Time to Cancel the Army’s Lease at Pohakuloa over Radiation Contamination

Call from Malu ‘Aina:

Time to Cancel the Army’s Lease at Pohakuloa over Radiation Contamination

1. The Army repeatedly denied the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) in Hawaii.

2. Now it has been confirmed that in the 1960s the U.S. Army used the Pohakuloa Training Area for firing spotting rounds containing DU for the Davy Crockett nuclear weapon system.

3. The DU spotting rounds have created the presence of radiation contamination at Pohakuloa.

4. DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

5. DU emits radioactive alpha particles than can cause cancer when inhaled (and poses health concerns for troops, residents and visitors in Hawaii).

6. Due to poor military record keeping, there may be more DU contamination at Pohakuloa than just Davy Crockett spotting rounds.

7. On July 2, 2008 the Hawaii County Council passed Resolution 639-08 by a vote of 8-1.

8. Resolution 639-08 called for “a complete halt to B-2 bombing missions and to all live firing exercises and other activities at the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) that creates dust until there is an assessment and clean up of the depleted uranium already present.”

9. Live-fire continues at PTA and the DU has not been cleaned up. Live-fire and high winds at Pohakuloa risk spreading the radiation contamination off-base.

10. While major potions (more than 84,000-acres) of Crown lands at PTA were taken (without compensation) by Executive orders, PTA has a State General Lease No. S-3849 by the State of Hawaii, Board of Land and Natural Resources – U.S. Lease, Contract No. DA-94-626-ENG-80 – August 19, 1964 (expiration date 16 Aug. 2029) consisting of 22,988 acres for $1.00 for 65 years.

11. In the 1960s when the Army leased State land in the Waiakea Forest Reserve (Hilo’s watershed) for what was suppose to be weather testing, but in fact was chemical weapons testing including deadly sarin gas, Hawaii County residents spoke up and the State lease to the Army was canceled; now, therefore,

THE PEOPLE OF HAWAII COUNTY NEED TO SPEAK UP AGAIN TO CANCEL THE ARMY’S LEASE AT THE POHAKULOA TRAINING AREA AND REQUIRE CLEAN UP OF DEPLETED URANIUM (DU) RADIATION CONTAMINATION.

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, etc.5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.

Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.

Phone (808) 966-7622. Email ja@interpac.net http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (April 30, 2010 – 450th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

NRC to Army: DU monitoring plan won’t work

http://bigislandweekly.com/articles/2010/04/28/read/news/news02.txt

NRC to Army: DU monitoring plan won’t work
By Alan D. McNarie
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 12:04 PM HST

The U.S. Army’s plan to monitor the air over Pohakuloa Training Area for depleted uranium has drawn sharp criticism from some Native Hawaiians, environmentalists, activists and independent experts. Now the Army has gotten an admonishment from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“We have concluded that the Plan will provide inconclusive results for the U.S. Army as to the potential impact of the dispersal of depleted uranium (DU) while the Pohakuloa Training Area is being utilized for aerial bombardment or other training exercises,” wrote Rebecca Tadesse, Chief of the NRC’s Materials Decommissioning Branch, in a recent letter to Lt. General Rick Lynch, who heads the Army’s Installation Management Command.

Tadesse and her staff reached that conclusion after reviewing the draft plan proposed by the Army and ORISE, the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, which would conduct the monitoring for aerial DU contamination at Pohakuloa and at various other locations around the island. The NRC experts concluded that the plan was inadequate in several areas: the number of air samples planned was “insufficient,” optimum locations for monitoring needed to be determined and established, and “Continuous monitoring should be performed during the testing and also prior to and following testing to determine background conditions,” so that the army would have a basis for comparison with any high readings. The letter also noted that the army proposed to conduct its air monitoring specifically during live firing exercises — even though the Army had told the NRC that it would not “use high explosives and bombs in areas where DU is present.”
“If that is true, why would there be an expectation that DU might be dispersed during such training exercises?” Tadesse asked.
The Army’s handling of the DU issue at Pohakuloa is also drawing fire from some independent experts, including retired army doctor Lorrin Pang, Los Alamos National Laboratory consultant Dr. Marshall Bland, and Dr. Michael Reimer, a retired geologist with a background in radiation monitoring. And Sierra Club researcher Cory Harden has used recently released Army documents to challenge the Army’s own estimates of how much DU may have been released into the environment at Pohakuloa.
“The NRC review seems to vindicate Dr. Pang and myself for claiming that the monitoring was insufficient,” Reimer told BIW.
According to the NRC’s Greg Pukin, his agency doesn’t generally have jurisdiction over weapons, but does have authority over DU and other radionuclides. The Army has applied to the NRC for a permit to possess DU at Pohakuloa — a permit that, if granted, could allow the recently discovered remains of depleted uranium spotter rounds from the Army’s cold-war-era Davy Crockett nuclear howitzer on site at the training area — spotter rounds whose presence in Hawai’i the army had denied until a citizen’s group unearthed an e-mail about their discovery in 2006. A group of local residents, including Harden, antiwar activist Jim Albertini, and native Hawaiian activist Isaac Harp had filed a challenge to the Army’s application on the grounds that its monitoring and clean-up plans were inadequate, but were recently denied standing by the NRC. Harp has appealed that denial.
Both Pang and Reimer testified as experts on April 14 at an NRC phone conference to consider Harp’s complaint. In addition to noting Tadesse’s criticisms, Reimer observed that the 5-micron filters that the army planned to use to capture possible DU particles for monitoring were a bit on the coarse side.
“Five-micron size [particles] would fall out within a mile,” he said. “Smaller sizes may be carried by the wind.” He recommended .45-micron filters.
Pang also challenged the army’s general credibility by citing a number of former army statements about DU that Pang said simply weren’t true.
“The Army stated to the Dept of Health Environmental Chief that inhaled DU (from exploding weaponry) was not a worry since DU is heavier than air and would not become airborne, therefore not inhaled,” he noted, for example. He testified that Army consultants, when discussing the amount of DU needed to produce radiation readings reported by civilian monitors at Pohakuloa, had held out their hands to indicate chunks the size of basketballs.
Pang also claims that an Army study setting human safety thresholds for DU inhalation was scientifically flawed.
“That study has been widely, publicly debunked by the scientific community,” he said. “The Army investigators did not count effects like tumors (both malignant and benign) in the exposed group.”
“The kind of air monitoring that the Army is using, they’ll never find it,” commented Harden at the conference call.
Harden also challenged an Army estimate that about 700 Davy Crocket spotter rounds may have been fired at Pohakuloa.
“To back up their claim they quoted from a report, which I only managed to obtained after ten months of repeated requests,” testified Harden. Their quote for the lower number does not match my copy of the report…. For soldiers to follow training manual requirements of that time, about 2,000 spotting rounds would have been needed at Pohakuloa. Now the Army didn’t find 2,000 spotting rounds recently at Pohakuloa Training Area, only four fragments. They speculate that range clearance may have been done, but offer no evidence to support this theory.”
Based on the discrepancies, the Army’s critics argued that the NRC simply couldn’t trust what the Army said about DU in Hawaii – nor could the public.
“Since we can’t rely on the military to shine their light on the hazards its left behind, we need help from NRC,” Hardin concluded.

Guam Senator Cruz demands demands radiation tests for Apra harbor

Senator B.J. Cruz from Guam is demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency require the U.S. military to test for radiation contamination be conducted in Apra Harbor before dredging and dumping of the sediment is approved.   He is right to demand these studies.  It is widely known that U.S. navy ships have leaked radioactive water in Apra.  Given the nuclear history of the Mariana islands, it is reasonable to expect that there is radioactive sediment in the harbor.

In Hawai’i, radioactive Cobalt 60 contaminates the sediment in Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa (Pearl Harbor), leaked from the nuclear power plants on navy ships.    The EPA knows this, but is not requiring a thorough clean up.  The EPA should at least require that the military study the contamination of the harbor sediment to know the baseline level of environmental and human health risk that exists.

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http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11842:cruz-demands-radiation-tests-&catid=1:guam-local-news&Itemid=2

Cruz demands radiation tests

THURSDAY, 22 APRIL 2010 04:34 BY THERESE HART | VARIETY NEWS STAFF

VICE Speaker BJ Cruz is protesting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s policy decision to not require radiation testing for dredged materials from Apra Harbor that would be dumped into the proposed ocean disposal site.

EPA said the testing was not necessary, prompting Cruz to fire off a letter to Nancy Woo, associate director of EPA’s water division for Region 9.

“It appears then that the dumping of any radioactive sediment under that equivalency threshold is an acceptable practice,” Cruz wrote.

“I take this to mean that, absent any proof that fuel and concentrated waste from nuclear reactors or materials used for radiological warfare were leaked into Apra Harbor, dredging and dumping may proceed without testing. That I cannot accept,” he added.

According to the Federal Register, EPA is proposing to designate the Guam Deep Ocean Disposal Site as a permanent ocean-dredged material disposal site located offshore of Guam. Disposal operations at the site will be limited to a maximum of 1 million cubit yards a calendar year and must be conducted in accordance with EPA’s site management and monitoring plan.

The Federal Register further reads that EPA should conduct an extensive series of tests and studies to determine if radiation exists in Apra Harbor waters or its sediments to independently confirm the Navy’s claim that the amount of leakage from nuclear-powered vessels is insignificant.

Woo has sent Cruz the final environmental impact statement for the designation of an offshore ocean-dredged material disposal site.

*Assurance*

In an April 14 letter, Woo assured Cruz that his concerns regarding radiation in dredged sentiment in Apra Harbor and its dumping in Guam waters have been addressed, but the vice speaker said he was far from reassured.

Woo cited USEPA regulations that prohibit ocean disposal of high-level radioactive waste and materials. Woo also stated that radioactivity testing will be required when there is reason to believe that elevated levels of radiation may be present.

The rules that Woo cites refers to fuel and concentrated waste from nuclear reactors and materials used for radiological warfare.

Cruz said he is concerned that EPA will allow the dumping of any radioactive material below high levels of concentration, which he said, is obvious.

Cruz believes that before any dredging occurs in Apra Harbor, samples taken from the depth of the proposed dredge must first be tested for radiation.

“It is common knowledge that the U.S. Navy discharged radioactive material into Apra Harbor on more than one occasion. It is imperative, then, that no dredging of the harbor take place until adequate radiation testing independent from that reported by the U.S. Navy has been conducted on proposed dredge sites,” wrote Cruz.

Abolition: The Only Path to Nuclear Security

http://www.truthout.org/abolition-the-only-path-nuclear-security58414

Abolition: The Only Path to Nuclear Security

Thursday 08 April 2010

by: Dr. Joseph Gerson, t r u t h o u t | Report

photo
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Br3nda, Eric M Martin)

In Prague, President Obama signed the modest START 1 Follow On Treaty, or “New START,” between the US and Russia. It helps to stabilize the relationship between the two remaining nuclear superpowers, and extends and updates verification measures, setting the stage for negotiating deeper reductions later.

New START will be praised as an encouraging sign of a renewed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation by both sides. That’s fine as far as it goes. But neither New START nor the Obama administration’s narrowly revised nuclear strategy (the Nuclear Posture Review) seriously begin to eliminate the danger of nuclear apocalypse.

That will require full implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It calls for the abolition of nuclear arsenals worldwide. Fulfilling the US NPT obligation is the only way President Obama can achieve his stated commitment for a nuclear-free future.

Note that even with the New START reductions in each country’s nuclear warheads, the US and Russia still will possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons seven years from now. Despite President Obama’s intention to reduce the US nuclear stockpile, the Federation of American Scientists finds that New START “doesn’t force either country to make changes in its nuclear structure.” Nevertheless, the US Senate should ratify it quickly as a positive move to reinforce nonproliferation diplomacy.

The key to a world free of nuclear weapons, however, is the four decade-old NPT. One of the seminal agreements of the 20th century, the NPT is the grand bargain whereby the non-nuclear nations (except Israel, India and Pakistan) forswore becoming nuclear powers. In exchange, they were guaranteed access to resources and technology for nuclear power production for peaceful purposes. The nuclear powers promised in the NPT’s Article VI to engage in “good faith negotiations” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

The NPT Review Conference, held at the United Nations every five years and set to start May 3, provides the most important opportunity for the world’s nations to demand that the nuclear powers finally fulfill their Article VI obligations.

The last NPT Review Conference, in 2005, was crippled by the Bush administration’s intransigence, and no agreements were reached. The conference adjourned in failure, putting the NPT in jeopardy. That failure also severely undermined the first priority of US national security policy since 9/11: preventing a nuclear attack by nonstate terrorists. It was this failure that spurred George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama to publicly embrace the vision of a nuclear weapons-free world.

A year ago, when President Obama repeated his pledge to work for nuclear weapons abolition, he followed a familiar political path by committing the US to work toward the fulfillment of its part of the NPT bargain. In fact, this week’s Nuclear Posture Review failed to renounce the US first-strike policy, a point emphasized by Defense Secretary Gates when he reiterated that “all options are on the table” as the US confronts Iran and North Korea. The double standard of insisting that we can possess nuclear weapons and threaten first-strike attacks, while other nations cannot, is rightfully seen as old-fashioned hypocrisy and fuels proliferation.

Even as he signs New START, President Obama is undermining his nonproliferation goal. Despite our economic travails, his budget calls for a $2 billion increase to modernize the US nuclear weapons production infrastructure, additional money to study development of a new nuclear weapon he opposes and $800 million to develop a new nuclear-capable cruise missile.

As the resolutions adopted annually in the UN General Assembly demonstrate, the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations want more than a New START. In May, when the NPT Review Conference convenes, delegates will be welcomed by the urgent demand delivered via tens of millions of petition signatures and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons abolitionists: Begin those “good faith negotiations” to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals.

European day of protest against nuclear weapons

Press release  –  www.bombspotting.org <http://www.bombspotting.org>

Contact:

Hans Lammerant – 0479/68 24 43

Inez Louwagie – 0498/68 29 40

Now or never: get rid of nuclear weapons.

3 April: Bombspotting Kleine Brogel

Today, one month before NPT Review Conference, Vredesactie is organising a Bombspotting action on the military base at Kleine Brogel, protesting the nuclear weapons that are stored there.

This action is part of a European day of protest against nuclear weapons, during which demonstrations are staged at all the nuclear weapons bases in Europe.

2010 offers unique opportunities for nuclear disarmament. As of 3 May 2010, the 187 countries that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the treaty that is supposed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, are reuniting. In 2010, NATO is reviewing its strategy and this time it can choose to do so without nuclear weapons.

Throughout Europe the political will to get rid of the NATO nuclear weapons is growing. Belgian top politicians are pleading for a nuclear-free Europe, but so far our government has not dared to take a stand. The Bombspotters demand that the Belgian government assume its responsability: the nuclear weapons have to go and as a member of NATO Belgium has to plead for the unconditional rejection of the illegal nuclear strategy.

Government, assume your responsability: disarm

One year ago president Obama put nuclear disarmament back on the international political agenda, but so far not much has been achieved. The START treaty finally has a successor, but large steps towards nuclear disarmament have not been made.

Despite all the rhetoric about a nuclear weapons-free world the nuclear states are not making any serious commitments to put that theory into practice, and are modernising their nuclear weapons.

In May of 2010, the NPT Review Conference starts. All countries that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty will be making new agreements about the further application of this treaty and therefore also about the requirement to disarm, contained within this treaty. In 2010 NATO will review its Strategic Concept. In november a new version of this Strategic Concept will be approved and in doing so the nuclear strategy of NATO will be determined for the coming decade.

Belgium is quite capable of playing a roll in further steps towards nuclear disarmament. The Bombspotters demand that the Belgian government assume its responsability: the nuclear weapons have to go and as a member of NATO Belgium has to plead for the unconditional rejection of the illegal nuclear strategy.

Belgium is one of the five countries that have put nuclear weapons on the agenda of the next informal NATO meeting with ministers of foreign affairs in Talinn on 22-23 April. But no one can say what this initiative really means. We therefore ask that the Belgian government make a clear case for the removal of the nuclear weapons.

Dozens of non-violent actions

“We are not part of the negotiations. We can not form new treaties, but we can prevent the illegal agreements concerning nuclear weapons from being executed in silence, far away from any public Vredesactie Contact: Hans Lammerant – 0479 68 24 43   Inez Louwagie – 0498 68 29 40 scrutiny. That is why as of december 2009 Vredesactie is staging non stop non-violent actions at the military base at Kleine Brogel”, says Inez Louwagie of Vredesactie.

Hundreds of people and organisations have responded to the appeal. Dozens of actions have been executed in the meantime. In december Saint Nicolas jumped the fence at Kleine Brogel. In January a team of non-violent action trainers made the world news. They walked through an open gate and almost reached the plane hangars where the nuclear bombs are stored. The day after the appeal for nuclear disarmament by our four top politicians and the rather unambitious response of our prime minister, again forty Bombspotters were present at Kleine Brogel. Singing choirs sang war songs, some people from Ghent dug a tunnel to the nuclear weapons, …

Today, 3 April, is the main event of this series that will continue until the start of the NPT-conference in May 2010. Hundreds of Bombspotters will perform non-violent actions on and around the military domain. They will have pic-nics on the landing strip, make their protests heard with fanfares, keep a silent vigil with Pax Christi, …

European day of action

Today’s action is also part of a European day of action against nuclear weapons. Anywhere in Europe where nuclear weapons are deployed, non-violent actions are being organised. In Great-Britain, Trident Ploughshares organises a blockade at the base of Faslane, where the British nuclear submarines are stationed. In France, non-violent actions are being organised at the base of Mont-Marsan (a nuclear weapons warehouse), in Brest at the FOST-headquarters (Force Océanique STratégique, the French nuclear submarines) and on 2 April at the ministry of defence in Paris. In Germany there will be a demonstration at the base of Büchel on 4 April, and the removal of the NATO nuclear weapons is one of the central demands of the Easter marches that take place all over Germany. In holland, Ontwapen organises a cleanup-action near and on the base of Volkel. In Turkey, actions take place in Ankara and Istanbul. Finally in Italy a demonstration was organised on 21 March at the base of Aviano.

The Bombspotting campaign

Just like the previous years the Bombspotting action is preceded by threatening words from the government, the installing of miles of barbed wire and the deployment of more than a thousand soldiers and police personnel. And yet the Bombspotting campaign is nothing but a non-violent attempt to make sure international law is applied.

Nuclear weapons can not be used without violating international humanitarian law. Their deployment and the training of Belgian pilots for their use, constitutes the preparation of crimes of war. The decision of the International Court of 8 July 1996 concerning nuclear weapons was therefore the incentive to start a campaign in order to incite our government to respect international humanitarian law and put an end to the deployment of nuclear weapons. Since 1997, a large group of people have participated in non-violent civilian inspections, during which in, analogy with the UN-inspectors in Iraq, they try to end the deployment of illegal weapons of mass destruction. The Belgian justice system has never dared to have a thorough judicial discussion in court. The only reaction from the government that remains, is to convert the base into a fort to protect its illegal policies from its civilians. The actions have succeeded in putting nuclear weapons on the political agenda, and an ever growing group of politicians have spoken out against further deployment of nuclear weapons. In 2005 Belgian parliament for the first time drafted a resolution asking for their removal. This year, Jean-Luc Dehaene, Willy Claes, Guy Verhofstadt and Louis Michel echoed the same point of view, as did dozens of members of parliament from all parties in a letter to president Obama. Will this growing political conscience finally be put into practice by the Belgian government in 2010?

The ministry of defence states that it is tired of the Bombspotting actions. Vredesactie will gladly put a stop to the Bombspotting campaign, when the Belgian government aligns itself with international humanitarian law and removes the nuclear weapons from Kleine Brogel.

Updates and pictures will be made available through www.bomspotting.be <http://www.bomspotting.be> . Vredesactie Contact: Hans Lammerant – 0479 68 24 43   Inez Louwagie – 0498 68 29 40

U.S. commander reveals true purpose of troops in Okinawa is to remove N. Korea’s nukes

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100401p2a00m0na016000c.html

April 1, 2010

U.S. commander reveals true purpose of troops in Okinawa is to remove N. Korea’s nukes

The commander of U.S. Marine Corps troops in Asia has recently revealed to Japanese defense officials that the true purpose of stationing Marines in Okinawa is to remove North Korea of its nuclear weapons if its regime collapses, sources close to the government say.

Ironically, confusion within the government over the selection of a relocation site for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture has helped extract the true intentions of U.S. forces. The question is whether it will pave the way for the building of an equal partnership between Japan and the United States as the administration of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has pursued.

Top-ranking Japanese and U.S. defense officials secretly met at the U.S. Embassy in the Akasaka district of downtown Tokyo on the morning of Feb. 17 to discuss the Futenma relocation issue. The meeting, held in English without an interpreter, was proposed by Lt. Gen. Keith Stalder, commander of Marine Corps troops operating in the Asia-Pacific region.

The commander asked Japanese officials to support the plan agreed upon by Washington and the previous Japanese administration to relocate the base to an offshore area of Camp Schwab in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, and reiterated Washington’s official view on the issue.

At the end of the one-hour meeting, one of the Japanese officials protested to Stalder. “We are experts in security issues, so we understand it. But people say Marine Corps troops are unnecessary in Okinawa because you only reiterate Washington’s official view.”

The commander kept silent for a while, and then revealed that Marine Corps troops in Okinawa are actually there to counter the threat of North Korea, according to one of Japanese attendees. Pointing out that there is more chance that Kim Jong Il’s regime will collapse than a military conflict breaking out between North and South Korea, Stalder explained that the most important mission of Marines in Okinawa in such an emergency situation is to promptly rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

Stadler appears to have taken advantage of Japan’s concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons from North Korea if the Kim regime collapsed. Even so, it was the first time that a high-ranking U.S. defense official has revealed the true reason for keeping Marines in Okinawa.

U.S. forces had previously explained that the Marines are stationed in Okinawa to deter the threat posed by North Korea and to counter any rapid military buildup by China.

In June 2008, North Korea reported to China, which chaired the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, that the country had stockpiled approximately 38.5 kilograms of plutonium. Based on this, it is presumed that Pyongyang possesses six to eight nuclear weapons, but it remains unclear.

A joint military exercise between U.S. and South Korean forces carried out from March 8 included a special forces drill to search for and recover North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction including nuclear arms.

Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, told a House panel on March 24 that the U.S. and South Korea are prepared to launch operations to remove weapons of mass destruction from North Korea, admitting that Washington is seriously considering a realistic scenario of removing nuclear weapons from North Korea.

The most serious challenge for the United States in the Asia-Pacific region is to counter China’s rapid military expansion. However, questions remain as to whether U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa are effective in deterring the threat posed by China.

Michael Green, former senior director for Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, emphasizes that Marine Corps are effective in countering China’s military buildup.

He pointed out that the Marine Corps have a mission of locating weapons of mass destruction stockpiled by North Korea if its regime collapses, and that its presence also sends a strong message to China that it cannot settle disputes over Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands through military force.

In sharp contrast, former Ground Self-Defense Force Lt. Gen. Takashi Fukuyama is skeptical of the idea.

“A deterrence to China’s threat can’t be achieved by the Marines alone. The United States, which doesn’t want to clash with China, apparently wouldn’t get involved in a conflict over the Senkaku Islands,” he says. “If North Korea’s regime collapses and ensuing confusion subsides, there might be no point in the U.S. keeping Marines in Okinawa.”

In his debate with Liberal Democratic Party leader Sadakazu Tanigaki in the Diet on Wednesday, Prime Minister Hatoyama emphasized that he can select a relocation site, which would maintain a deterrence, while lessening Okinawa’s burden of hosting U.S. bases.

“I’m confident that the relocation plan I have in mind is as effective as, or even more effective than the previously agreed upon plan in lessening Okinawa’s burden and ensuring a deterrence,” Hatoyama said.

However, the security environment surrounding the Japanese archipelago has been undergoing rapid changes and there are various views on the situation.

While the Hatoyama administration is desperately looking for a relocation site, there is no sign that Tokyo and Washington have examined the roles that the Marine Corps in Okinawa should play.

Yoichi Iha, mayor of Ginowan that hosts Air Station Futenma, dismisses the claim that U.S. Marines must stay in Okinawa because of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

“If the Marines’ presence is necessary because of North Korea’s nuclear threat, they can be stationed in Kadena (in Okinawa Prefecture) or Iwakuni (in Yamaguchi Prefecture). There is no reason why they must be kept at Futenma,” he said.

Disarm Now! For Peace & Human Needs – March and Rally, NYC

English-half-page

International Day of Action – Sunday, May 2

4 February 2010

Join people from around the world for an afternoon of action!

2:00 PM – Rally near Times Square (exact location to be announced)

3:30 PM – March across 42nd Street to the United Nations

4:00 – 5:30 PM – International Peace & Music Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (47th St. between First and Second Aves.)

In the coming weeks, we will be confirming a line-up of rally speakers and performers to both inform and inspire us in addition to greetings from delegations from our international partners who are helping to organize this International Day of Action.

At the Peace Festival, there will be tents and tables that will provide information and organizing resources so that we can continue our work for a safe, nuclear-free, peaceful and just world for all!  There will be a tent with the Japanese delegation including Hibakusha (survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) as well as many other issue based tents and tables.

Disarm Now!

Mobilizing Call of the NPT Review 2010

Today our world is facing crises on an unprecedented scale: global warming, poverty, war, hunger, and disease. They threaten the very future of life as we know it, and on a daily basis bring death, sorrow and suffering to the majority of people on our planet. Yet these problems are almost entirely the results of human action and they can be equally be resolved by human action. We have an unprecedented opportunity to create the political will to manage the riches and natural bounty of our world in such a way as to meet the needs of all peoples, and to enable us to live together in peace and justice.

Such is the desire of the overwhelming majority of peoples, yet we face a situation today where global military spending – money for killing – has now reached a total of $1.46 trillion in 2008. Furthermore, nine countries maintain arsenals of nuclear weapons – all together, over 23,000 warheads. These uniquely destructive weapons can not only destroy life on our planet many times over, but they are also used as political weapons of terror, reinforcing an unjustifiable global inequality. The eradication of these weapons will not only end the threat of global annihilation and this hierarchy of terror, but it will unlock enormous resources to address climate change and mass poverty, serve as the leading edge of the global trend towards demilitarisation, and make advances in other areas of human aspiration possible.

In spite of treaty obligations and international resolutions and rulings over the decades since the criminal atomic bombings of Japan by the United States in 1945, the nuclear weapons states have failed to eliminate their nuclear arms. Their continued possession of these weapons, together with modernisation of systems and increasingly aggressive nuclear use policies in recent years, have contributed to an increasing tendency towards their proliferation, and a greater likelihood of nuclear war.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) requires both non-proliferation and disarmament, and must be supported and strengthened – yet it lacks a concrete process for achieving these essential goals. Furthermore, there are grave problems with its Article IV. This guarantees the right to peaceful nuclear energy but overlooks the inextricable link between nuclear power and weapons technologies and their health and environmental costs. The newly-launched International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) provides an opportunity to phase out nuclear power, superseding the Article IV guarantee. This said, the NPT continues to provide the framework for advancing towards an essential new initiative – a timetable for the elimination of nuclear weapons so urgently sought by the global majority.

The NPT Review Conference in May 2010 presents a precious opportunity to take that initiative. It is an opportunity that must on no account be missed. After the spiraling aggression of the Bush era, the Obama presidency provides a new context for our campaigning. President Obama’s commitment, alongside that of President Medvedev of Russia, to global abolition of nuclear weapons is greatly welcomed, and their first steps towards bilateral reductions and support for treaties restricting nuclear developments are positive. However, the goal of global abolition cannot be postponed into the indefinite future, for only a defined, achievable and timetabled process can halt the proliferation that threatens us all.

To this end, to secure a future for humanity and our planet, to help create the conditions for a world of peace, justice and genuine human security, we urge the 2010 NPT Review Conference to make an unambiguous commitment to begin negotiations on a convention for the time-bound elimination of all nuclear weapons, a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

Such a step will not happen without the active encouragement of civil society, giving voice to the yearning of the global majority for a world free from the fear of nuclear annihilation. We urge all those who share this vision to join us in mobilising for the international peace conference in New York on May 1 st and the International Day of Action for a Nuclear Free World, in New York and globally, on May 2nd, as well as for the presentation of petition signatures to the NPT Review Conference.

See all the signers:  http://peaceandjusticenow.org/wordpress/call-to-action/disarm-now/

Jeju Island Farmers Continue to Resist Navy Base

For more photos, please see here:

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2010/03/gangjeong-is-strong-and.html

http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2010/03/jeju-island-farmers-continue-to-resist.html

Monday, March 08, 2010

JEJU ISLAND FARMERS CONTINUE TO RESIST NAVY BASE

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It has been raining on and off for more than a month in the Gangjeong village. Still the lights in the tents have never been put out in the nights. About 4-5 people in shifts make vigil every day and night. The tents are just off from the site for the planned ceremony for the naval base construction.


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Flags cover the tent site. “We death-defiantly oppose the naval base!”

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The Navy set up the board depicting how the naval base would be fantastic site for tourists with all the luxurious cruises, flowers and photo-taking tourists. “It’s just nonsensical. If the military base is set-up, who can freely take the pictures of the base? The Navy is insisting the logic that persuades nobody,” villagers say.

By Sung-Hee Choi

Inchon, South Korea

Why it was important to visit the village and hear the villagers’ voice itself? – “Navy’s media manipulation’ should be watched,” the villagers say.
It has constantly been raining in the Gangjeong village for more than a month, except for the few hours off, each day. When I went to the village in the late night of March 5, it was such a raining night, too. Since the police raid on Jan. 18, the villagers have set up the tents and have been doing the tent vigils just near the site of the planned ceremony for the naval base.

A few South Korean newspapers have written that the tension had been high since Jan. 18. According to some articles, it was Feb. 24 that the joint chief of the Navy visited the current governor and Gangjeong village. According to another article, on the very same day, Kim Tae-Young, the Minister of the National Defense Department was announcing in Seoul that the Department wanted to have the ceremony for the naval base construction in March.

Furthermore, an article said that “according to the Navy, the land compensation for the planned area has been done by 51% while compensation for the fishing industry has been done by 80%.”

I had to see myself what were really going on in Gangjeong and listen to the villagers who will now sit in the middle of a dangerous chess game as the U.S. makes a move to checkmate Russia and China in the region, by the naval base plan that the villagers have opposed for more than three years.

Have the villagers given up the struggle? To say conclusion first, the answer was clearly ‘no’. The villagers have never given up their struggle. Their will has seldom been changed. Furthermore, I found during this visit, that they have the confidence in their struggle to win.

It should be all Koreans’ concern that the planned Jeju naval base issue is not only the Island matter but also the matter that tests all South Koreans’ awareness and morality against the U.S. domination strategy to make the North East Asia as dangerous war base against China and Russia, for the interest of a few arms sales corporations.

What the villagers want is their voice to be heard despite Navy’s manipulation of the public opinion.

Even though the tent was not so cold inside as imagined, one can easily imagine all the inconvenience the villagers have had to endure and the desperate spirit that they are going through.

About 4-5 five men sleep in that inconvenient tent every night. They simply call it “Watchful situation” before the highest conflict with the Navy is foreseen in coming soon.

But to my interpretation of the news articles on the Navy plan and progress of land and fishing compensation, the villagers’ response was in a word – ‘a laugh’.

“The Navy and Defense Department are trying to make the naval base construction as if it is an established fact. They are manipulating the public opinion and most media is uncritically supporting them repeating only their words with half-truth. We need the press that really reflects our voice.”

A villager, Mr. Kim who was proud of 400 years history of the village naturally formed and was among the 23 villagers who started the struggle three years ago emphasized that.

“The Navy is simply attempting to enforce the construction, ignoring all the rational and persuasive procedures. They know they cannot but lose in the lawsuits that we have appealed. Regarding the lawsuits, it is almost likely we win. The Navy can hardly repel that. You know what? The lawyers of the Navy showed that they wanted to delay the trial because they, themselves know that they cannot win the trial. That is why they are anxious and trying to manipulate through the press as if all the preparations for the naval base construction are going well.”

“Why the Navy and police raided us in the dawn when there was little press on January 18? They did that because they did not want our voice to be heard.”

“They say it is a civilian-military complex beauty harbor for tourism. The Navy says that if the base is constructed in the Jeju, it would help the villagers with economic benefit of $5,000 each whenever a cruises come in the harbor. But I remember when Kang Chang-Soo, the high Navy officer was saying about the naval base plan years ago, he was not mentioning about cruise AT ALL. Further, the soil of Gangjeong is the best all over the Jeju Island. Gangjeong, as its name, Gang (means river) and Jeong (means water) implies, it is the blessed watery land. You will get water anywhere in Gangjeong. You can never find such land around this area. In the 1960-70s, Gangjeong was famous for the rich rice harvest until the crops were replaced mostly to tangerine. The area where the Navy wants to come in with the base has been once the rice fields that have once fed all the Island people. Whatever crops you raise here, whether it is, rice, garlic or tangerine, you would get the best harvest. Then why we have to give up this best farming land for the sake of naval base whose economic benefit is already clear to be treacherous.”

(His account of why the villagers cannot but oppose the naval base, in light of economic point of view, remind me the Pyeongtaek where the best rice fields in South Korea were forcefully taken away for the base expansion of the U.S. Forces in Korea in 2007, despite people’s strong opposition against it.)

“Look, even though the Navy says about 50 % of the land was compensated, it is exaggeration and lie. You should know why I emphasize the fact that the Gangjeong is the naturally formed village for 400 hundred years. Did you see any apartments in Gangjeong? No, unlike most villages, there is no apartment here. That is one aspect of what the naturally formed village is about. By rule, you cannot sell the land more than 5% inside the naturally formed land. You should know that the Navy bought most of it from the outsiders of the Gangjeong village, who had owned the lands in the village.”

He also said that even though the Navy says in the media that 80% of fishing industry has been compensated, as he knows, no compensation has practically been done. Each of the sea diving women have not gotten money yet because of the complicated distributing issue.

In conclusion, most Gangjeong villagers who have opposed the base from the beginning with the 680 opposition ballots among 700 participants in the general village meeting on August 10, 2007, have still remained true to their original faith and the Navy has not been able to either show the responsible plan nor succeed to get peoples’ hearts.

What makes people angry is the institutional violence under the name of “national policies” that says the nation cannot consider villagers’ opinion such as the vote mentioned above because it is the ‘national policy’.

Yes. Their opinions are not only totally ignored but manipulated as opposite. That is what makes the villagers mad about it and here is the point that the people should really pay attention to.

How the Villagers see the prospect of the Struggle.

The mayor (Kang dong Kyun) whom I met on March 6 was confident that the villagers would have the high possibility to win all the lawsuits that they have appealed including the administrative lawsuit, last April 2009, in which they appealed against the Minister of the National Defense Department for the cancellation of the approval on the national defense/ military facility business realization plan. The procedures that the Navy claims to have gotten through and approved have been done in reality in the illegal and snatched way, totally nonsensical, supported by state power that totally ignore people’s opinion. The Navy knows it themselves and knows that it will lose in the lawsuits, the villagers say.

And the Island governing election is coming on June 2. The Jeju media is covered with all the election issues and the candidates in the opposition parties who know that the naval base issue would be the hot potato have been even saying that they would review all the plans on the naval base from the beginning despite the fact that one of them was mentioning simply to change the site of the base to Hwasoon that was the original candidate site but withdrawn because of people’s fierce struggle for five years there (another betrayal then!).

However, if the Navy still enforces the plan of the base in Gangjeong, then the villagers cannot but fight, at the risk of physical conflict, the mayor said in grave voice.

The mayor was foreseeing the Navy may want to have the ceremony around mid-April, not necessarily related to the lawsuit trial dates and results.

“What we can expect is if the construction begins, the Navy would want to avoid all the conflicts. They would make the police be in front of the struggle, instead of itself. Then, the right-wing thugs in the area will be employed, too, making the situation easily imaginable of dangerous violence against the villagers.”

Yes. It would be the frightening situation, then. The small village of about 600 households with 2,000 residents might turn into the tragically dangerous site. It was one of the reasons that the villagers could not lose their tension. And it may be one of the reasons why more people need to go to Gangjeong, to find the ways to support them.

One of the things I found in the village situation was that more cultural activists are needed in Gangjeong. Currently a movie critic has lived in the tent for more than six months in the cold and windy Joongduk coast. And there are two cartoonists who have done most of the cultural activities, there. But the village needs more artists to go there, to record, and to make their cultural activism to support the tent vigil and other activities.

The Gangjeong village people have fought hard. As a villager said, if the Navy base is set up, all the Jeju Island will be the military base, far different from the Island of Peace.

The South Korea and U.S. are making one of the biggest annual war exercises against North Korea, all over the area of South Korea. They are called “Key Resolve” from March 8-18 and the “Foal Eagle” from March 3 to April 30.

These military war games go against the current of negotiating the Peace Treaty in which the talks on the non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula should be done at the same time. The US-SK alliance, and US-SK-Japan war alliance, whose first three party military exercise would be done this April, seems to be anxious to anchor in the Jeju Island with this naval base construction plan.

As a villager said, there is no need to set up the base in Jeju if it is against the North Korea. South Korea has already many naval base in Busan, Jinhae, etc.

The base is really against China and will be surely used by the United States, the villagers clearly say. It would be then my and our responsibility to share the struggle with the villagers against the naval base so that the Jeju Island remains as the true Island of Peace, not as the island of war base.

More on Nuclear Survivors Remembrance Day

http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11167:-nuclear-survivors-remembrance-day-&catid=36:bens-pen&Itemid=67

Nuclear Survivors Remembrance Day

Tuesday, 02 March 2010 03:26 by Sen. Ben Pangelinan

March 1, 2010 marks the 56th year of the explosion of the most devastating instrument of mass destruction of its time and for many decades to come, the nuclear bomb, Code named “Bravo” on the peoples of the Pacific. It was detonated by the United States on the Pacific atoll of Bikini causing unforeseen but not unhoped results on the people and the environment of the Pacific peoples, including the people of Guam.

In a triumph of science for the United States, the bomb, 1000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki propelled the United States as the undisputed world power being the only nation to possess and use such an incredibly and indiscriminately destructive force.

We commemorate the people and remember their suffering who live each day of their lives, diminished in its quality from the long term effects of radiation sickness, a multitude of cancers now left to fend for themselves after the destruction of their island homes and dislocated from their ability to survive from the bounties of their oceans.

The explosion vaporized the coral, the land and the water. This toxic mix mushroomed into the atmosphere, traveled and fell upon the islands of Rongelap 100 miles away and Utirik over 300 miles away, buried beneath the radioactive fallout.

To this day, the United States professes it needed the development of such weapons of mass destruction for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.”

While it has succeeded in the development of the bombs, what it has failed to do is to make good to mankind its promise to take care of the people who lived it, utterly disrupted and destroyed. Nor has it owned up to its responsibility and acknowledge that the debilitating effects of the test reached our shores as well.

Instead, what we have reaped from this policy of nuclear armament and development is a community that struggles to cope with the ill health effects on the child bearing women whose babies are still born, born without limbs, heads and skeletons. In the ensuing years, survivors of the testing are ravaged with cancers at rates beyond existence anywhere else and the people of Guam have not been spared.

The struggle continues for the survivors of ERUB—the islands of Enewetak, Rongelap, Utirik and Bikini, who have become nuclear nomads, looking for a habitable and hospitable place to make their lives whole. It is no coincidence that “erub” in the Marshallese language means broken or shattered. They continue their efforts to mend their lives as they pursue greater compensation from the United States that has underfunded their radiation compensation programs.

Next month, Guam’s community of radiation exposure victims will go before the US Congress to present their own case for inclusion in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). It is a struggle, long and hard, emotional and draining, bolstered by the United States’ own panel of scientific experts, who unequivocally stated that Guam received significant radioactive fallout for the atom bomb tests and should be eligible for compensation under RECA. I hope to be presented the opportunity to continue assisting them in their efforts.

The following month, the Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference will convene in New York. It is our hope that our President will lead the nations of the world and unite towards an agreement that will rid the world of nuclear arms.

Let the destruction of the past, guide us in our efforts to heal the world and its peoples. Let this day of remembrance of nuclear survivors set our moral compass on the path of justice.

Ben Pangelinan is a Senator in the 30th Guam Legislature and a former Speaker now serving his eighth term in the Guam Legislature. E-mail comments or suggestions to senbenp@guam.net or ctzenben@ite.net

Nuclear survivors worry as U.S. presses for resettlement

http://www.mvariety.com/n-test-affected-islanders-worry-as-us-presses-for-resettlement.php

N-test affected islanders worry as US presses for resettlement

Tuesday, 02 March 2010 00:00 By Giff Johnson – For Variety

MAJURO — Fifty-six years after an American hydrogen bomb blast in the Pacific exposed hundreds of people to radioactive fallout, the U.S. Congress is pressing islanders to return home by next year.

March 1 is a national holiday that recognizes Nuclear Victims Day in the Marshall Islands. This year, which marks the 25th year since Rongelap Islanders’ self-evacuated their radioactive islands, islanders are facing a U.S. ultimatum: move back to Rongelap in 2011 or face cutoff of funding support for the “temporary” community at Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, where about 400 islanders have lived since their 1985 evacuation.

Afraid

“I don’t want to return to Rongelap,” said Lemeyo Abon, a Rongelap survivor of the U.S. nuclear testing era who turns 70 on July 5. “I am afraid,” she said in reaction to the U.S. Congress’ push to have Rongelap resettled by 2011. “If we go back it will be our death — is it the United States intention to eliminate us?”

The U.S. provided Rongelap Atoll Local Government with a $45 million resettlement trust fund to finance cleanup and rehabilitation work on Rongelap Island when studies after the islanders evacuated showed the atoll still contained high levels of radioactivity. Since 2000, the atoll’s local government has built a power plant, installed water-making equipment, paved roads and has completed nine of a planned 50 homes for a future resettlement. Following advice of U.S. government scientists, land where community facilities and homes are located has had the top 15 inches of top soil scraped off and replaced by crush coral rocks, and land with food crops such as coconut trees has been doused with potassium fertilizer to block uptake of radioactive cesium-137 by the roots.

Temporary

With millions of dollars invested in the cleanup of Rongelap, U.S. congressional leaders want to see Rongelap resettled and the “temporary” home of Mejatto closed by the end of next year. Last October, six leading U.S. senators and representatives issued a letter to the Interior Department critical of the slow pace of resettlement. The letter also directed the Interior Department to withhold partial funding for Rongelap Atoll Local Government for the current fiscal year until it submitted a report on the resettlement to the Congress.

Allen Stayman, staff to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman who was a signer of the letter, said that “it is important to note that (the letter) was sent last October. Since then, congressional staff has had good communications with local government representatives and a target date for completion of resettlement and the closure of the facilities at Mejatto is to be set for the end of the next fiscal year, or October 1, 2011.”

Ongoing support

The U.S. Department of Energy is set to provide ongoing monitoring and support. “The DOE’s position is we support resettlement if the atoll wants to do it,” said Patricia Worthington, who heads the Office of Health and Safety in Washington.

While Rongelap local government is pressing ahead with building 40 more homes this year and next, Mayor James Matayoshi said Rongelap Islanders living on Mejatto have always wanted to return to their home islands, but questions about radiation safety continue to linger — despite U.S. government assurances of safety.

Criminal

If contaminated soil around housing and community facilities is combined with potassium fertilizer treatment of agriculture areas, “the natural background dose plus the nuclear-test-related dose at Rongelap would be less than the usual background dose in the United States and Europe,” said Dr. Terry Hamilton of the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in mid-February.

“It is very hard for me to trust and believe any word that is said by Americans after what the United States and the Department of Energy has done to us,” said Abon. “What they did to us is criminal.”

When the 15-megaton Bravo test was detonated in 1954, no warning was given to people on Rongelap and other downwind islands. A snowstorm of radioactivity exposed unsuspecting Rongelap islanders to a near lethal dose of radiation, causing vomiting, skin burns and their hair to fall out — classic symptoms of high-level radiation exposure. In 1998, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control Radiation Studies Branch report on the Marshall Islands said that the 67 U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands spewed out 150 times more radioactive-iodine 131 than the 1986 reactive accident at Chernobyl. The majority of islanders exposed in 1954 have had thyroid tumors and cancers.

High spirits

Rongelap’s local government is not ignoring the U.S. insistence on resettlement, but a resettlement appears unlikely in 18 months. “People are in high spirits about the possibility of resettling,” Matayoshi said. “But the practicalities are the challenge now.”

Rongelap islanders left in 1985 fearing radiation exposure, which subsequent independent studies confirmed. While there are more than 60 small islands in the atoll, many of which are used for food gathering, the nuclear cleanup work has focused only on the main island. For Matayoshi, a successful resettlement revolves around U.S. commitments to Rongelap to provide safeguards and assurances, and people’s acceptance of these assurances.

DOE’s Worthington said their department wants to partner with Rongelap Atoll Local Government to set up a monitoring program in order to reconfirm the decision made to resettle or to make any adjustments needed. Monitoring will involve doing “whole body counts” for people before they go back and then once they return and continuing in an ongoing manner to maintain assurance of safety, she said. A whole body counter checks for cesium-137 uptake, providing the person being monitored with information within 15 minutes.

Impossible

But Abon sees resettlement of Rongelap Atoll as “impossible” because only a small part of the atoll has had its nuclear contamination cleaned, while the population has grown significantly, meaning they need to use more islands to comfortably resettle.

Availability of imported food, needed to reduce intake of cesium-137 from staple crops such as coconuts, breadfruit and pandanus, is also a big worry to islanders.

“I foresee problems with provisioning the island because Rongelap is so far away from the centers,” said Abon. Remote islands in this western Pacific nation that are scattered over 750,000 square miles of ocean area receive government ship visits once every three-to-four months. Abon said that unlike the other outer island communities, if a ship is delayed to Rongelap, islanders should not eat from the land. “We will be forced to eat off the land. The poison is there even if you can’t taste, smell or see it,” warns Abon.

Matayoshi, whose mother was on Rongelap during the Bravo fallout, believes that the people’s “livelihood will be well-served living on Rongelap because of the convenience and benefits (of power, water and housing) and their access to freedom as the owners of the atoll.”

He adds, however, “We are not forcing anyone to take our view. We’ll lay out what is possible, what the options are and the consequences if we continue to delay the resettlement process.”