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Saddle Road Realignment: Another military highway

SADDLE: BIG ISLE ROAD CONNECTION

Officials hail island link for Hilo and West Hawaii

By Rod Thompson

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Dec 12, 2008

HILO » Federal, state and county officials opened a rebuilt, widened, 9-mile stretch of the 49-mile Saddle Road between Hilo and West Hawaii yesterday, part of a two-decade-long process of unifying the two sides of the Big Island.

A previous segment was completed last year. To date, 17 miles of the project have been finished at a cost of $126.4 million, said project manager Dave Gedeon, of the Federal Highway Administration.

“This is not just a road project. It’s part of building a community,” said state transportation Director Brennon Morioka. The island is “one big home rather than two separate regions,” he said.

Mayor Billy Kenoi echoed the idea. At a time when some people in West Hawaii are resentful of Hilo, the road connects the community as a whole, Kenoi said.

Walter Kunitake, head of the advisory Saddle Road Task Force, said he is happy with the current pace since construction began in 2004. “It’s wonderful, the speed. We’re on a roll now,” he said.

The road bed for another 7-mile segment routed around the Army’s Pohakuloa Training Area is already complete.

Paving is expected to start soon after New Year’s and to be completed roughly in September.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye’s representative, Jennifer Goto Sabas, said $30 million is allotted for further construction, but Gedeon said more will be needed.

Sabas emphasized that much of the justification for the project has been military need for access to Pohakuloa.

“The vast majority of the dollars are defense dollars,” she said.

That will change to nonmilitary highway dollars as the east and west ends of the road are constructed, Gedeon said, but the funding will still be almost 100 percent federal.

A proposed state project would link the west end of Saddle Road to a new state highway down to the West Hawaii coast. Federal money might also pay for 80 percent of that, Gedeon said.

HILO » Federal, state and county officials opened a rebuilt, widened, 9-mile stretch of the 49-mile Saddle Road between Hilo and West Hawaii yesterday, part of a two-decade-long process of unifying the two sides of the Big Island.

A previous segment was completed last year. To date, 17 miles of the project have been finished at a cost of $126.4 million, said project manager Dave Gedeon, of the Federal Highway Administration.

“This is not just a road project. It’s part of building a community,” said state transportation Director Brennon Morioka. The island is “one big home rather than two separate regions,” he said.

Mayor Billy Kenoi echoed the idea. At a time when some people in West Hawaii are resentful of Hilo, the road connects the community as a whole, Kenoi said.

Walter Kunitake, head of the advisory Saddle Road Task Force, said he is happy with the current pace since construction began in 2004. “It’s wonderful, the speed. We’re on a roll now,” he said.

The road bed for another 7-mile segment routed around the Army’s Pohakuloa Training Area is already complete.

Paving is expected to start soon after New Year’s and to be completed roughly in September.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye’s representative, Jennifer Goto Sabas, said $30 million is allotted for further construction, but Gedeon said more will be needed.

Sabas emphasized that much of the justification for the project has been military need for access to Pohakuloa.

“The vast majority of the dollars are defense dollars,” she said.

That will change to nonmilitary highway dollars as the east and west ends of the road are constructed, Gedeon said, but the funding will still be almost 100 percent federal.

A proposed state project would link the west end of Saddle Road to a new state highway down to the West Hawaii coast. Federal money might also pay for 80 percent of that, Gedeon said.

Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/hawaiinews/20081212_Officials_hail_island_link_for_Hilo_and_West_Hawaii.html

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Tackling the Global Military Industrial Complex

Tackling the Global Military Industrial Complex

By John Feffer

The headlines coming out of East Asia have been rather positive – compared to the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan, melting glaciers, and plummeting stock markets. The Six Party Talks have been making progress toward ending the confrontation between the United States and North Korea and denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. Over the summer, North Korea provided a detailed accounting of its nuclear programs and even destroyed the cooling tower of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The Bush administration in turn announced that it was taking North Korea off the Trading with the Enemy Act list and the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. After a disagreement over verification, the two sides reached a compromise in October and negotiations are heading toward their third and final stage.

Helped by the other Six Party participants – South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China – the United States and North Korea appear to be only a few steps away from ending the Cold War that has divided them for more than half a century.

However, even if negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang proceed smoothly to the next level, the situation in East Asia is far from peaceful. Beneath the surface, an arms race among the countries in the Six Party Talks continues to heat up. Although a global economic recession is putting pressure on budgets everywhere, military spending will likely continue its upward trajectory without public pressure.

The arms race in Northeast Asia is driving up global military expenditures. Any effort to get a grip on the global military industrial complex will have to begin with these six countries.

Military Budgets on the Rise

The numbers are startling. U.S. military spending, which represents nearly half of all global military expenditures, has increased over 70 percent since 2001. Between 1999 and 2006, South Korea also raised its defense spending by over 70 percent, and the government in Seoul plans to increase this figure by 7-8 percent every year for the next dozen years. Chinese and Russian military spending increases have been even larger over the same period. In its difficult economic straits, North Korea has attempted to keep pace, increasing military spending by 25% (in local currency) between 2004 and 2007. Only Japan has not increased its expenditures over the same period, though an influential group of politicians in the ruling party has been pushing to remove the 1%-of-GDP cap on military spending.

The arms race in East Asia has specific, regional implications. The United States continues to lavish funds on Cold War weapons systems that can only be used in wars against comparable adversaries (in other words, China or Russia). While Beijing and Washington have cooperated on such issues as the Six Party negotiations and counter-terrorism, the Pentagon’s moves to deploy missile defense systems in the Asia Pacific are raising Chinese eyebrows. North Korea has developed weapons that undermine the security of the other members of the Six Party talks. But South Korea, too, is acquiring military capability that can reach beyond the peninsula. China’s rapid increase in military spending is creating jitters among her neighbors in the region. Washington may find comfort in an emerging new political consensus in Japan that favors a strong, offensively arrayed military, but Beijing, Seoul, and Pyongyang are keeping a worried eye on it. With Russia and China moving closer together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the United States and Japan strengthening their bilateral alliance, a new Cold War divide is emerging in the region. Increased military spending is both a symptom and a driver of this new confrontation.

This is no mere regional issue. In East Asia, the largest militaries in the world – the United States, China, Russia, and Japan – all face one another. The countries participating in the Six-Party Talks are responsible for 65% of global military spending. These developments in East Asia mirror a global trend: world military expenditures increased by 45 percent over the last decade.

Military Freeze

To address this new Cold War, publicize its “hidden” arms race, and press the governments concerned to change their budget priorities, activists from the peace and Asian-American communities have proposed a Pacific Freeze campaign. Modeled after Randall Forsberg’s Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign of the 1980s, the Pacific Freeze calls on the governments in the Six Party Talks to freeze their military spending and then reduce their budgets on an equitable basis – with the United States leading the way – as a first step in demilitarizing the region. Like Forsberg’s earlier campaign, the initial freeze on military spending would be mutual.

The Freeze includes both the United States and Russia, for they are Pacific powers and spend a great deal of money on their military presence in the region. They are also the top two arms exporters in the world. Any attempt to restrain military spending that does not include the former Cold War adversaries will not likely succeed. The Freeze also applies to the entirety of the military budgets and not just the portions used in the Pacific region. The United States does not spend its entire half-trillion dollar military budget on its military presence in the Pacific. Nor do Russia and China. However, all three countries can redeploy troops and military hardware to the Pacific region in an emergency. And, since all six countries spend far in excess of their legitimate security needs, freezing the overall budget is a necessary first step in establishing reasonable budget priorities.

The ultimate goal of the campaign is to draw down military budgets and transfer a portion of the savings to a regional Green Energy fund. But the intermediary goal, as with the Nuclear Freeze campaign of the 1980s, is to get people talking about the issue. Right now, military spending is a sacred cow in all six countries. Every government insists that military “modernization” is imperative. Few civic groups have been able to raise the issue in a unilateral context in the sense of urging their government to unilaterally reduce military spending. So, both governments, and to a certain extent civic groups too, are trapped in a security dilemma. Yet this narrow security dilemma is itself inset in a much larger human security dilemma. At a time when we urgently need funds for the food crisis, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the AIDS crisis, and other looming crises – all of which threaten human security – military spending is nowhere near the top of the global agenda.

The Six Party Talks provide a strategic opening for this kind of campaign. The participating governments have all been talking peace but preparing for war. With the Freeze, we call on the governments to put their money where the mouths are. Any progress in the nuclear talks is commendable. But the runaway military budgets exacerbate the many challenges to regional security. Despite booming trade relations, the region faces many threats to stability. A regional security mechanism, one of the working groups within the Six Party framework, could begin to address these threats. But unless such a mechanism deals with the arms race in the region, it will address only surface issues and fail to grapple with a driving force behind insecurity.

Obama’s Dilemma

The current financial crisis – which has finally kicked in globally – may do what peace activists have been unable to do: impose austerity measures on military spending. The prospects for this, however, are not good. First of all, during past recessions and depressions, governments have used arms spending to maintain employment and stimulate the economy. Second, in the United States, the Democratic Party has continually feared being perceived as “soft on the military.” Although he has urged an end to the war in Iraq, Obama also called for redeploying troops to Afghanistan, increasing the size of the military by 92,000 troops, and staying “on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar.” The Pentagon wants an increase in military spending of $450 billion over the next five years (that’s over and above the already-scheduled increases for next two years).

Obama, however, is pushing for a large economic stimulus and universal health care. At a time when tax increases are largely off the table, where will the new president get the money for these ambitious plans? The peace movement has to push hard for Obama to choose butter over guns.

Peace activists have tried for years to clip the wings of the Pentagon. We’ve pushed for military reductions domestically and watched the Pentagon expand like the Blob. We’ve tried to work at an international level to restrain military spending only to witness the creation of a global military industrial complex. It’s time to try something new. Let’s leverage the negative impact of the financial crisis and the positive developments of the Six Party Talks to get the issue of military spending on table. The global military industrial complex is eating our planet. A freeze is the first step in chaining this monster and turning to the real problems that confront us.

For more information and to sign the Pacific Freeze Call to Action, please visit: http://www.pacificfreeze.ips-dc.org/

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus – www.fpif.org – at the Institute for Policy Studies.

You can sign on to War Times/Tiempo de Guerras e-mail Announcement List at http://www.war-times.org.

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Navatek builds robotic military ship

Another military ship backed by Sen. Inouye. “This summer, Navatek delivered to the U.S. Navy two 11-meter USVs worth $3.7 million, with pending orders for two more. The unmanned vessels will be used on the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships that are now in testing.”
HonoluluAdvertiser.com

December 9, 2008

Navatek builds $2.2M research ship

By William Cole
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai’i ship design company Navatek Ltd. yesterday showed off some of the unmanned vessel technology it is developing for the U.S. and Singapore navies, as well as special operations warfare boat designs, as it continues to expand in the military market.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai’i, donned a welder’s jacket, hat, glove and mask, meanwhile, to assist in laying the first joining weld on the keel of a 65-foot research vessel, the Kuapa Ray.

The $2.2 million vessel, being built by Navatek, will serve as a research platform for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Navy in Florida to improve port and harbor security.

The Kuapa Ray is expected to be completed in about a year.

Inouye said Navatek President Steven Loui “has demonstrated that you can conceive an idea in Hawai’i, you can design an idea in Hawai’i, you can produce an idea in Hawai’i, and come out with something that is so superior that Singapore says, ‘This is what we want.’ ”

The company, which operates at Pier 41, said it is completing construction on a 9-meter (29.5-foot) “unmanned surface vessel,” or USV, for Singapore worth $350,000.

An award is pending for the delivery of another 9-meter USV to Singapore for $450,000, officials said.

This summer, Navatek delivered to the U.S. Navy two 11-meter USVs worth $3.7 million, with pending orders for two more. The unmanned vessels will be used on the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships that are now in testing.

“The value of unmanned and semi-autonomous vehicles to the military is immense,” Loui said. “Outfitted with sensors and weapons, they can perform dangerous missions without risking human lives.”

All of the unmanned boats have Navatek’s proprietary “entrapment tunnel monohull” design that the company says provides a stable ride and allows for high payloads.

In the last two years, the firm has landed four contracts worth $6.7 million.

Eric Schiff, vice president for special projects with Navatek, said a big project may add to that worth – a $6 million possible deal to build a 160-foot ship for the Navy with “bow lifting” technology also utilized on the Kuapa Ray.

The technology improves seakeeping and fuel efficiency, Navatek said. Officials said the ship would be built in partnership with a Mainland shipyard, but some of the technology would be added in Hawai’i.

Schiff said Navatek is unique in the United States.

“There’s not another company in the country that does the applied marine science that we do,” Schiff said. A lot of companies do marine engineering and marine analysis, but “we actually do applied science – we build our technologies.”

Navatek also is applying its bow and stern wing-like lifting-body technology to smooth out the ride of high-speed boats used by Navy SEAL commandos.

Navatek has built commercial vessels in Hawai’i in the past. The company is a privately owned subsidiary of Pacific Marine, which also owns Pacific Shipyards International.

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The new US invasion of Guam

This is an old article from a pro-military perspective. Notice how Chamoru opposition to the military expansion is diminished and how local politicians are falling over themselves to get to the trough.

Guam’s Return to Prominence

Sea Power | Richard R. Burgess | January 25, 2007

The 2006 agreement between the United States and Japan to shift 8,000 U.S. Marines from bases in Japan to the island of Guam by 2014 is likely to have more far-reaching implications than just a change of address for some units of the Marine Corps’ III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF). The move is accelerating the return to prominence of Guam in the U.S. defense posture and fostering a higher level of cooperation among the U.S. armed forces in the Pacific region.

Rear Adm. Gary A. Engle, former commander of the Pacific Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said the advent of the Marines creates the opportunity for forces on Guam “to be a model of jointness in how we operate.”

Guam has been the hub of joint military exercises in recent years, including Exercise Valiant Shield 2006 in June, which included three aircraft carrier strike groups operating together, along with other Navy ships and aircraft, Coast Guard units, and Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft. Exercise Resultant Fury in December 2004 involved joint sea strike exercises with Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy aircraft.

Guam, which is located 3,500 miles west of Hawaii and 1,300 miles southeast of Japan, is the largest and southernmost island of the Marianas Island chain. With a population of 160,000, Guam hosts more than 12,000 military personnel and their family members. The island supports two major facilities: Naval Base Guam, home to three attack submarines and a submarine tender, and Anderson Air Force Base, home to a Navy helicopter squadron and rotating deployments of Air Force bombers and tankers.

The other islands in the Marianas chain form the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, which has an agreement with the United States for training facilities and hosting one of the Military Sealift Command’s three Maritime Prepositioning Force squadrons. One of the islands, Farallon de Medinilla, is an uninhabited 200-acre island leased in 1976 for 100 years and is the Pacific Fleet’s only U.S.-controlled range available for live-fire training for forward-deployed naval forces.

Acquired from Spain in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War, Guam became a territory of the United States and emerged as an important refueling station. Captured by Japan in 1941, it was retaken by U.S. forces in a bitter battle in 1944 and was an important logistics base for the remainder of the Pacific campaign.

During the Cold War, Guam was a base for ballistic-missile submarines and patrol planes to counter Soviet submarines. During the Vietnam War, it was the launching point for B-52 bombers on long-range strikes on Vietnam. In the 1990s, the post-Cold War drawdown left U.S. force levels on Guam at low ebb.

U.S. forces began building up in Guam in 2002 when the Navy moved the first of three attack submarines to the naval base, placing them closer to deployment regions, saving time in transit and freeing more time for operations. The Navy expects to move two more submarines there. The Air Force has begun rotational deployments of B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers to Guam.

“Guam has several advantages, including its position in the Western Pacific,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Leaf, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and the military’s point man on the build-up in Guam. “The fact that there’s an existing [Department of Defense] infrastructure is another advantage because of the significant amount of land” held by DoD.

U.S. sovereignty over the island is another advantage, making use of forces more flexible and free from host-country political considerations regarding foreign policy, deployments and status-of-forces agreements.

The move of 8,000 Marines and an estimated 9,000 family members — mostly from Okinawa — is driven not by military strategy but the result of negotiations between the United States and Japan to reduce the social tension and environmental impact of large numbers of U.S. troops and aircraft on the small island. Moving the Marines to Guam places them more than 1,000 miles further from the Far East and potential flashpoints such as the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Straits.

“There’s no free lunch to putting forces inward,” Leaf said, noting that Guam is an “excellent choice for that rebasing. Normally, forces based in the Pacific are also global forces and may be needed outside our area of responsibility. Guam will provide a good location for that kind of response as well.”

“To be able to sustain our posture in the Western Pacific more efficiently and effectively, we need to restructure our basing and operating posture throughout the region, and Guam can make a huge contribution to that,” said Tom Donnelly, senior advisor in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“There’s some value in distance in that you are out of immediate strike range of China’s power-projection capabilities,” he said. Guam “could certainly serve as an excellent patrol base and important inter-theater staging base, and relatively secure rear area in event of a crisis or conflict, particularly one extending over a period of time.”

The Air Force plans to stage Global Hawk long-range surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles at Andersen beginning in April 2007, bolstering plans to make Guam “a hub for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike operations — a good composite capability to provide forces for the Pacific region,” Leaf said.

“The agreement reached between Japan and the United States [on May 1] represents the strength of our alliance and adjusting that alliance to current conditions and to the needs and desires of both nations,” he said.

The relocation agreement includes a commitment by the government of Japan to pay approximately $6.9 billion of the anticipated $10.3 billion cost to move Marines and their families to Guam.

The Marines have not yet determined which units of the III MEF will move to Guam, and the specifics of the restructuring of bases in Okinawa are still being worked out between the United States and Japan.

Engle foresees requirements for new barracks and family housing, plus improvements to the airfield, schools, commissaries and exchanges, as well as new utility systems, roads and waste facilities. Improvements already are in the works or were recently completed to accommodate an increased Air Force and Navy presence, including a new hangar, medical facility, fitness complex, high school, middle school and an upgrade to a water treatment facility.

Plans for the Northern Marianas are less defined, but the Navy, stressing the importance of working closely with the commonwealth, is looking at the possibility of increasing training facilities on the islands. One island, Tinian, has been used by Marine Corps units for training.

Pacific Command and the Navy are coordinating closely with the government of Guam and the island localities regarding anticipated construction on the island. In September, Leaf met with government officials, town mayors, contractor associations and the Chamber of Commerce to discuss the basing plans.

Guam’s representative in Congress, Madeleine Z. Bordallo, said the build-up will “provide an economic boost to the island with opportunities for new jobs, increased tax revenues for the government, increased utilization of Guam’s hotels, businesses, restaurants and the like and other corollary positive impacts.”

“The governor and Guam’s local leaders are working toward partnering arrangements in all places possible,” she said. “Further, we can predict now that increased revenue that will come in to the government of Guam can provide new opportunities to be dedicated to improving Guam’s aging infrastructure.”

“Bordallo has also strongly encouraged the Department of Defense to use environmentally friendly technologies in their development, such as developing green housing or pursuing renewable power projects,” said her spokesman, Joseph Duenas. “Specific warfighting training facilities, such as small arms weapons ranges, will have to meet the stringent requirements of federal law in order to minimize risk to the local environment and habitat.”

Congress authorized $193 million in military construction funds for Guam in the fiscal year 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, a $31 million increase over 2006 funding.

“Guam is likely to see between $400 million and $1 billion in military construction in military construction each year for a period of six to 10 years,” Bordallo said.

She also noted the potential of a North Korean ballistic-missile threat to Guam, which is within striking distance of North Korean missiles under development.

“Guam’s residents recognize and fully value the protection provided by the missile defense capabilities of the U.S. military, including sea-based Aegis systems in the Pacific, Duenas said. “Further, Congresswoman Bordallo has encouraged the Pacific Command to expedite future plans to station a Patriot missile battery on Guam, something not expected until approximately 2012.”

Some elements of Guam’s indigenous Chamorro population — which comprises about 37 percent of the island’s people — oppose the build-up, claiming that the Chamorro suffer under U.S. “colonialization” and “militarization.”

On Oct. 4, self-described human rights activist Julian Aguon, of the Chamorro Cultural Development and Research Institute, addressed the Special Political and Decolonialization Committee of the U.N. general assembly, criticizing the status of Guam as a U.S. territory and declaring that U.S. “militarization” would result in volatile and irreversible consequences for the Chamorro culture and population.

Aguon urged the U.N. committee “to pass a resolution condemning this massive transfer and build-up of Guam as a grave breach of duty.”

The overwhelming majority of Guam’s residents are in favor of the build-up, Bordallo said, citing both the economic benefits and increased security.

A survey commissioned in August by the Pacific Daily News, a newspaper published in Guam, indicated that 61 percent of Guamanians — including 56 percent of Chamorros — rated the military expansion of Guam as “a good thing.”
Copyright 2008 Sea Power. All opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.

Source: http://www.military.com/forums/0,15240,123418,00.html

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The Storm of US Militarization Hits Guam

The Storm of US Militarization hits Guam

Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues – April 2008 – New York, NY

Item # 6
Topic: Pacific
Presenter: Julian Aguon

Collective Intervention of the Chamoru Nation and Affiliated Indigenous Chamoru Organizations; Society for Threatened Peoples International (ECOSOC); CORE (ECOSOC); Western Shoshone Defense Project; Flying Eagle Woman Fund (ECOSOC); Mohawk Nation at Kahmawake; Cultural Development and Research Institute; Famoksaiyan; Organization of People for Indigenous Rights; Colonized Chamoru Coalition; Chamoru Landowners Association; Chamoru Language Teachers Association; Guahan Indigenous Collective; Hurao, Inc.; Landowners United; Chamoru Veterans Association; Fuetsan Famaloan

Ati addeng-miyo your Excellencies. My name is Julian Aguon and I appear before you with the full support and blessings of my elders. I address you on behalf of the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam, an endangered people now being rushed toward full-blown extinction.

In 2008, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam brace ourselves for a storm of U.S. militarization so enormous in scope, so volatile in nature, so irreversible in consequence. U.S. military realignment in the Asia-Pacific region seeks to homeport sixty percent of its Pacific Fleet in and around our ancient archipelago. With no input from the indigenous Chamoru people and over our deepening dissent, the US plans to flood Guam, its Colony in Perpetuity, with upwards of 50,000 people, which includes the 8,000 U.S. Marines and their 9,000 dependents being ousted by Okinawa and an outside labor force estimated upwards of 20,000 workers on construction contracts. In addition, six nuclear submarines will be added to the three already stationed in Guam as well as a monstrous Global Strike Force, a strike and intelligence surveillance reconnaissance hub at Andersen Air Force Base.

This buildup only complements the impressive Air Force and Navy show of force occupying 1/3 of our 212 square mile island already. This massive military expansionism exacts devastating consequences on my people, who make up only 37% of the 170,000 people living in Guam and who already suffer the signature maladies of a colonial condition.

The military buildup of Guam endangers our fundamental and inalienable human right to self-determination, the exercise of which our Administering Power, the United States, has strategically denied us-in glaring betrayal of its international obligations under the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN General Assembly Resolution 1514, to name but some.

The unilateral decision to hyper-militarize our homeland is the latest in a long line of covenant breaches on the part of our Administering Power to guide Guam toward self-governance. It was made totally without consulting the indigenous Chamoru people. No public education campaign regarding the social, cultural, and political consequences of this hyper-militarization has been seriously undertaken or even contemplated.

Of the 10.3 billion dollars settled upon by the U.S. and Japan for the transfer of U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam, nothing has been said as to whether or not this money will be used to improve our flailing infrastructure. Recently, the largest joint military exercise in recent history conducted what were casually called war games off Guam waters. 22,000 US military personnel, 30 ships, and 280 aircraft partook in “Valiant Shield.” That weekend, water was cut off to a number of local villages on the Navy water line. The local people of those villages went some thirty days without running water. Across the military-constructed fence, the tap flowed freely for the U.S. military population. The suggestion of late is that Guam is expected to foot the bill of this re-occupation. Meetings with defense officials have proved empty. Military officers we have met with inform us only of their inability to commit to anything. In effect, they repeat that they have no working plans to spend money on civilian projects. Dollars tied to this transfer have been allocated to development only within the bases. Money for education in the territory will again be allocated to schools for children of U.S. military personnel and not ours. Meanwhile, virtually every public sector in Guam is being threatened with privatization.

There is talk of plans to condemn more of our land to accommodate its accelerated military needs. In contrast, there is no talk of plans to clean up radioactive contaminations (strontium, in particular) of Guam from toxins leftover from the U.S.’ World War II activities and its intense nuclear bombing campaign of the Marshall Islands only 1200 miles from Guam. Indeed, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam suffer extraordinarily high rates of cancer and dementia-related illness due to the U.S.’ widespread toxic contamination of Guam. For example, Chamorus suffer from nasopharynx cancer at a rate 1,999% higher than the U.S. average (per 100,000). To boot, Guam has 19 Superfund sites, most of which are associated with U.S. military base activities as in the case of Andersen Air Force Base and the former Naval Air Station. Nineteen sites is a significant number in consideration of the island’s small size of 212 square meters.
There is also no word on whether or not the U.S. plans to pay war reparations due to us since it forgave Japan its World War II war crimes committed against the Chamorus.
Like an awful re-run of World War II, when the U.S. unilaterally forgave Japan its horrific war crimes on our people, the US is back at the table negotiating away our human rights including our right to self-determination. Beyond the B-2 bombers in our skies, the ships playing war games in our waters, the added weapons of mass destruction, and the contamination that has robbed us of so many loved ones by way of our extraordinarily high rates of cancers and dementia-related illnesses, there is a growing desperation back home. A desperate lethargy in the wind. A realization that if the UN remains unable to slow the manic speed of US militarization, Chamorus as a people will pass.

In 2005 and 2006, we appeared before the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee, alerting the UN organ of these two frightening facts: 1) it was recently discovered that the U.S. Department of Interior purposefully killed a presidential directive handed down in 1975, which ordered that Guam be given a commonwealth status no less favorable than the one the U.S. was negotiating with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands at that time; and 2) a campaign of the Guam Chamber of Commerce (primarily consisting of U.S. Statesiders) to privatize every one of Guam’s public resources (the island’s only water provider, only power provider, only local telephone provider, public schools, and its only port, on an island that imports 85-90% of its food and where private monopolies of public goods would truly make us captive to the forces of the market) is undermining our ancient indigenous civilization with violent speed. Eating us whole.
Not much has changed since we last were here in New York. Our power provider has been privatized, our telecommunications sold. Our only water provider and one port are under relentless attack. The meager, questionable victories we have had to stay this mass privatization are only the result of indigenous Chamoru grassroots activists who, on their own-with no financial, institutional, or strategic support-holding both their hands up, holding the line as best they can. At great personal cost.

Your Excellencies: Know this-the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam are neither informed nor unified around this military buildup despite dominant media representations. For all intents and purposes, there is no free press in Guam. Local media only makes noise of the re-occupation, not sense of it. The Pacific Daily News-the American subsidiary newspaper that dominates the discourse-has cut off the oxygen supply to indigenous resistance movement. Rather than debating this buildup’s enormous sociopolitical, environmental and cultural consequences, it has framed the conversation around how best to ask the U.S. (politely) for de facto consideration of our concerns. Without appearing un-American.

We are not Americans. We are Chamorus. We are heirs to a matrilineal, indigenous civilization born two thousand years before Jesus. And we are being disappeared. Off your radar.
All this, and only two years until the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. And no midterm review by the Special Committee on Decolonization. No designation of any expert to track Guam’s progress, or lack thereof, toward progressing off the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Not one UN visiting mission to Guam.

It is a sad commentary that the Administering Power year after year abstains or votes against UN resolutions addressing the “Question of Guam” and resolutions reflecting the work of the UN on decolonization including the resolution on the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the very recent Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. With this non-support by Guam’s Administering Power, it is no wonder that the list of the Non-Self-Governing Territories under the administration of the United States has turned half a century old with little progress.

We Chamorus come to New York year after year, appealing to the UN decolonization committee to follow through with its mandate. Indeed, the UN has collected almost thirty years of our testimony, with nothing to show for it. I represent today the third generation of Chamoru activists to appear before the UN, desperately trying to safeguard our inalienable, still unrealized, human right to self-determination.

The failure of the U.S. to honor its international obligations to Guam and her native people, the non-responsiveness of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to our rapid deterioration, and the overall non-performance of relevant U.S. and UN Decolonization organs and officials combine to carry our small chance of survival to its final coffin.

All this combines to elevate the human rights situation in Guam as a matter not only of decolonization, but ethnic cleansing.

Indeed, when future generations look upon these days, they might label Guam not merely a U.S. colony, but rather, a UN colony.

To date the Forum has deferred to the Special Committee. The time has come for the Forum to take the lead. To this end we request the Forum take the following action:

Sponsor an expert seminar in conjunction with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Special Committee on Decolonization to examine the impact of the UN decolonization process regarding the indigenous peoples of the NSGTs-now and previously listed on the UN list of NSGTs. This seminar must be under the auspices of the Forum due to existing problems with the Secretariat of the Special Committee. We request that Independent Expert Carlyle G. Corbin be included in the seminar as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples.

Utilize the Inter-Agency Support Group to begin to implement the Program of Implementation (POI) with UN Agencies, UNDP, UNEP and other agencies and specialized bodies as directed by the General Assembly; and

Communicate its concern for the human rights of indigenous peoples and all peoples in the NSGTs to the UN Human Rights Council and request that the Council designate a Special Rapporteur on the Situation of the Peoples of the Non-Self-Governing Territories.

In Solidarity and Urgency,
The Chamoru Nation and Indigenous Chamoru Organizations of Guam, with support of the above-listed organizations.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/minagahet/pakyofinamilitat

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Court could stop Superferry

HonoluluAdvertiser.com

December 9, 2008

Hawaii Superferry’s interisland service depends on court ruling

Service may be halted if high court rules against law that let ship operate

By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Government Writer

The state Supreme Court, whose ruling last year led to a three-month shutdown of Hawaii Superferry, will decide whether the interisland service can continue in a new case to be heard next week.

The court will decide whether Gov. Linda Lingle and the Legislature violated the state Constitution last year with a new law that allowed Superferry to resume operation while an environmental review of the project is completed.

A ruling could have an immediate impact on whether Superferry can operate between O’ahu and Maui. It could also influence the separation of powers among the governor, the Legislature and the courts.

The Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow and the Kahului Harbor Coalition, the nonprofit groups that brought the legal challenge that temporarily stopped Superferry last year, have asked the court to declare the new law unconstitutional.

Arguments before the court are scheduled for Dec. 18.

The Supreme Court ruled in August 2007 that the state should not have exempted the Superferry project from an environmental assessment. A Maui court subsequently halted ferry service to Kahului Harbor, while public protests kept the ferry from returning to Kaua’i.

Lingle called a special session of the Legislature, where lawmakers passed a bill that allowed the ferry to resume operation under conditions designed to protect the environment while an environmental impact statement is prepared. Lingle signed the bill into law, and the Maui court allowed the ferry to return to Kahului Harbor.

Many political observers thought the legal challenges were largely over, but the court’s willingness to hear the appeal so soon raises the possibility that Superferry may again be stopped.

“This case is now a case of even greater public importance,” Isaac Hall, the Wailuku attorney representing the environmental groups, said in court filings.

violations alleged

Hall’s main arguments are that the new law violates two parts of the Constitution: Article I, Section 21, which bars the state from making any irrevocable grants of special privileges; and Article XI, Section 5, which says the Legislature can only exercise power over state lands through general laws.

The constitutional restriction on special privileges, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, is meant to ensure the state acts on behalf of all people and not for the sake of the elite. The provision limiting the Legislature’s power to general laws over state lands is designed to prevent sweetheart land deals for private interests.

Lawmakers, mindful of the constitutional restrictions, were careful not to mention Superferry by name in the new law, and instead described a “large capacity ferry vessel.”

But Hall argues that the new law was “conceived, cut and tailored” solely for Superferry, a special law that gave Superferry access through an operating agreement to state land at Kahului and other harbors.

Hall also argues that the new law deprives the environmental groups of a vested right, given by the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, for an environmental assessment under the state’s environmental review law. The new law removed the large-capacity ferry vessel from under the state’s environmental review law and created a similar – although not identical – process to conduct an environmental impact statement by next summer.

Hall argues that the new law “amounts to a legislative and executive revision of judicial decisions.”

Lawmakers were guided when drafting the new law by the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society. The ruling found that it was not unconstitutional for Congress to change timber harvesting rules in federally managed forests in response to legal challenges by environmentalists, who had argued that the old rules threatened endangered northern spotted owls.

The ruling found that Congress did not direct results in the legal challenges under the old law, but instead replaced the legal standards with new provisions.

Lawmakers in Hawai’i essentially did the same thing with Superferry.

State lawyer counters

Dorothy Sellers, the state solicitor general, argues in the state’s legal briefs that the governor and lawmakers acted within their authority to create new public policy.

Sellers said the new law is not an irrevocable grant of special privileges for a ferry company because it expires when the environmental impact statement is accepted by the state or, at the latest, by next summer.

The new law is not a special law involving legislative power over state lands, Sellers argues, because the operating agreement is between an executive-branch agency – the state Department of Transportation – and a ferry company. The ferry company also does not have an exclusive right under the agreement and must share state harbors with other users.

Sellers said Hawai’i courts have not addressed the meaning of general law as it applies to Article XI of the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has upheld a legislative act designed to respond to a singular circumstance. In Bulgo v. County of Maui in 1967, the court found that it was constitutional for the Legislature to pass a law tailored for Maui calling for a special election to replace the chairman of the board of supervisors, who had died shortly after re-election and had not begun his new term.

Sellers also argued that the environmental groups have no vested right to an environmental assessment for Superferry under the state’s environmental review law because the August 2007 Supreme Court decision was not the final judgment in the case.

The appeal, Sellers said, is “an assault on the inherent, essential power of the Legislature to speak for the people and to revise the public policies of the state as the Legislature determines necessary.”

Last year, lawmakers were not enthusiastic about returning in special session to help Superferry but agreed because of the potential benefits of interisland ferry service. Lawmakers found that the ferry was an alternative mode of transportation that could help move people and cargo between the islands and could be an asset in disaster relief.

State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), said she believes the Legislature acted properly. She wishes, however, that the state House, Lingle and Superferry had agreed with the Senate and supported an environmental review of the project before the court ruled that such a review was required.

Hanabusa predicted that justices would decide the appeal based on an Article XI test of whether the new law is general or special.

‘a major problem’

If the court were to issue a broad ruling limiting the Legislature’s power, Hanabusa said, lawmakers may have to consider asking voters to amend the Constitution.

In 2006, for example, voters approved a constitutional amendment that allowed the Legislature to define what constitutes the continuous sexual abuse of a minor under 14. The court had ruled that a law defining continuous sexual abuse was a violation of the right to due process because jurors were not instructed that they had to be unanimous about which specific acts amounted to continuous abuse.

“If the Supreme Court comes back and says that we don’t have the right to make exceptions to the law, for whatever reason, then we’re going to have a major problem,” Hanabusa said.

Irene Bowie, the executive director of Maui Tomorrow, said the environmental groups deserve a real environmental assessment of Superferry, not what their attorney has described as a “pseudo-process that falls far short” of the state’s environmental law.

“I think that this has been an illegitimate process. I don’t think there’s any real results that we’ll come away with on this,” Bowie said of the new law. “We would absolutely like to see this done over again in the proper way.”

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Ex-soldier videotaped rape of his infant child

HonoluluAdvertiser.com

December 8, 2008

Hawaii man admits to videotaping rape of his infant child

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Danny Friddle admitted today to repeatedly raping his infant child and videotaping the assaults, crimes that were labeled “shocking and despicable” by the Prosecutor’s Office.

The 31-year-old defendant appeared before Family Court Judge Patrick Border this afternoon to finalize a plea agreement with the state that calls for a punishment of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt and khaki pants, Friddle repeatedly answered “yes” to questions from the judge, demonstrating that he understood the charges and the consequences of his guilty plea.

He will be sentenced by Border in February.

Under the terms of the plea deal, the state will ask the Hawai‘i Paroling Authority to set Friddle’s minimum time behind bars at 20 years.

Friddle agreed not to seek a parole hearing until 15 years of incarceration.

“What Danny Friddle did was shocking, despicable and an outrage to the entire community,” said First Deputy Prosecutor Douglas Chin.

“This kind of behavior will not be tolerated,” Chin said.
Friddle was arrested by Honolulu police in March after a backpack containing a videotape of the assaults was discovered at a Kalihi bus stop.

Chin said that a child found the backpack and gave it to a parent, who turned it over to police after viewing the video.

“It was one child saving another,” Chin said outside court. He acknowledged that Friddle’s crimes might have gone undetected if the backpack had not been found at the bus stop.

“We have no idea who put the tape at the bus stop,” he said.

Friddle pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree sex assault, three counts of second-degree sex assault and three counts of promoting child abuse in the first degree.

Chin declined to discuss the relationship of the victim to Friddle, but court records show that he began his assaults in June 2006 on the day his daughter was born.

According to the indictment, one series of assaults on the videotape occurred from June through September of 2006 and others from October 2006 to March of this year.

Friddle came to Hawai‘i with the Army in 2003 and was married here in December 2005. He was divorced in September 2007.

After leaving the military, Friddle worked as car salesman and as a security guard, according to court records.

Friddle’s identity card with a local security guard company was found in the backpack. His ex-wife identified him as the man on the videotape, according to police reports.

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Ex-soldier gets life term

Sex crime plea deal includes life term

By Nelson Daranciang

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Dec 09, 2008

A man who videotaped himself sexually assaulting his infant daughter has agreed to accept a life prison term with the possibility for parole.

Video: Defendant In Shocking Sex Assault Case Gets A Life Sentence. In partnership with KITV.com

In a plea agreement with the state, Danny Franklin Friddle, 31, of Honokai Hale pleaded guilty yesterday to eight counts of first-degree sexual assault, three counts of first-degree promoting child abuse and three counts of third-degree sexual assault.

Circuit Judge Patrick Border said he will abide by the terms of the plea agreement when he sentences Friddle in February.

Friddle remains in custody at Oahu Community Correctional Center, unable to post $100,000 bail.

He will request that the Hawaii Paroling Authority grant him eligibility for parole after 15 years.

Douglas Chin, first deputy prosecutor, said the state will ask that Friddle serve at least 20 years before he is eligible.

“Regardless of the recommendation of the prosecutor or the public defender, his responsibility will be to plead his case in front of the parole board. And it is up to the parole board, what he’s eventually sentenced to,” Chin said.

Police arrested Friddle on March 12 after they recovered a videotape of Friddle sexually assaulting a baby girl who appeared to be less than 6 months old in one segment. A second segment showed Friddle apparently assaulting the same girl, who appeared about 1 year old. Date stamps on the video clips were June 25, 2006, and Jan. 28, 2007.

“What Danny Friddle did was shocking, despicable. It was an outrage to the entire community,” Chin said. “This life sentence with the possibility for parole that he is agreeing to sends a clear message from the community to any offender out there that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.”

Police said a woman turned over a bag containing the mini-DV videotape and Friddle’s work identification, which she said was left at a bus stop in Kalihi.

Chin said the woman’s child found the bag.

According to state court records, Friddle and his ex-wife had a daughter who was born June 2006. Friddle and his wife separated in August 2006 and were divorced in September 2007. The court granted the ex-wife physical custody of the child but allowed Friddle visitation.

Police said when they showed the video to Friddle’s ex-wife, she identified the child as her daughter and the location of the assault, Friddle’s Honokai Hale home.

Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20081209_Sex_crime_plea_deal_includes_life_term.html

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Monitoring Depleted Uranium

Note: This is an old article, but it is still relevant. The Army is refusing to clean up the DU contamination in Schofield Barracks.

Monitoring depleted uranium
Protecting the public against exposure

By Kristine Kubat
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 9:10 AM HST

While weapons made with depleted uranium can penetrate any substance known to man, the issues surrounding the use of this radioactive, heavy metal are having a much harder time sinking in.

Here in Hawai`i, Linda Faye Kroll is a retired nurse who has dedicated her life to educating the public about the dangers of military toxics. When Representative Josh Green introduced H.B. 1452 this legislative session, he created a forum for Kroll and others to voice their concerns.

“Don’t believe anything I tell you,” Kroll cautions, “look into it for yourself.” Advice that seems to be gaining momentum at the local and state levels as U.S. Senator Inouye once again pushes for an increase in the military presence here and citizens are raising concerns about the increase of pollution that, inevitably, comes with the deal. “Make no mistake, everything having to do with preparing and making war is toxic,” says Kroll.

In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense is the single largest producer of pollution in the world.

H.B. 1452 originally called for testing soil outside the military’s live-fire ranges in the state of Hawai`i to determine if DU is present. The bill passed out of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee and was heard for the second time last Saturday, this time by the Finance Committee chaired by Marcus Oshiro. Here it was amended to include air and water testing. The only opposition to the bill thus far has come from the Department of Health, which has taken the position that it can’t afford the testing, estimated by DOH at $5 million per year. Rep. Green believes the federal government should share the cost because “any DU we’re being exposed to must have come from the military.”

All decision makers at the hearing voted in favor of passage, there were 17 ayes. Now H.B. 1452 is headed for the senate.

Depleted uranium (DU) is the by-product of the process that yields nuclear fuel. For decades, the U.S. government has been quietly converting stockpiles of it into weapons. The use of DU munitions in our own country is prohibited, a fact which does not keep the Pentagon from deploying them abroad, primarily in Iraq. They have also been used extensively in Serbia and Bosnia.

The Pentagon claims that the low levels of radiation emitted from DU weaponry pose no health risks. Many scientists disagree with the way this conclusion is drawn. The military looks only at how the trillions of healthy cells that comprise the human body are affected by exposure to low dosages when handling the munitions. They ignore the fact that as DU munitions are exploded, they burst into flames and vaporize.

Dr. Helen Caldicott is the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. She also founded an international umbrella group called International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Caldicott herself was personally nominated for the Nobel Prize by Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling.

According to Caldicott, up to 70% of the uranium released when DU munitions are exploded is converted into microscopic particles that can be inhaled or ingested immediately or when air, soil and water get contaminated. Once inside the human body, these particles kill or mutate the cells they come in contact with. Photographs of DU particles in living lung tissues show them as tiny sun-like, radiating objects. The half-life of this radioactive substance is 4.5 billion years.

Over 375 tons of DU was released into the Iraq environment during the first Gulf War. Since that time, scientists, doctors and soldiers have been trying to understand how a war that lasted 100 hours and left 148 killed in action could have resulted in 10,324 veterans dead and another 221,502 disabled.

DU is the prime suspect in any independent investigation of the situation. As research continues, the military is slowly shifting from its once adamant position that DU was not involved. Recent publications from the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) and the Army Environmental Policy Institute reflect the change.

The AFRRI published its findings that DU transforms cells into tumorigenic phenotypes, is mutagenic, induces genetic instability and induces oncogenes, suggesting carcinogenicity. AFRRI’s conclusion: “Strong evidence exists to support detailed study of DU carcinogenicity.” In 1995, the AEPI admitted that DU may cause liver, lung and kidney damage.

A recent Army report to Congress sheds light on DOD’s predicament: If a link between the use of DU and the deaths and disabilities resulting from the Gulf War were established, the costs to the government would be astronomical. Here disabilities would also include the birth defects that are found in the returning soldiers’ offspring.

The name of the organization Kroll founded to educate the public about the risks of DU is called “Ten Fingers, Ten Toes” — a reference to the alarming incidence of birth defects found in areas where DU weapons have been used in Iraq and Kosovo. AFRRI also found DU produced chromosome damage and caused delayed reproductive death.

In 2002, the United Nations declared DU a weapon of mass destruction and its use a breach of international law. So far America has used over 2000 tons in the second Gulf War.

Until August of 2005, when DU munitions were found at Schofield Barracks, people in Hawai`i who had concerns about the use of the radioactive substance were looking at this bigger picture. With the local discovery, the issue has hit home.

The EIS that was prepared for the Stryker Brigade stated that DU was never used in Hawai`i. Evidence to the contrary turned up after Kyle Kajihiro, of the American Friends Service Committee, made repeated FOIA requests and dredged through endless stacks of documents. He discovered a single paragraph revealing that DU was present in the ground at Schofield, forcing the Army to admit that they misrepresented the facts to the community, including Senator Daniel Inouye.

For a long time, the Navy has stored DU at Lualualei on O`ahu under its Naval Radioactive Materials permit. In 1994, two DU rounds were accidentally fired from Pearl Harbor; they landed above Aiea and have never been recovered.

Leimaile and Kamoa Quitevis are literally on the front lines of the DU issue. The couple was hired by Garcia and Associates to monitor construction related to the expansion of Schofield to accomodate the Stryker Brigade. Their job was to ensure that sacred Hawaiian sites were not disturbed. Along with others who assisted the Quitevises in their fieldwork, the couple has been exposed to DU. Kamoa has photographic evidence that ordinances known to contain DU were open-air detonated. He testified before the house committee hearing H.B. 1452 that he has seen thousands of shards from Davy Crocketts, as the ordinances are called, scattered about Schofield.

None of the cultural monitors were ever told about the dangers related to DU exposure. Whether or not the Army agrees that such dangers exist, their own guidelines require the use of protective gear for DU clean-up, including respirators. None of the personnel on base wore protective gear; none of the cultural monitors were informed about the presence of DU; none of them knew they should be taking precautions against exposure.

Just recently, Leimaile’s sister who was assisting on site and pregnant at the time, gave birth to a child with a serious birth defect. The baby was born with it’s intestines outside its body.

“We can’t say for sure that the baby’s defect came from DU,” says Leimaile, “but there’s a chance. We need to start monitoring.”

Source: http://www.bigislandweekly.com/articles/2007/02/28/read/news/news02.txt

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Military jet crash in San Diego kills 3 on ground

Military jet crash in San Diego kills 3 on ground

By ELLIOT SPAGAT – 3 hours ago

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A fighter jet returning to a Marine base after a training exercise crashed in flames in a San Diego neighborhood Monday, killing three people on the ground, leaving one missing and destroying two homes.

The pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet jet ejected safely just before the crash around noon at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. Explosions rocked a neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes, sending flames and plumes of smoke skyward.

“The house shook; the ground shook. It was like I was frozen in my place,” said Steve Krasner, who lives a few blocks from the crash. “It was bigger than any earthquake I ever felt.”

Three people were killed in a house where two children, a mother and a grandmother were believed to be at the time of the crash, but fire officials did not immediately know who died. Another person remained missing, and officials said the search was suspended until Tuesday morning.

“We just know that four people were inside, and three of them have been accounted for,” Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque said.

The pilot, who ended up hanging by his parachute from a tree in a canyon beneath the neighborhood, was in stable condition at a naval hospital in San Diego, said Miramar spokeswoman 1st Lt. Katheryn Putnam. The pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the San Diego coast when the plane went down, she said.

Putnam had no details on a possible cause. Investigators will review information from a flight data recorder, and there was no indication the pilot was using alcohol or drugs, she said.

The Navy recently inspected hundreds of F/A-18 Hornets built by Boeing Co. after discovering “fatigue cracks” on more than a dozen aircraft. The Navy announced last month it had grounded 10 of the jets and placed flight restrictions on another 20 until repairs could be made.

The inspectors checked the Hornets for cracks in a hinge that connects the aileron – flaps that help stabilize the jet in flight – to the wing.

An F-18, a supersonic jet used widely in the Marine Corps and Navy and by the stunt-flying Blue Angels, costs about $57 million. An F-18 crashed at Miramar – known as the setting for the movie “Top Gun” – in November 2006, and that pilot also ejected safely.

Authorities said smoke rising from the wreckage was toxic and evacuated about 20 homes. By Monday night only six homes remained evacuated because they were uninhabitable, said San Diego police spokeswoman Monica Munoz.

There was little sign of the plane in the smoking ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home, and a charred jet engine lay on a street near a parked camper. A parachute was visible in the canyon below a row of houses.

The neighborhood in the University City section of San Diego smelled of jet fuel and smoke. Ambulances, fire trucks and police cars choked the streets. A Marine Corps bomb disposal truck was there, although police assured residents there was no ordnance aboard the jet.

Neighbors described chaos after the jet tore into the houses and flames erupted.

“It was pandemonium,” said Paulette Glauser, 49, who lived six houses away. “Neighbors were running down toward us in a panic, of course.”

Jets frequently streak over the neighborhood, two miles from the base, but residents said the imperiled aircraft was flying extremely low.

Jordan Houston was looking out his back window three blocks from the crash when the plane passed by. A parachute ejected from the craft, followed by a loud explosion and a mushroom-shaped cloud.

Houston, 25, said a truck exploded after the driver backed over flaming debris and then jumped from the cab yelling, “I just filled up my gas tank.”

The crash was near University City High School, where students were kept locked in classrooms after the crash. Barbara Prince, a school secretary, said there was no damage to the campus and no one was injured.

Neighbors jolted by the crash said they initially thought it was the sound of gunshots, a train derailment or tractor-trailer trucks colliding.

“It was quite violent,” said Ben Dishman, 55, who was resting on his couch after having back surgery. “I hear the jets from Miramar all the time. I often worry that one of them will hit one of these homes. It was inevitable. I feel very lucky.”

Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hukCDXicy0DS1K2Rva8_VdP1d2hgD94UVQQ80

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