Tag: Movements and Resistance

Posted on

Open Letter from a Hawai’i Okinawan: “The Battle of Okinawa is not over…”

Eric Wada, a person of Okinawan ancestry in Hawai’i, teacher of Okinawan language and a master of traditional Okinawan sanshin and song, posted the following open letter on Facebook to the people of his ancestral homeland:

OKINAWA 911 !!! PLEASE READ AND DISTRIBUTE !

To all in Okinawa,

Okinawa needs to realize their rights have been taken away over and over. They have been lied to and used as sacrifice by the Japanese, just because they are not really Japanese, but Ryukuan. A colonized land taken over by U.S. and Japan. Okinawa has no voice. Okinawa needs to stand up and demand their rights.

They were forcefully annexed in 1879, same as Queen Lili`uokalani of Hawai`i. They were told that their way of life, dress and culture are inferior and that they must stop speaking their native language . They were taught that they were stupid and would not be able to hold a good job or position if they spoke Okinawan. They were punished for being Okinawan.

Now less than 5% of the population understands and speaks the language. Okinawa did not have any voice in these decisions. Almost all Okinawans believed the reversion to Japan would bring them equality and status as Japanese.

It has been 40 years and nothing has changed as Okinawans still receive the bad end of the deal. They take the burden of 80% of all U.S. bases in Japan, but Okinawa has not seen the economic rewards. The only ones who prosper is the landowners and a small percentage who work on the bases. The majority of Okinawans still suffer as Japan has not helped to build Okinawa back up after making it it’s sacrifice in the war, although knowing that they were going to surrender. 140,00 Okinawans, elders, women, children, lost their lives in the only land battle, as innocent Ryukyuan blood was spilled in a war they were forced to be a shield for.

Okinawa now faces the base decision being shoved down their throats should the Japan government create a new law to override the Okinawans’ decision. U.S. is putting pressure on Japan, without consideration to the vote and decision of the Okinawa people. Articles quote U.S. as saying ‘for national interests..etc” Who’s interests? Americans? So much for “Liberty and Justice for All”. Its very interesting how the so called democratic laws of the U.S., works at their discretion, but otherwise can be thrown aside when it comes to forcing what they want on foreign peoples and lands.

As for Japan, the prejudice of the Okinawans still remains as Okinawa is used for its own gains. If only Okinawa can realize their rights are being violated over and over and if this continues there will be no more Okinawa. If U.S. really preaches “Liberty and Justice for All”, then they must honor the decision of the Okinawans and honor their promise to return Futenma. If not…Futenma agreement was only to quell the anger from the rape in 1995.

Okinawans understand how important peace is, but at the same time cannot continue to be the sacrifice as their rights are continually violated. The Battle of Okinawa is not over…the cultural genocide of Okinawa continues.

Posted on

Navy will re-evaluate selection of Pagat for firing range

In a win for opponents of the Navy buildup on Guam, the Pacific News Center reports that the Navy has agreed to do a supplementary environmental impact statement for a proposed live fire training facility in Guam:

The national trust for historic preservation, The Guam Preservation trust and We Are Guahan filed a suit against the Navy in attempts to stop them from going forward with their plans to use Pagat as a firing range complex. The crux of the plaintiffs argument is that the Navy did not adequately evaluate or consider all of the alternative sites that could’ve been used as a firing range complex. A thorough evaluation of all potential sites is required by the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA.

[…]

Back on June 17th Hawaii district court judge Leslie Kobayashi denied without prejudice DOD’s request for a stay in the lawsuit. The Navy then filed a motion to dismiss for a lack of jurisdiction. However, before the hearing on the motion to dismiss which was scheduled for November 30th the Joint Guam Program Office Director Joe Ludovici filed today’s declaration in essence agreeing to redo the entire firing range selection process which could result in the selection of an entirely new site. This declaration from ludovici is expected to result in an order from Judge Kobayashi instructing the Navy to go ahead and conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement.

Read the declaration by JGPO Director Joseph Ludovichi. However, it should be noted that a win under NEPA does not stop the project outright.  After reviewing alternatives for its proposed firing range, the Navy could choose a different location, or it could choose the same location.

Posted on

One Veteran’s Rough Path from Killing and Torturing to Peace

Check out this article about military whistleblower Evan Knappenberger and his journey from wanting to kill in revenge for 9/11 to speaking out against the crimes of the government:

One Veteran’s Rough Path from Killing and Torturing to Peace

By davidswanson – Posted on 15 November 2011

Not yet 30, Evan Knappenberger has already lived several lives.  His story destroys the U.S. government’s case against whistleblower Bradley Manning, exposes the toxic mix of fraud and incompetence that creates U.S. war policies, and highlights the damage so often done to soldiers who come home without visible injuries.

Knappenberger, seen in this video, was trained as an “intelligence analyst” at the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Training Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona in 2003 and 2004, the same school attended by Bradley Manning.  In April of this year, the PBS show Frontline, responding to an article Knappenberger had published, flew him to Los Angeles on a private jet, and interviewed him for four hours.

Knappenberger told Frontline that he, like Manning, had had access to the U.S. government’s SIPRNet database when he had been in Iraq.  Knappenberger told Frontline that 1,400 U.S. government agencies put their information on SIPRNet, and that 2 million employees were given access to it.  SIPRNet has secret blogs, secret discussions, and its own secret Google search engine.  At one point, the Pentagon encouraged gambling on SIPRNet on the likelihood of future terrorist attacks.  Knappenberger also pointed out that the United States had given the Iraqi Army access to the database, knowing full well that many members of the Iraqi Army were also on the U.S. target list as enemies fighting U.S. troops.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Posted on

Nuclear Guinea Pigs

Cover image for Nov 9, 2011

Mahalo to Beverly Keever for her intrepid reporting on the secret history of nuclear colonialism in the Pacific and the plight of nuclear survivors and refugees from the Marshall Islands.  Here article “Nuclear Guinea Pigs” was the cover story of the Honolulu Weekly. Here are excerpts:

In the old-timey section of Kalihi, tucked between auto repair shops and boarded-up storefronts, Maza Attari, a Marshall Islander, lived with four family members in a one-bedroom apartment barely bigger than a ping-pong table. When visited by this reporter last summer, Attari had been unable to find steady work since being flown to Honolulu 12 years ago for back surgery that had left him with a severe limp and weakened muscles.

Attari’s circumstances exemplify the far-reaching impacts of nuclear testing upon irradiated, exiled or dislocated Marshall Islanders. From 1946 to 1962, their home atolls served as experimental grounds where the US detonated nuclear weapons and tested delivery systems in the transition from conventional to intercontinental bombers. In all, the US exploded 86 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, which are situated 3,000 miles west of Honolulu. Those 86 bombs equated to 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombs–or 1.4 weapons per day for 16 years.

A one-time magistrate and mayor on Utrik, Attari said last summer that he doubted he would be able to return there, prophesying instead, “I’m going to stay here until I die.” He died in September of this year, without ever receiving the reparations that he and other nuclear victims have claimed.

The debt

It is a debt that is not only owed them, but that has compounded over time. Because these nuclear weapons experiments were too dangerous and unpredictable to be conducted on the US mainland, Attari and other Marshallese are part of the reason for America’s superpower status today. A half-century later, the Marshall Islands continue to serve as a crucial part of an outer defense periphery for the US heartland–6,000 miles away. That periphery includes the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, where for more than three decades missiles fired from 4,000 miles away (at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California) have crashed near Kwajalein Atoll, horribly frightening the indigenous inhabitants and leaving them unsure of where the debris will fall.

[…]

The British government, between 1957 and 1958 conducted nine atmospheric tests, yielding the equivalent of about 12,000,000 tons of TNT, and the French carried out 193 Pacific nuclear tests yielding the equivalent of about 13,500,000 tons beginning in 1962 and ending on Jan. 27, 1996. The British and French data were recently gleaned from hard-to-find sources and compiled by University of Hawaii botany professor Mark Merlin and graduate student Ricardo Gonzalez, enabling them to reveal for the first time a pathbreaking, half-century panorama of the environmental consequences of Pacific nuclear testing conducted by all three nations.

[…]

Guinea pigs

Not until 1994, 40 years after Bravo’s fallout, did Attari and other exposed islanders learn they were used as human subjects to research the effects of radioactive fallout and of livin. Within days after Bravo, while still at the naval base to which they had been evacuated, Rongelap and Utrik Islanders were incorporated into Project 4.1. They were neither asked for nor gave their informed consent, nor were told the risks of the studies for which they gained no benefit.

Titled the “Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons, the document was classified “Secret Restricted Data.”

I am reminded of Henry Kissinger’s infamous statement about the Marshall Islands that revealed his genocidal indifference to the nuclear crimes of the U.S.: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”   We give a damn.

Posted on

“The Base” Movie about Jeju struggle

A documentary about the Jeju struggle is being produced by the same film maker who did “Pax Americana”.  It’s called “The Base”. Check it out:

http://thebasefilm.com/index.html

A Tale of War, Peace and Resistance

The South Korean Government is constructing a naval base on Jeju Island. Officially designated the “Island of World Peace,” Jeju was the scene of a massacre in which 30,000-60,000 civilians were estimated to have been slaughtered during a democratic uprising in 1948. This genocide was conducted under United States military government rule by South Korean security forces. The pain of this dark past is ever present and has yet to heal.

Located strategically in the Korea Strait, the island’s potential to become a military target in the event of an armed conflict in this tense region would increase exponentially with the addition of a naval base. The threat this poses to the men, women and children of Jeju Island is unconscionable, and it can be avoided through halting the base construction. Throughout Jeju´s history whenever a military has been present on the island it has brought with it death and bloodshed.

The Base is the inspiring tale of a humble fishing and farming community. Men, women and children determined to fight military and corporate giants with their bare hands, in pursuit of a vision of Peace shared for generations.

Posted on

In APEC’s Shadow: The Pacific People’s Economy

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2011/11/10/13740-in-apecs-shadow-the-pacific-peoples-economy/

In APEC’s Shadow: The Pacific People’s Economy

By Chad Blair11/10/2011

John Hook/Civil Beat

APEC is “armed and dangerous” and “drunk with power,” capable of enacting violence against people and destroying whole economies.

That harsh assessment comes from Victor Menotti, executive director of the International Forum on Globalization.

[…]

Moana Nui — Hawaiian for “big ocean” — was organized by “a loose collective” of academics, activists and community leaders. The speakers talked about a “liquid nation” that struggles to sustain itself in an “American lake,” to use the title of a book by the conference’s keynote speaker, Walden Bello.

[…]

“We envision a better future for all people,” said Osorio. “We never want to lose sight that we as a native people have a stake.”

“We come here to find a way to rise up to support the liquid nation,” said Menotti.

That nation involves labor, faith groups, environmentalists, peace activists and indigenous leaders.

Menotti continued: “All our different movements have come together to challenge APEC and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agenda and assert our own agenda.”

Posted on

(De) Militarizing the Pacific – Hawaiʻi and Guahan

NATIVE VOICES #3: 11/9/11, 7pm, Halau O Haumea, Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies.

DEMILITARIZING THE PACIFIC: a roundtable featuring scholars & activists from HAWAII & GUAHAN, including JULIAN AGUON, LISA NATIVIDAD, TY KAWIKA TENGAN, TERRI KEKOʻOLANI, & KALEIKOA KAʻEO. Hosted by CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ.

Posted on

US GI in SKorea gets 10 years in prison for rape

The AP reports that a “US GI in SKorea gets 10 years in prison for rape”:

A South Korean court sentenced a U.S. soldier to 10 years in prison Tuesday for raping a teenage girl — the second harshest punishment handed down to a convicted American soldier here in nearly 20 years.

Uijeongbu District Court convicted 21-year-old Pfc. Kevin Flippin of sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl numerous times after breaking into her small boarding room near Seoul in September, court spokesman Lee Sang-yup said.

Flippin committed many “sadistic and sexually perverted acts” while threatening the girl with a pair of scissors, a knife and a lighter, Lee said. The soldier robbed the girl of 5,000 won ($4.50) as well, he said.

The court verdict said the girl felt “terrified and sexually humiliated,” according to Lee.

The case, along with a separate rape allegation by a teenage girl against another U.S. soldier, prompted top U.S. military and government officials to offer public apologies.

Posted on

Lost Bases of Empire

As war, economic crises and political unrest continue to sap the United States, maintaining the vast network of U.S. foreign military bases may become more tenuous.   Tarak Barkawi writes in Al Jazeera:

But the US is divided and turned in on itself. Much of the government is hobbled by underinvestment, privatisation and party politics. Mainstream debate lacks little rational basis for effective foreign and strategic policy.

The presumptive Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has recently suggested China take over from the US in providing humanitarian aid.

The world is becoming a different place. Major US interventions, welcome or not, are unlikely to be on offer. We are perhaps one financial crisis away from the moment when the idea of maintaining even established bases abroad – when the iron web of empire since 1945 will itself be called into question.

This may be a moment for anti-militarization forces to push back against the war machine. Radio France Internationale reports that Kyrgyzstanʻs president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has called for the U.S. to close its military base in Manas:

Kyrgyzstan’s president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has declared that the United States must shut down its base in the central Asian country when the lease expires in 2014. Atambayev, who won Sunday’s election with over 63 per cent of the vote, said that the base’s presence is a security threat to Kyrgyzstan.

[…]

Local politicians say that fuel dumps by US planes destroy crops and cause illness, claims that are denied by Washington.

But Atambayev, who resigned as prime minister to stand as president, invoked the country’s security to justify the ultimatum.

“We know that the United States is often engaged in conflict. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, and now relations are tense with Iran,” he said. “I would not want for one of these countries to launch a retaliatory strike on the military base.”

However, despite the pending withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the U.S. plans an expansion within the Persian Gulf region to maintain hegemony in the region. The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.

The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Obama’s announcement this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.

After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon is now drawing up an alternative.

In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.

In Okinawa, despite Secretary of Defense Leon Panettaʻs recent trip to Japan to shore up a U.S. base realignment plan within Okinawa, Okinawans are not having it.   Former Okinawa governor Keiichi Inamine, who had supported the base realignment plan, said that relocation of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa was “impossible”:

‘Everyone in Okinawa thinks it’s impossible’ to relocate US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to a more remote part of the island, former Okinawa governor Keiichi Inamine told the Mainichi newspaper.

Inamine, backed by the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was elected governor in late 1998 and supported the relocation plan with some conditions, such as 15-year time limit on a new facility in Nago city, in the northern part of Okinawa.

‘Okinawa has completely changed,’ he said. ‘It’s time for the government to admit it’s impossible to relocate the base within Okinawa and ask the US to reconsider.’

 

Proudly powered by WordPress