Does Guam have an identity crisis?

This article on the struggle to recover Chamoru culture and identity in Guahan came across as patronizing to me. Is it an identity crisis in Guam/Guahan? It’s more like colonial trauma caused by 500 years of occupation and oppression by three different colonizers. Occupation creates schizophrenia in a people. With this perspective, the survival and resilience of Chamoru culture is amazing. Sometimes it takes a crisis like the military expansion threat to highlight the contradictions and energize the resistance.

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http://www.theworld.org/2010/04/29/guam-people-ponder-their-identity/

Guam people ponder their identity

By The World ⋅ April 29, 2010

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Last weekend 90,000 people turned out to protest the continued presence of US forces on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The protestors want US forces moved off the island, something Washington is loathe to do – still, there are plans to move 8,000 Okinawa Marines to Guam. Guam is a US territory in the Pacific, but as The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports, plans for the military build-up on Guam have ignited soul-searching about just how American people there feel. (Photos: Mary Kay Magistad)

Drive around Guam, and you might think you were in an American suburb – same chain stores, same chain restaurants, same American culture – on the surface.

Chamorro dancers

But beneath the surface is 4,000 years of Chamorro tribal history – history young Chamorros who have grown up as US citizens are starting to rediscover. This group of teenagers – is dressed in grass skirts – the girls with flowers in their hair, the guys with loin clothes and fighting sticks.

They shout about how Chamorros need to remember their roots. One is 20-year-old Rico Sablan:

“My message was talking about the outsiders came and tried to change our culture, and my message was saying – stand strong for our people and keep our people strong.”

The outsiders who first came were the Spanish – some 400 years ago, bringing with them disease that wiped out all but a couple thousand Chamorros. Survivors intermarried with the Spanish colonizers and other settlers, so the language is now heavily accented with Spanish. Much Chamorro oral tradition has been lost too, so the songs and dances performed by these young people tonight are a reconstruction – a best guess of what they might have been.

Dancer Rico Sablan says given Guam’s colonial past, he has mixed feelings about the US military’s plans to move 8,000 marines here, in addition to the 6,000 military personnel already in Guam.

“Don’t get me wrong, I feel safe with them coming here. But don’t take the land from the people.”

In recent months, Guamanians have been weighing what an expanded US military presence might mean for them. There are concerns about the environmental impact, about Guam taxpayers being asked to bear too heavy a burden.

Seventeen-year-old Alyssa Eclavea, who’s at the evening gathering, has her own worries:

“I’ve looked up some stories in Okinawa, that they’ve been raping women, or young ladies, as young as 12 years old. And if they bring those Marines to our island, there are so many beautiful women on our island, it’s going to happen.”

Michael Bevacqua

Although, that’s not been a problem on Guam so far. And Guam has hosted far more US military personnel in the past – some 200,000 at the end of World War II. But Guam’s civilian population was much smaller then, and felt less empowered. Now some in the generation that has grown up American are questioning American dominance. Michael Bevacqua has a white American father and a Chamorro mother:

“I don’t know how American I feel, I mean I prefer living on Guam, I like living on Guam, I spent half of my life in the States getting educated and I think for me my perspective is that America is a colonizer.”

Guam is a US territory, and Guamanians are US citizens. They have full rights to live, work and vote in the rest of the United States. But while on Guam, they can’t vote for president – they can only elect one non-voting representative to Congress. Still, the US military says it has consulted extensively with Guamanians, about their concerns about the military build-up. John Jackson directs the Joint Guam Program Office for the Secretary of the Navy:

“We received responses everything from Yankee go home to welcome back Marines we are glad to have you here. And everywhere in between. So it is a reflection of Guam’s society, a reflection of the society of the United States. Many different views on many different subjects.”

Jackson says some of the environmental or cultural concerns have led to modifications of the plan. But he says – the overall expansion will go ahead – because it serves US security interests in the region:

“Guam’s strategic location enhances the flexibility of the US forces in the Pacific, which allows for greater freedom of action as well as the ability to respond to crisis whether it is, say, humanitarian assistance or disaster-related crisis or perhaps deterrence or military action.”

This is being done, in part, with an eye to China’s military build-up and increasingly muscular navy, which is starting to roam deeper into waters traditionally patrolled by the US Pacific Fleet. The move to Guam is to also meant to avoid what’s been happening in Okinawa – protests that create uncertainty about how long US bases can stay. Guam, as a US territory, can’t exactly kick them out. And many Chamorros feel it shouldn’t, anyway. Many have served in the US military.

Sergeant-Major Juan Blaz

Retired Sergeant-Major Juan Blaz served 21 years in the US army, was wounded three times in Vietnam, and received the Distinguished Service Cross. He says, he’s a fiercely proud American, and he doesn’t see what all the fuss about the military expansion is about:

“I think it is great for the island and the island in part is also a great contributing factor to our nation and defense of our nation.”

This difference in attitude is somewhat generational. Older Guamanians have positive memories of US forces liberating Guam from the Japanese. At least some younger ones are caught between their US passports and a growing awareness of an identity separate from America. Still, there may be room for both. Several of the guys here, shouting fiercely in loincloths, plan to join the US military once they’re old enough.

For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Guam.

May 5, 2010

Environmental Protection of Bases?

From Foreign Policy In Focus:

http://www.fpif.org/articles/environmental_protectionof_bases

Environmental Protection of Bases?

By David Vine. Edited by John Feffer, April 22, 2010

Just weeks before today’s Earth Day, and for the second time in little more than a year, environmental groups have teamed with governments to create massive new marine protection areas across wide swaths of the world’s oceans. Both times, however, there’s been something (pardon the pun) fishy about these benevolent-sounding efforts at environmental protection.

Most recently, on April 1, the British government announced the creation of the world’s largest marine protection area in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago, which would include a ban on commercial fishing in an area larger than California and twice the size of Britain. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called it “a major step forward for protecting the oceans.

A representative for the Pew Charitable Trusts—which helped spearhead the effort along with groups including the Marine Conservation Society, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Greenpeace—compared the ecological diversity of the Chagos islands to the Galapagos and the Great Barrier Reef. The Pew representative described the establishment of the protected area as “a historic victory for global ocean conservation.” Indeed, this was the second such victory for Pew, which also supported the creation, in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, of three large marine protection areas in the Pacific Ocean, around some of the Hawai’ian islands and the islands of Guam, Tinian, and Saipan.

The timing of the announcements for both the Indian Ocean and Pacific marine protection areas—on the eve of upcoming British parliamentary elections and in the days before Bush left office when he was trying to salvage a legacy—suggests that there’s more here than the celebratory announcements would suggest.

A Base Issue

Both marine protection areas provide safe homes for sea turtles, sharks, breeding sea birds, and coral reefs. But they are also home to major U.S. military bases. Chagos’s largest island, Diego Garcia, hosts a secretive billion-dollar Air Force and Navy base that has been part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The Pacific protection areas are home to U.S. bases on Guam, Tinian, Saipan, Rota, Farallon de Medinilla, Wake Island, and Johnston Island.

In both cases, the otherwise “pristine” protected environments carve out significant exceptions for the military. In Chagos, the British government has said, “We nor the US would want the creation of a marine protected area to have any impact on the operational capability of the base on Diego Garcia. For this reason…it may be necessary to consider the exclusion of Diego Garcia and its three-mile territorial waters.” In the Pacific, the Bush administration stressed that “nothing” in the protected areas “impairs or otherwise affects the activities of the U.S. Department of Defense.”

The incongruity of military bases in the middle of environmental protection areas is particularly acute since many military installations cause serious damage to local environments. As Miriam Pemberton and I warned in the wake of Bush’s announcement, “Such damage includes the blasting of pristine coral reefs, clear-cutting of virgin forests, deploying underwater sonar dangerous to marine life, leaching carcinogenic pollutants into the soil and seas from lax toxic waste storage and military accidents, and using land and sea for target practice, decimating ecosystems with exploded and unexploded munitions. Guam alone is home to 19 Superfund sites.”

Similarly, the base on Diego Garcia was built by blasting and dredging the island’s coral-lined lagoon, using bulldozers and chains to uproot coconut trees from the ground and paving a significant proportion of the island in asphalt. Since its construction, the island has seen more than one million gallons of jet fuel leaks, water fouled with diesel fuel sludge, the warehousing of depleted uranium-tipped bunker buster bombs, and the likely storage of nuclear weapons.

For all the benefits that marine protection areas might bring, governments are using environmentalism as a cover to protect the long-term life of environmentally harmful bases. The designation also helps governments hold onto strategic territories. Indeed, all of the Pacific and Indian Ocean islands involved are effectively colonies, including the Chagos Archipelago, which Britain refers to as the British Indian Ocean Territory and which was illegally detached from Mauritius during decolonization in the 1960s.

Ratifying Expulsion

The environmental cover-up goes deeper. In addition to the Mauritian sovereignty claim on Chagos, the islands are also claimed by their former indigenous inhabitants, the Chagossians, whom the U.S. and British governments forcibly removed from their homeland during the base’s creation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since their expulsion, the Chagossians have been struggling for the right to return and proper compensation. Three times since 2000, the British High Court has ruled the removal unlawful, only to have Britain’s highest court overturn the lower-court rulings in 2008. The Chagossians have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and expect hearings to begin this summer.

Again, the timing of the announcement of the Chagos marine protection area is far from coincidental. It could cement forever the Chagossians’ exile no matter the ruling of the European court. “The conservation groups have fallen into a trap,” explained Chagossian Roch Evenor, secretary of the UK Chagos Support Association. “They are being used by the government to prevent us returning.”

Others agree. In a letter to Greenpeace UK, Mauritian activist Ram Seegobin wrote, “Clearly, the British government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case in Europe, then there will be another ‘reason’ for denying the banished people their right of return.”

British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights organization Reprieve, was even more direct: “The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug.”

While the Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation created by the children of one of the founders of Sun Oil Company, has been working behind the scenes for three years with British officials on the marine protection areas, other environmentalists have opposed the plan. “Conservation is a laudable goal,” Catherine Philp argued recently in The Times of London, “but it is a hollow and untruthful one when decided on behalf of the true guardians of that land who were robbed of it; not for the protection of the environment, but for a cheap media win and the easy benefit of the military-industrial machine.”

It did not have to be this way. The Chagossians, as one of their leaders, Olivier Bancoult, has said, once “lived in harmony with our natural environment until we were forcibly removed to make way for a nuclear military base.” The U.K. and U.S. governments could correct this injustice and protect the environment at the same time by finally allowing the Chagossians to return and serve as the proper guardians of their environment. It is not too late to correct this mistake. It is not too late to prevent the good name of environmentalism from being used to compound injustices that have been covered up for too long.

David Vine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009), and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Recommended Citation:

David Vine, “Environmental Protection of Bases?” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, April 22, 2010)

May 4, 2010May 6, 2010

Blackwater is operating in Guam and Shariki, Japan

Another blogger shared the following articles about Blackwater and their involvement in Guam and Shariki, a tiny village in Japan that hosts a missile defense radar facility. She points out:

• In 2006, Blackwater’s aviation division won a $91 million contract for air charter work in Guam, a contract the Navy had set aside for small businesses. Two losing bidders challenged the award, saying Blackwater had more than 1,500 employees, the threshold for an aviation contract. An administrative judge ruled for Blackwater, saying the company’s 1,000-plus guards working overseas did not count as employees…

• Blackwater teamed up with the Chenega, an Alaskan Native American tribe of 69 people, to guard a missile defense installation in northern Japan. As a native-owned company, Chenega can win special no-bid contracts because of rules crafted by Alaska’s powerful U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

• And this is from Wikipedia: In Asia, Blackwater has contracts in Japan guarding AN/TPY-2 radar systems.

More: A U.S. military mobile BMD radar (AN/TPY-2, i.e., “X-Band Radar”) was deployed in June 2006 to the. ASDF Shariki Sub-base in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. A new detachment, consisting of a small team of military service members and contractors who will operate and maintain the Forward Based X-Band Radar Transportable (FBX-T) system, was honored during an activation ceremony 26 September 2006 at Camp Shariki in Aomori Pref., hosted by Brig. Gen. John E. Seward, commanding general of 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command of the U.S. Army Pacific Command. The FBX-T radar is designed to provide early detection and tracking of ballistic missile threats while providing a key element to the layered defense strategy. The radar is a defensive system with no offensive capability and will fall under the command and control of the 94th AAMDC, which is based at Fort Shafter, Hi. The command officially joined USARPAC in Oct. 2005.

I found the information fascinating that Blackwater was teaming with Chenega, an Alaska Native Corporation that has “Special 8A” status to get no-bid, unlimited contracts from the federal government. This arrangement is ripe for corruption. The federal government has issued scathing reports on the abuses of the Special 8A status whereby, native corporations get the sole source contract as a front for a larger military contractor.

Native Hawaiian Organizations also get special 8A status for military contracts thanks to Senator Inouye. However, since Native Hawaiians are not listed as a federally recognized tribe, every year Senator Inouye must add Native Hawaiians into the existing statutes via provisions of defense spending bills. The so-called Akaka Bill to list Native Hawaiians as a native tribe under the U.S. government would solidify Native Hawaiian access to these special 8A contracts. Some of the leading proponents of the Akaka Bill are already getting the no-bid contracts for defense projects. The passage of the Akaka Bill will further militarize Hawai’i by co-opting Native Hawaiians into the military industrial complex.

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http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1575255/

Blackwater’s Aggressive, Entrepreneurial Culture Keeps its Business Growing

By McClatchy-Tribune News Service

May 17, 2008

Blackwater was all over the news last fall, and the news wasn’t good. The North Carolina company created a diplomatic crisis when its guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square.

The Iraqi government promised to evict the company from Iraq. Blackwater’s reclusive owner, Erik Prince, was called to Congress to testify; and afterward, he began a PR blitz of the national media. He even appeared on “60 Minutes.”

Today, however, the trouble has subsided. Last month, the State Department renewed its contract with Blackwater to provide security in Iraq. It’s still in Afghanistan for the military. In the fall, Blackwater won a new contract, for $92 million, to fly soldiers and cargo around Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Army. And the company was one of five picked to support the Pentagon’s Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program, a five-year contract worth up to $15 billion.

As the company grows, so do its headaches: a persistent congressional investigation, several high-profile lawsuits and a federal weapons investigation. Still, Blackwater is thriving because of its aggressive and entrepreneurial business culture and a strong network of Republican connections. The company has hired extensively from the top levels of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department, and named the former No. 2 official at the CIA to its Board of Advisors.

“Their connections certainly help a lot,” said Peter Singer, an expert on military contractors at the Brookings Institution. “But they may be a vulnerability in the future, if the regime changes in Washington.”

This is a company that barely existed at the start of the decade; Blackwater grew from $204,000 in federal contracts in 2000 to almost $600 million in 2006. Its rise is a case study in business timing and the power of financial and political capital to take advantage of a new market.

Blackwater Lodge and Training Center was the brainchild of Al Clark, a Navy SEAL and instructor. Dissatisfied with the Navy’s rented training grounds, Clark told colleagues he would open his own when he left the service. Clark hooked up with Erik Prince, a young Navy SEAL who shared his interest in training. Clark didn’t know it at the time, but Prince was an heir to a billion-dollar auto-parts fortune.

When the two broke ground on Blackwater Lodge and Training Center in Currituck and Camden counties in northeast North Carolina in 1997, the timing was good. The military had closed and consolidated bases after the Cold War and neglected training facilities. Blackwater built the largest shooting facility in the country, with indoor ranges, mock urban landscapes, a 1,200-yard firing range, driving tracks and a lake for naval training. Blackwater boasted it could design any sort of training a client might want.

The location was excellent, within four hours of the Pentagon in Washington, and Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The country’s biggest naval base in Norfolk, Va., was less than an hour away. Despite the steady stream of business, Blackwater wasn’t making money. Clark recalled how Prince summoned him to his office, on Christmas Eve 1999 and said, “I want this place profitable tomorrow.”

Clark said his relations with Prince went downhill when Prince complained that he was training the students so well that no one would come back for more training.

Clark left Blackwater in the summer of 2000. Business was growing steadily, Clark said, but the company wasn’t making a profit.

“There are two people who put Blackwater on the map,” Clark said _ “Al Clark and Osama bin Laden.”

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the demand for training from military and law enforcement filled Blackwater’s ranges and classrooms.

Blackwater’s most lucrative line of business wouldn’t be in the Eastern North Carolina town of Moyock, but overseas. It was the brainchild of a former CIA employee, Jamie Smith.

While working at Blackwater before Sept. 11, Smith had suggested that Blackwater go into the private security business, guarding businessmen or government officials. Prince was initially skeptical, but warmed to the idea after the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

Prince contacted Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, the No. 2 official at the CIA. Krongard had known Prince since at least 1999, when Krongard’s son, a Navy SEAL, had trained at Blackwater, according to Al Clark. Krongard had visited Blackwater and shot at the firing ranges, Clark said. (In October, Krongard stepped down from Blackwater’s Board of Advisors because his brother, Howard Krongard, was the State Department inspector general responsible for investigating Blackwater. Howard Krongard later resigned.)

The CIA was stretched thin in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. Blackwater landed a sole-source, no-bid contract to provide security at CIA stations in Afghanistan.

When Blackwater won the contract, the company had no one to staff it. Smith advertised for security contractors in the Washington Post, according to author Robert Young Pelton. Smith led the security team when it arrived in the early spring of 2002.

The contract was not a big one; it called for 16 Blackwater security personnel, plus dozens of Afghan guards hired locally. But it was profitable, a Blackwater budget spreadsheet shows. Blackwater expected a 26 percent profit on the job.

Most important, the contract was a start, a foot in the door of what would expand into a billion-dollar industry once the U.S. invaded Iraq.

The invasion created a huge demand for private security in Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sent about half the troops recommended by his Army chief of staff. There weren’t enough soldiers to secure the country, let alone protect U.S. diplomats and civilian workers.

In August 2003, Blackwater won a $27 million sole-source contract to guard Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and probably the top assassination target of insurgents.

The contract called for helicopters to fly Bremer around Iraq. Blackwater was well positioned for that; the company had bought a Florida aviation company four months earlier.

Peter Singer, an expert on private military contractors, said this was typical of Blackwater’s business savvy.

“They are very good and very savvy at identifying market needs and pushing hard to enter into those markets, even before clients have recognized the need,” Singer said.

The private security business turned Blackwater into a heavyweight government contractor; the company went from $204,911 in government contracts in fiscal 2000 to $593 million in 2006, an average annual growth rate of 277 percent. Blackwater went from having 16 guards in Afghanistan to more than 850 personnel in Iraq.

By the end of 2006, Blackwater had received more than $1 billion in government contracts. That doesn’t include classified contracts, including providing security at CIA sites overseas.

The CIA contracts are lucrative, according to a document Blackwater filed in a federal lawsuit.

Blackwater had a contract since 2003 to protect a CIA site in Pakistan, the document said. “The profit potential is high (25%+ margin),” because of the classified nature of the budgets, and the knowledge gained from past performance on existing contracts.

During congressional testimony in October, Erik Prince said that Blackwater made a 10 percent profit on his State Department contracts, but he declined to elaborate or discuss the company’s annual profits. He also declined to comment for this report. But there is a healthy markup for the company’s services: Blackwater bills the State Department $1,221 for a security guard earning $500 a day.

For all the controversy, Blackwater has an unblemished record on its main task in Iraq: None of the diplomats in the company’s care have been killed or wounded. Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy recently told The New York Times that the diplomats could not function in Iraq without Blackwater: “If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq.”

A company that has banked more than $1 billion in federal payments since Sept. 11, 2001, doesn’t sound like a small business, but Blackwater says it is.

For a company providing security services, the threshold for a small business is $17 million in annual revenue. Blackwater passed that threshold in 2003, yet continued to list itself as a small business.

In 2006, Blackwater’s aviation division won a $91 million contract for air charter work in Guam, a contract the Navy had set aside for small businesses. Two losing bidders challenged the award, saying Blackwater had more than 1,500 employees, the threshold for an aviation contract. An administrative judge ruled for Blackwater, saying the company’s 1,000-plus guards working overseas did not count as employees.

Blackwater’s contention that its guards are not employees has generated a lot of controversy.

Last year, an Internal Revenue Service hearing officer ruled that a Blackwater security guard was an employee, not an independent contractor. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman has asked the IRS to investigate whether the company used the independent contractor designation to avoid paying federal taxes. Blackwater disputes Waxman’s complaint. If that ruling were applied to Blackwater’s entire work force, the company could be on the hook for $50 million in unpaid Medicare and Social Security taxes that companies must pay for their workers.

Prince, Blackwater’s founder, is known for his libertarian views. He touts the virtues of the free market and entrepreneurs. But the company is not averse to exploiting contracting loopholes and government giveaways.

Blackwater teamed up with the Chenega, an Alaskan Native American tribe of 69 people, to guard a missile defense installation in northern Japan. As a native-owned company, Chenega can win special no-bid contracts because of rules crafted by Alaska’s powerful U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

But to fulfill the terms, Chenega needed a partner to supply the guards, so it turned to Blackwater. The contract was worth $5 million for Blackwater in 2006 and $6 million for the first half of 2007.

In North Carolina, the Department of Commerce approved a $120,000 grant for Blackwater to support the company’s production of its Grizzly armored vehicle. The department projected that Blackwater would file for $637,500 in tax credits for the same project.

Despite the phenomenal growth, Prince has been quietly looking for more investors. At the end of April, the giant hedge fund Cerberus said it had decided against investing as much as $200 million in Blackwater. After news broke of Cerberus’ interest, Blackwater President Gary Jackson sent an e-mail message saying the company was anticipating even more growth, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“The company has “had two successive quarters of unprecedented growth,” Jackson wrote, and is “exploring multiple avenues to finance our continued expansion.”

External link: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1575255/

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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49341

Tiny base assimilates into Japanese town

To allay locals’ health fears, housing built close to radar

By Teri Weaver, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, October 8, 2007

SHARIKI, Japan

In Shariki, selecting the right place for American workers’ housing involved more than worrying about a daily commute.

For the 100 or so government contractors and two U.S. Army soldiers now living in and around the tiny Japanese village near the Sea of Japan, setting up a homestead also sent a message about their mission, according to the company commander at Shariki Communications Site.

“There were some people that told us, if you build that housing (elsewhere), it will be a public relations disaster,” said Capt. Will Hunter, whose unit in Shariki is attached to the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command in Hawaii. “It implies that you don’t think it’s safe to live around the radar.”

The radar is the AN/TPY-2, which points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies. The system is serious — it could burn a person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, Hunter says.

That hasn’t happened, he says, and occasional testing by the Americans and Japanese has found the radar does not interfere with local cell phones or harm local farming. Still, showing is better than telling, and that means building a housing complex for the Americans only a five-minute drive from the site.

It’s an apt example of how community relations can take on special meaning when a seaside village of 5,500 Japanese residents finds itself hosting several dozen Americans.

Hunter, the first commander of the year-old unit, has spent much of the past year making and implementing decisions like housing location. He’s also become a local ambassador of sorts at festivals, parades, Japanese military ceremonies and even afternoon cookouts.

“I think that’s my bigger job,” he said when weighing building relationships with local residents against his other tasks, working with the contractors and ensuring security of the radar site.

First Sgt. Ben Williams, the only other soldier in the unit, has picked up the role as well. Williams has been in the Army 16 years, and this is his first assignment without soldiers to lead and with a foreign language to negotiate. “I’m still feeling this out,” he says.

On one of his first days in town, he, Hunter and about 20 other workers from base helped drag a 16-ton float for a festival in Goshogawara, the biggest city about 45 minutes from base. “I was drenched,” he said of the sweaty work on the humid summer night.

For Hunter, much of the community relations means establishing safety procedures and conveniences for the Americans. He has set up phone lists and emergency procedures with local police and other officials so languages won’t be barriers to a response to Americans in need.

He’s even collected menus from local restaurants and had them translated to make it easier for the Americans to dine out and for local businesses to attract more customers.

The local community has responded as well. Lt. Col. Masaru Ohta, the Japan Air Self Defense Force’s 21st Air Defense Missile Squadron commander, ensures Americans get invited to festivals and meetings. And the city of Tsugaru, which oversees the smaller community of Shariki, has built a police koban in the village.

“I choose to say this police box was built for us, not because of us,” Hunter says.

Vehicle accidents have been the one sore spot for Hunter. There have been quite a few since the Americans came to Shariki, where an average of 12 meters of snow falls each winter.

Most of the accidents involve simple mistakes, not paying attention or slipping on ice, Hunter says. Still, a couple of Japanese people have been injured and gomen money, traditional compensation and condolence money, has been paid.

“In all honesty, I have beat up the contractors a lot about making their people drive correctly,” Hunter says while driving on a narrow two-lane road through rice paddies. The highway connects Shariki and Goshogawara, the closest place to big-city life that includes karaoke parlors, a dance club and two malls.

It’s hard to have absolute control, however, over a workforce that reports to a private company rather than a company commander, he says.

The Americans work for Raytheon and Chenega Blackwater Solutions, who, respectively, run the missile radar and provide security at the base.

In the past year, a couple of workers were sent home as punishment. But Hunter has no direct control over their privilege to hold a license, as he does over soldiers.

At the Shariki police station, inspector Yoshifumi Nakagawa warmly welcomes Hunter and gives business cards printed in English and Japanese to the two members of his staff – Williams and translator Yuko Akita.

Nakagawa was happy to learn Hunter has an interpreter, his first even though the Army unit officially stood up on Sept. 26, 2006. Previously, the captain relied on a handful of the contractors who speak Japanese, or a few of Ohta’s command staff who speak English.

The police official and the translator exchange cell phone numbers, then Nakagawa praises Hunter for participating in a recent community walk. It’s a formal thank-you for two men who see each other regularly. Both take the same language exchange course on Fridays, and the group has dinner together once a month.

Ohta credits the Americans’ involvement in the community with appeasing some of the fears first raised when the radar was built. “Because they participate in local events,” he says through a translator, “now there are no objections.”

The objections haven’t quite gone away. A Japanese Ministry of Defense office, at Shariki city hall, is where the Defense Facilities Administration Bureau works as liaison between the community and the U.S. Army base, Hunter says. It’s also where locals can go with concerns about the radar site.

In the past year, complaints have fallen off so much that the office has reduced its hours twice.

A couple of months ago, Hunter met with the bureau to hear about any recent complaints. One resident said his pacemaker had acted oddly when he drove on Shariki’s main street. Another man said his radio transmitted only static at 5 a.m. on a recent day. Both men suspected the radar.

“Things like that still come up,” Hunter said. “I think for the most part, people understand the radar is not going to hurt them.”

April 30, 2010

Guam: military buildup impact study contains “inaccurate, inadequate information and plagiarized materials”

This is what happens when the military predetermines the outcome, hires mercenary environmental firms to make the results ‘to fit’, then tries to force the decision on the local community. It’s called environmental racism. It’s called imperialism.

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http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11944:plagiarism-irks-senators&catid=1:guam-local-news&Itemid=2

Plagiarism irks senators

Thursday, 29 April 2010 02:54 by Jennifer Naylor Gesick | Variety News Staff

Military asked to draft a new impact study for Guam buildup

GUAM senators are demanding that the Department of Defense draft a new environmental impact statement, irked that the draft impact study presented to the local community contained a string of inaccurate, inadequate information and plagiarized materials.

They are also asking the defense department to conduct a new impact study for important projects such as Apra Harbor and the firing range proposed on Route 15.

Speaker Judi Won Pat responded with utter disgust to the discovery that portions of the draft impact study were plagiarized. “If they are going to plagiarize something that has nothing to do with Guam, then that makes me question all the contractors and experts they consulted,” she said.

“This makes me wonder how much of the entire DEIS is flawed. The military needs to do some inquiries here,” Won Pat added.

She questioned why the contractor TEC, Inc., which wrote the report for the military, would cut and paste scientific information from a source that did not study Apra Harbor.

Won Pat added that it is the plagiarism along with several other discoveries of inadequate and wrong information that prompted the legislature to pass Resolution 275, which says the senators feel that whole sections of the DEIS should be dealt with separately.

Federal visit

Won Pat said, “It is very timely,” because Guam is going to be visited by high-level officials in the next few weeks.

Guam is expecting a visit this week from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Wallace C. Gregson. The senators plan to meet with him, and he is scheduled to give a lecture at the University of Guam entitled “Where America’s Day Begins: Guam and U.S. Engagement in the Asia Pacific.”

Senator Rory Respicio was also upset at the recent developments. “I’m shocked,” he said. “When anything like this is discovered, it makes the entire document suspect.”

“We have already found many problems ourselves and we know that EPA finds it insufficient,” added Respicio. “I wonder how many other items like this are scattered throughout the voluminous report? Could it be that EPA was also aware of this, and perhaps other instances where DEIS findings were taken from other sources without acknowledgment?”

Suspicion

Senator Judi Guthertz, chairwoman of the military buildup committee, said, “Dr. Jason Biggs revealed what many suspected all along. The company contracted by the Department of Navy to draft the impact statement for the Guam military buildup did not do a good job.”

“In many ways, the multi-thousand page report is misleading, inaccurate, condescending to the people of Guam, and now — thanks to Dr. Biggs’ discovery – we know it is, at least in part, a dishonest document,” said Guthertz.

“The company contracted to do the draft study knows little about Guam and obviously scrambled to find information it could claim to help justify the military buildup preferred option plans for Guam,” Guthertz said.

April 30, 2010

Palau: Senate asks U.S. to consider Angaur as Futenma relocation site

http://www.mvariety.com/2010042826058/local-news/senate-asks-u.s.-to-consider-angaur-as-futenma-relocation-site.php

Senate asks U.S. to consider Angaur as Futenma relocation site

Wednesday, April 28 2010 15:19 By Bernadette H. Carreon

KOROR (Palau Horizon) – The Senate has adopted a resolution asking President Johnson Toribiong to offer the State of Angaur as an alternative location for the United States’ Airbase following plans to relocate the Futenma Airbase from Okinawa, Japan.

Resolution 8-53 stated that Angaur State can be utilized for the “United States military, strategic planning for the relocation of the Futenma Airbase from Okinawa, Japan.”

Resolution 8-53 requests President Johnson Toribiong to discuss with the government of the United States, through diplomatic channels the plan.

The resolution said that under the Compact of Free Association, U.S. has the right options to use lands in Palau for military defense.

The resolution cited that on the April 13-15, 2010 issue of the Palau Horizon, two members of the Japanese Diet; namely, the Honorable Takamine Zenshin and Tinian-born Representative Teruya Kantoku, expressed strong desire for the Island of Tinian in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands as a likely site to relocate Futenma Airbase from Okinawa, Japan.

The senators said historically Angaur has been used as a military support by the U.S. during World War II.

The resolution stated that a nearly 10,000 feet runway was constructed on Angaur Island from September 17-30, 1944 following a six-day, non-stop bombardment by USS Tennessee and landing on Angaur of the US 81st Infantry Division under the Command of Major General Paul J. Muller and from this newly constructed airfield US military aircrafts flew over to and bombed the Island of Peleliu and that said Angaur airfield provided much needed support for the invasion and the eventual US victory of the Battle of Peleliu.

It added, several years later said Angaur Airfield was put to civilian use as interim airport for commercial airplanes to land throughout the time Airai International Airport was under construction for resurfacing and extension of the runways.

Under Title III, Article II – Defense Sites and Operating Rights – in Section 321 of the Compact of Free Association “allows the United States to establish and use defense sites in Palau, and may designate land and water areas and improvements in accordance with terms and conditions set forth in a separate subsidiary agreement known as the Military Use and Operating Rights Agreement.”

Japan wanted the airbase out of Okinawa.

April 29, 2010April 29, 2010

Guam Lawmakers Cry Foul On Military Report

GUAM LAWMAKERS CRY FOUL ON MILITARY REPORT

Plagiarism, inaccurate information mar EIS

By Jennifer Naylor Gesick

HAGÅTÑA, Guam (Marianas Variety, April 29, 2010) – Guam senators are demanding that the Department of Defense draft a new environmental impact statement, irked that the draft impact study presented to the local community contained a string of inaccurate, inadequate information and plagiarized materials. They are also asking the defense department to conduct a new impact study for important projects such as Apra Harbor and the firing range proposed on Route 15.

“This makes me wonder how much of the entire DEIS [draft environmental impact statement] is flawed. The military needs to do some inquiries here,” Won Pat added.

She questioned why the contractor TEC, Inc., which wrote the report for the military, would cut and paste scientific information from a source that did not study Apra Harbor.

Won Pat said, “It is very timely,” because Guam is going to be visited by high-level officials in the next few weeks.

Senator Rory Respicio was also upset at the recent developments. “I’m shocked,” he said. “When anything like this is discovered, it makes the entire document suspect.”

He suggested, as others have, that Guam should take more time for the military buildup process. “This is just one more reason that we need to slow down this process and work together, both the federal and local governments, to do it right,” said Respicio.Senator Judi Guthertz, chairwoman of the military buildup committee, said, “Dr. Jason Biggs revealed what many suspected all along. The company contracted by the Department of Navy to draft the impact statement for the Guam military buildup did not do a good job.”

April 28, 2010

Palau’s senate offers land for U.S. Pacific base

In the 1980s, the people of Palau fought very hard to institute a nuclear free constitution. But the U.S. refused to accept the nuclear prohibition and made Palauans revise their constitution. In the end, after a campaign of political terror, a constitution was ratified that did not contain the nuclear free clause. It is a tragic irony that the present leaders in Palau are actively courting the same military power that once derailed their self-determination efforts.

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http://australianetworknews.com/stories/201004/2884918.htm?desktop

Palau’s senate offers land for US Pacific base

Last Updated: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:54:00 +1000

Palau’s Senate has asked President President Johnson Toribiong to offer the state of Angaur as an alternative location for the US Futenma air base in Okinawa, Japan.

The Marianas Variety reports that under the Compact of Free Association, the US military has the option to use lands in Palau.

The senators also noted that two Japanese politicians recently visited the CNMI to look at a site being considered by Japan as a likely relocation site for Futenma.

Okinawa residents are protesting at Japan’s 2006 agreement to relocate the US base to a coastal part of the island.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama vowed to review the agreement but has struggled to find an alternative location.

April 27, 2010

Pasifik rising! Famokaiyan and Women for Genuine Security action in San Francisco

On Earth Day, April 22, Famoksaiyan and Women for Genuine Security held a press conference and action at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Earth Day commemoration in protest of the military expansion in Guahan/Guam and the Mariana Islands. The action was also in solidarity with the massive demonstrations in Okinawa protesting U.S. military bases.

Check out the report on their action at the website for the West Coast chapter of Famoksaiyan. There’s a great slide show at the end of the article.

I feel the Pasifik rising…

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http://famoksaiyanwc.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/earth-day-press-conference-4-22-2010/

April 25, 2010…2:23 pm

Clean up not build up!: Earth Day Press Conference 4.22.2010

Contributed by Erica Benton

On April 22, Earth Day, several groups gathered outside St. Patrick’s Church in San Francisco demanding a halt to US military expansion on the Pacific island of Guam. Their voices join recent EPA concerns that the Department of Defense’s plan will have devastating impacts on 71 acres of coral reef and fails to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. The plan will threaten the habitat of thousands of species of marine life, including endangered species such as green sea turtle, hawksbill sea turtle and spinner dolphin. At a time of economic recession and mounting national debt, the US base expansion on Guam will be one of the largest buildups in recent history, costing US taxpayers an estimated $9 Billion. On Earth Day, San Franciscans witnessed the release of a letter signed by 100 environmentalists, scholars, community and religious leaders who are calling on the White House and the Council on Environmental Quality to halt the build-up.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in its evaluation of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), gave the plan the worst possible rating, calling it “inadequate” and “insufficient,” and stating that the impacts of dredging on the high quality coral reefs of Apra Harbor “are of sufficient magnitude that EPA believes the action should not proceed as proposed.” The proposed build up, would bring 79,000 more people to Guam, increasing the population of 173,456 by 47%. According to the EPA, the plan fails to adequately address the impact of this population increase on the water supply and wastewater treatment on Guam, creating adverse public health impacts.

Environmental research organizations, such as the Center for Biological Diversity stated in their public comment: “The Navy has failed to meet the statutory requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality…. because it improperly limited the scope of the DEIS and failed to include sufficient information on alternatives, impacts to cultural resources and social justice issues, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”

“Our communities in Guam are counting on us to be a voice for them in Washington,” says Erica Benton, a local bay area resident with family ties to Guam and a member of

Famoksaiyan, a group which voices concerns for Guam and Chamorros in the diaspora. “The island is an unincorporated territory of the US, which basically means they cannot vote for US presidents and only have a non-voting delegate in Congress. We hope our leaders here in California take a stand with us, and for the environment.”

“This Earth Day, we have to address that the military is one of the biggest polluters on the planet, and the largest contributor to greenhouse gases. The massive build up on Guam directly contradicts efforts to protect our environment from global warming,” says Reverend Deborah Lee, a member of Women for Genuine Security, the local chapter of a global women’s network that works to protect the health and safety of communities around US military bases. “The US military has an enormous carbon footprint which must be addressed for the health of local communities and the security of our entire planet.”

As the largest Chamorro population outside of Guam resides in California, groups are calling on California Congressional Representatives and President Obama to:

1) Halt the current plans for the build up;

2) Before the DOD goes forward, require a rewrite of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, with an appropriate public comment period of at least 6 months. The new DEIS should address socioeconomic and cultural impacts on local communities, clearly outlined mitigation of environmental impacts and greenhouse gases, and impacts to self-determination. The process of writing the DEIS should be transparent and include participation of community and environmental watchdog groups.

3) Require the DOD to clean up existing contamination and toxic sites, on and off-base, caused by military operations on Guam, before any base expansion projects are considered;

The San Francisco Earth Day action took place across the street from the EPA’s Earth Day Festival at Yerba Buena Garden. The action was also in solidarity with rallies that will be held in Washington DC and Okinawa, Japan on Sunday, April 25th in protest of a new US base in Okinawa which already holds 30 bases. 100,000 people are expected to rally in Okinawa this Sunday. The Guam build-up plan includes the proposed transfer of 8,000 Marines from Futenma Air Station in Okinawa after decades of local protests.

April 26, 2010

Hypersonic glider test fails over the Pacific

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/04/26/national/a143633D74.DTL

US defense agency’s hypersonic glider test fails

Monday, April 26, 2010

(04-26) 14:36 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) —

A U.S. defense agency says contact with an experimental hypersonic glider was lost after it launched from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base last week.

The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched atop a booster rocket on Thursday. It was supposed to separate and glide at many times the speed of sound to a splashdown near Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said Monday that the glider did separate and a preliminary review indicates it achieved controlled flight before telemetry was lost.

The agency says engineers are trying to determine what happened and where it came down.

The U.S. military is trying to develop technology to respond to threats around the globe at speeds of Mach 20 or greater.

April 26, 2010

Insular Empire “Red Pill Tour”

Vanessa Warheit, director of the film Insular Empire: America in the Mariana Islands just posted a new entry about her visit to Hawai’i and what she has dubbed the “Red Pill Tour”, a reference to the scene in The Matrix when Neo takes the red pill that awakens him to the violent and oppressive reality of his existence as he joins the resistance.

It was surreal standing over the map of the Pacific ocean in the Arizona Memorial visitor’s center, talking with Dr. Hope Cristobal a Chamorro leader from Guam, Lino Olopai, a Refaluwasch (Carolinian) master canoe navigator from Saipan, Terri Keko’olani and Vanessa about the “American Lake”, how the Pacific is depicted in the U.S. imperial imagination. Then Lino struck up a conversation with “cousins” from Kiribati, who happened to be visiting the memorial. In beautiful contrast, it illustrated how peoples of the Pacific see Ka Moana Nui as the medium that unites peoples.