistance
LaFebre, Expansion 1860-1898
Dick: Progress to Pacific
Dick: General Custer
Lind: Hawaii
Bardsley: US Troops to Australia: China
Paik and Mander: Pacific Blowback
Space Alert! Dec. 2012
Middleton, Australian
Military Connections
US and NZ: Waihopai
Spybase
Vandenberg Air Force
Base
Canada Joins the Pivot
Star Wars and China
USPACCOM
Contents #5 March 27, 2013
RESISTANCE
Gagnon: Oppose US/SK War Games
Public Citizen: Stop Trans-Pacific Partnership: Contact Your Congressman
Garate: Resistance to US Military Bases in S. Korea
Kalikasan People’s Resistance
to US Military Destruction of Environment in the Philippines
HISTORY
San Juan: African-Americans in Philippine Revolution, David
Fagen
Chalmers Johnson
Steve Clemons, Tribute
Dick, Blowback
Conroy, et al., West Across the Pacific
And S.
America
END US
WESTWARD IMPERIALISM PACIFIC/E. ASIA
NEWSLETTER #8
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