Tag: Movements and Resistance

Today’s Honolulu Star Bulletin reported:   “The Alakai went home yesterday looking for work.”

Maybe it was a slip, but it was accurate.  The Superferry’s home is, and always has been somewhere else.  It was never a homegrown interisland transportation system to ship pineapples or allow grandma on Maui to visit her grandkids on O’ahu.   It was always about powerful outside interests using Hawai’i to further their business plans and spread the risk to tax payers.  That’s why the business plan for the Superferry never made sense, and why the company was so eager to pack up and ship out once it had gotten everything it needed from Hawai’i and a convenient out.   Where the Superferry ends up will reveal a lot about its real business plans.

Peace for Life Second People’s Forum
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA • 20-23 MARCH 2009
Organized in partnership with Colombian NGOs led by
Proyecto Justicia y Vida

BOGOTÁ DECLARATION 2009

Faith and Resistance for Peace and Life in the Age of U.S./Global Empire

With the powers of dance, music, testimonies and prayers, and enriched by multiple analyses, we Colombian peoples’ movements, and international delegates in solidarity, issue this joint call to the international community. In March 2009 at Bogotá, Colombians through Proyecto Justicia y Vida, joined with the Second People’s Forum of Peace for Life to focus Colombia’s armed conflict and struggle within a larger global context, under the theme, “Without Fear of Empire: Global People’s Resistance.” Peace for Life defines its peace and justice objectives in relation to the core issues of empire, state terrorism and militarized neoliberal globalization, especially as forged by the imperial power of the U.S.

The international delegation brought solidarity and support, with over 50 political activists, scholars, laity, pastors, priests, and peoples attending from every continent. Hundreds of Colombians met in common purpose with international guests coming from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, Germany, India, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nepal, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Tonga, United Kingdom, and the United States.

RESISTANCE’S PAIN AND POWER

Together, we Colombians and international delegates, weave the strength of our resistance with our faith for a common struggle. Our struggle grows strong amid the destruction of peoples and lands that the U.S global empire-with its transnational corporations and Neoliberal policies-inflicts upon the peoples of Colombia and so many others.

Colombia today is burdened by the nightmare of more than 50 years of armed conflict, as guerrilla groups have waged an ongoing struggle against unjust Colombian governments. The present government exploits this long-standing conflict to advance the special interests of its elite, the 3 percent of the population who owns over half of Colombia’s arable land. The conflicts inside the country are many and complex, but we lift our cry especially against the U.S. global empire, which, often with Europe’s complicity, endlessly multiplies the people’s pain.

There is some hope, because today the power of the U.S. global empire is in decline, due to its own internal economic crisis, and the unyielding resistance of people’s movements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Moreover, there are the rival powers of a stronger China, Russia, and especially the new governments brought to power by peoples’ movements across Latin America (in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, for example). Nevertheless, the empire remains a threat. It has divided the entire globe into strategic command regions, and maintains over 800 military bases worldwide. The U.S. is now making a desperate and brutal assault on the people of Colombia, in order to secure empire’s traditional hold over all the Americas and, by extension, over the globe. Empire is hungry for the resources of Colombia, Latin America’s fifth largest economy. It has a particular hunger for narco-trafficking, exploiting it and so destroying humanity. It now seeks to strengthen its strategic position in Colombia, located between Central and South America, and bordering Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. Empire especially covets the oil of Colombia, the third largest Latin American supplier of oil to the U.S. (after Venezuela and Mexico). To feed its domestic demand for oil, the U.S. imports more oil from Latin America than even from the Middle East. And with gains and investments from these resources, the empire plays a ruthless game, a “casino capitalism,” a speculation of high finance that brings the people low.

And so, Colombia’s peoples are bleeding. Women, children, the aged-especially those from Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and peasant/campesino communities-are now being displaced and dispossessed from their lands. Indigenous peoples’ struggle for their land and culture is met by the Colombian state’s continued repression and threats of “extinction.” Middle classes have been exploited by their banks and lending agencies. Millions of displaced persons and refugees have been created by strategic maneuvers of elites who expropriate land for economic gain and power. These displacements are not just a simple transfer of peoples from one place to another; they are the brutal, forced loss of home and housing, being coerced to live without dignity, seeing loved-ones killed, tortured, poisoned by defoliating spraying of coca fields, denuding and polluting mother earth. Moreover, when leaders for peace and justice have come forward to work in peaceful and political ways, they routinely have been assassinated by military and paramilitary agents.

We have seen this bleeding before. We recognize the bleeding of Colombian peoples as U.S. Empire’s work elsewhere. It is, for example, the same bleeding we see when the empire of America and Israel work together to dispossess Palestinian peoples of their lands, enforcing more than 60 years of colonization, apartheid discrimination, and illegal occupation of Palestine. In Colombia today, Israel works as a full partner with the United States in the funding and training of military and paramilitary forces to enact illegal dispossession of lands and peoples, as they do in Palestine.

It is the same bleeding from empire that, historically, we have seen in the invasions and occupations of the Philippines for its resources and strategic position, in the partition and brutal militarization of the divided Koreas, in the more than a million lives lost in the U.S. war in Vietnam, in the militarized colonization of Puerto Rico, in the economic isolation and invasion of Haiti, in the brutal interventions into democratic struggles in Nepal, in the invasions of Grenada and Panama, and in the embargos and attacks on the people’s revolution in Cuba. Today we see the bleeding continue, in the war and occupation of Iraq (a million of its civilians sacrificed to empire), in the suffering of young women and men in the sweat factories of empire’s “free trade export zones,” in the uninvestigated feminicides (murders of women) in Guatemala, in the networks of human trafficking (in women, especially), in the empire’s torture cells of Abu-Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, in the empire’s feeding on the callous neglect and exploitation of Dalit people, in the imperial actions and inactions in Rwanda, the Congo and Sudan, and in the empire’s current spiraling into greater militarization and war in Afghanistan. Even as we meet in Bogotá, we also hear the cries from Sri Lanka, where civilians are dying from attacks by a government supported by the US in the name of a “struggle against terrorism.”

Empire has its own religion, often believing that this bleeding is a necessary sacrifice for globalization, for civilization, for the future of all peoples. Too many Christian churches preach this theology, condoning the sacrifice of the poor, or becoming complicit by their silence with this sacrifice of the earth and her poor. We reject this theology of sacrifice for imperial globalization. We refuse to be the sacrificial lambs for the empire’s pretexts and projects, whether called “war on terrorism,” “war on drugs,” or “development.”

THE CALL AND PLEDGE OF A COUNTER-IMPERIAL FAITH

We, nevertheless, are not just bleeding. We are also breathing life, and celebrating life’s emergence, even in the throes of U.S. imperial power. We breathe in our rage and mourning, and live out a new culture of memory, remembering to be led toward justice and peace by our many departed ancestors and martyrs. We breathe and calmly discern in empire the structural demons of greed and violence that we must name and resist everywhere. We breathe within a fragile ecosystem of air and water, and are thus united and empowered with all peoples of this one earth, which births and nurtures us all. In Bogotá, we Indigenous, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and other peoples of conscience, celebrate together this new spirituality of breath and life. This spirituality breaks down the politics and religions of self-centeredness, egoism, individualism, and greed, and brings peace and life with justice.

Thus our shared pain and lamentation have arisen in faith, with a new counter-imperial spirituality, nurtured by many faiths that guide our concrete popular movements and organizing. We are especially led by and have as our exemplars the women and mothers of the dispossessed in Colombia and among the dispossessed of every land. This spirituality is part of a revolution of spiritual values and practices the world over. We call all peoples of faith and conscience to this revolution-whether they be from any religion or no religion-to participate in the spiritualities of many faiths resisting empire today in their own settings.

We join our Colombian brothers and sisters to call for prosecution of the Colombian state’s and financial sectors’ crimes against humanity, especially as transnational corporations have ravaged the country. War and dispossession against all, especially farmers, must be ended. Colonization and racism against Colombia’s indigenous peoples must be dismantled, especially for the Raizal peoples of Colombia’s Caribbean region. We bring the same urgency to prosecuting crimes against international law in Colombia as we do to those in Palestine.

We call also to our brothers and sisters under repression or in crisis inside the U.S. imperium. We celebrate your faith and spirituality of resistance against your government’s imperial power. Your economic crisis is part of the multiple chaos being visited upon us throughout the world, driven by the imperial adventures and interventions of U.S. global power. Your bleeding within the U.S. is one of the many rivulets of blood flowing from the open wounds of empire around the world.

As all who hear our call join with us, we pledge our resolve to resist the many strategies of empire today. Here at this Forum, we have analyzed and mourned our planet in peril, but in hope and joy we are building new structures to hasten the time of a liberation from empire for all the oppressed of the earth.

Adopted by the participants of the Peace for Life Second People’s Forum held on 20-23 March 2009 in Bogotá, Colombia

The Second People’s Forum of Peace for Life was organized in partnership with Proyecto Justicia y Vida and a consortium of Colombian NGOs and social movements: Sociedad Latinoamericana de Economia Politica y Pensamiento Critico (SEPLA); Colombianas y colombianos por La Paz; Movimiento de Cristianos y Cristianas por la Paz; Comisión Interfranciscana de Justicia, Paz y Reverencia con la Creación; Movimiento de Maestros y Maestras; Movimiento Campesino Colombiano; Movimiento Indígena Colombiano; and Movimiento de Víctimas de Crímenes del Sector Financiero. Other local organizations, including progressive Christian groups like Red Ecumenica, were also represented at the Forum. Sixty-two (62) international delegates from 22 countries and more than 300 local activists participated in the event.

Conspiracy ferry

Did we get taken for a ride by Hawai‘i Superferry?

Christopher Pala
Mar 25, 2009

Hawai‘i’s Superferry ended its choppy ride last week, leaving tantalizing clues, but no proof, that the whole venture was about more than providing “reliable commercial service in these islands,” as CEO Thomas B. Fargo insisted at his dawn press conference.

“You look at the players involved, you have to question their motives, there are some pretty significant defense contracts involved,” said Rep. Hermina Morita, who chairs the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee.

The defense contracts come in two categories.

First, the construction of the two ferries by Austal USA helped the young company get a contract to build a military version of the fast cargo and troop-transport ship-with an option for nine others-for a total of $1.6 billion, according to defense analysts and Austal USA itself. It also played a role in getting a contract for a Littoral Combat Ship prototype, a separate project to build up to 50 fast, aluminum warships at more than twice the price for each. The question is: was that the real purpose of building the Superferry?

Second, there are the ferries themselves. Now that the Hawai‘i Supreme Court has freed them of any obligation to serve the Islands, which has proved to be a money-losing operation, are they going to fetch a better price elsewhere? If they do, was that the main point for building them and bringing them here?

Austal and INCAT are the two giants of the big, fast aluminum catamaran business that have been supplying the world market for decades from their shipyards in Australia. Unlike most countries, the United States can’t buy foreign vessels for internal or military use: the Jones Act specifies they must be built domestically. So to crack the American market, Austal and INCAT needed to set up shipyards in the United States. Austal USA set up shop in Mobile, Ala., in 2001 and INCAT partnered with Bollinger Shipyards, Inc. in South Lockport, La., both with their eye on a contract for a military version of the Superferry.

By the summer of 2004, when work started on the first Superferry, Austal USA had built eight ships, all smaller than the Superferry. “Bollinger/Incat [USA] was a credible threat,” Bill Pfister, VP for external relations at Austal USA, said in a telephone interview from Mobile. “Building the Superferry was very helpful in demonstrating that we can build these ships in the United States as well as Australia, it was a major part of our credibility, almost a prerequisite,” he said. “It allowed us to build up the work force and the facilities.” Once the first Superferry was finished, that work force moved to the Littoral Combat Ship prototype, he said. And last November, as work was ending on the second Superferry, the Huakai, Austal beat Bollinger/Incat USA for the contract for the military version of the Superferry, called the Joint High Speed Vessel-essentially a Superferry with a helipad in the back.

In an interview together last year, Tig Krekel, vice chairman and partner of J.F. Lehman & Company, an investment bank in New York, and John Garibaldi, a former Hawaiian and Aloha Airlines executive who was CEO of Hawai‘i Superferry when it launched service, described how Garibaldi, Tim Dick and Terry White started the project together, financing it out of their savings until early 2004, when they raised $3.3 million. In September 2004, Lehman & Company took over the company and its principal, John F. Lehman, signed a deal to provide $85 million for the first Superferry.

“The ship started being built in summer of ’04, basically on spec,” Garibaldi said. “It was done on verbal assurances from Lehman and me that we would not leave them with the ship.” By the fall of 2005, Krekel said, Lehman was chairman of the board and the Maritime Administration was ready to guarantee $140 million of the $185 million loan.

Garibaldi said the shipyard had started building the ship “on spec” because the project’s financial success was so obvious “it was a no-brainer.” Krekel added, “We expect service to grow to five ships, the market’s there.”

But Alan Lerchbacker, the founding CEO of Austal USA, painted a different picture in an interview in Honolulu with Pacific Business News published on January 19, 2007, the same week Hawai‘i Superferry took delivery of the Alakai.

“I just worry about getting enough business to cover costs because of the sheer size of it,” he was quoted as saying. “They may need 400 to 500 passengers to break even.” Indeed, Hawai‘i Superferry executives had said the financial break-even point lay at 50 percent capacity, or 143 cars and 433 passengers, which the Superferry rarely attained.

Lerchbacker said he had suggested a 220-foot vessel, but the company chose the 326-foot model-and then another one of 344 feet.

Still unclear is whether Austal started building the Alakea “on spec” because it was the perfect way to prove its mettle to the military procurement community or because it believed that whatever the Hawai‘i plan’s merit, the ship itself would be attractive to the military. Also opaque is J.F. Lehman & Co.’s financial interest in Austal’s success. Atlantic Marine, which the company purchased recently and has a shipyard that adjoins Austal’s in Mobile, works with steel ships and “has no connection to Austal,” said Tim Colton, a shipping analyst in Florida.

The second kind of military contract that may be involved has to do with what would happen if the Superferries fail in their mission to make money in Hawai‘i or are prevented from operating by the courts.

On Thursday, Superferry CEO Fargo said, “We’re going to have to go out and find other employment for Alakai.” He added, “There are other ferry operations that would like to expand their service. Certainly the military may very well want to lease this particular ship.”

In July, BYM Marine and Maritime News reported, “Austal was recently awarded a new contract to provide additional features and equipment on the second Hawaii Superferry to facilitate its use by the military. This follows on from the long-term charter, since 2001, of the Austal-built 308-foot vehicle-passenger catamaran WestPac Express by the III Marine Expeditionary Force based on Okinawa, Japan.”

Pfister, the Austal vice-president, sidestepped in an e-mail exchange the question of whether a contract had been signed with the military to lease the Huakai. He explained that modification in question is a ramp that allows the ship to discharge cargo pretty much anywhere. It’s not usually used in civilian service because it’s heavy and cuts the number of cars by about 20 to 25, he wrote.

Lori Abe, a spokeswoman for Hawai‘i Superferry, said the ramp was added for use in the Big Island and that BYM is wrong.

Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said leasing the superferries to the military would be difficult to pull off. “Leasing military equipment is not popular in Congress,” he said. Another analyst, who asked to remain anonymous, added: “Tolerance for leasing rather than buying ran out. Another lease now could be a hard sell.”

But Colton, the analyst, said that if anyone can pull it off, it’s Lehman. The Navy secretary in the entire Reagan administration who famously advocated a 600-ship navy (from about 500) was a major adviser and fund-raiser for John McCain and was seen as his likely his chief of staff. “He’s much better positioned than anyone else to get these boats leased,” Colton said.

While we may never learn what interest Lehman had in helping Austal get the military contracts, the value of the two civilian superferries should soon become apparent.

If Lehman fails to lease them out and stops servicing the loan, the federal maritime administration, the loan’s guarantor, would have to take over the ships and likely sell them to the Navy. That could trigger headlines like “Feds Bail Out Another Well-Connected Fatcat.”

And there would be some irony in Obama’s Navy bailing out one of his most powerful opponents.

Source: http://honoluluweekly.com/feature/2009/03/conspiracy-ferry/

This blog post about the Superferry debacle by Jan TenBruggencate aptly applies a popular military aphorism:

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Source: http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/2009/03/admiral-farraguts-torpedoes-and-hawaii.html

Admiral Farragut’s torpedoes and the Hawai’i Superferry

There is a point at which a commander throws caution to the winds and orders, in the words of Admiral Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”

It worked for David Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. He defeated the Confederate fleet-largely because most of the tethered mines, then called torpedoes, were duds. They bounced off the ships’ hulls and didn’t explode.

Damning the torpedoes is always risky. It doesn’t always work. Indeed, it seldom does. Take the Hawai’i Superferry (I know, you’re tired of the Superferry).

Early on, when there was still plenty of time to perform a proper environmental study without holding up the ferry at all, someone made that call.

To paraphrase the classic line from “The Treasure of Sierra Madre:” “We don’t have no EIS. We don’t need no EIS. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ EIS.”

Never mind that the Councils of three of the four counties, representing 100 percent of the ferry’s destinations from Honolulu, asked for environmental studies.

Today’s it’s popular to blame the “environmentalists” for the Superferry’s failure. But County Councils are hardly hotbeds of environmental furor. They mostly get blamed for representing the interests of power, not the radical vegan community.

Someone, at some point, made the Farragut call, although we don’t know whether it was in Governor Linda Lingle’s office, Superferry president John Garibaldi’s office, a Superferry lawyer’s or state Attorney General’s office, a public relations consultant’s office or perhaps a state Department of Transportation office.

The call was wrong. The Hawai’i Supreme Court said so, although the court’s position in this is widely misunderstood. It required the Department of Transportation conduct an EIS-not that the Superferry prepare one.

In late August, 2007, a 15-year-old kid on a surfboard was among four dozen swimming and paddling protesters in Nawiliwili Harbor, preventing the Superferry’s entrance. When Coast Guard officers used boat hooks to try to snag him and arrest him, he insisted they arrest the ferry captain as the real lawbreaker.

Technically, the Kauai kid on the surboard was wrong. Arguably, he should have been protesting at the state Department of Transportation office-or at the office of the person who made the Farragut call, if anybody could figure out who that was.

And technically, the Superferry was right as it sailed into the minefield. But clearly, the Farragut call in this case was catastrophic.

For Farragut, the mines didn’t go off. For the Hawai’i Superferry, they did.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Hawaii Court Backs Protestors vs. Superferry

(But the Saga Continues)
By Jerry Mander & Koohan Paik

March 24, 2009

In the latest turn of events in Hawaii’s impressive grassroots uprising against a huge corporate-military boondoggle, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled unanimously (5-0) that the Hawaii Superferry has no legal authority to continue its operations in the state, at least for the time being. But, hold the cheery encomiums and ginger-blossom bouquets; there are downsides to this story that, so far, most media have neglected. First, the good news.

The ruling struck down as “unconstitutional” a law instigated by right-wing Republican Governor Linda Lingle called Act Two, which was intended to circumvent an earlier unanimous Hawaii Supreme Court ruling (August 2007). That prior decision asserted that the giant high-speed catamaran–which races at 40 miles per hour through humpback whale calving grounds, uses 12,000 gallons of gas on a round trip between islands and may have other extremely serious environmental effects–could not begin operations without first completing a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the Hawaii Environmental Policy Act (HEPA). The Superferry company, however, owned by the infamous New York militarist financier John F. Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, advocate of a 600-ship Navy to dominate the world’s oceans and member of the neocon Project for the New American Century, said it would not comply with the 2007 decision. Governor Lingle immediately backed Lehman via her (illegal) legislative foray, which exempted the Superferry from doing an EIS under HEPA and gave faux authority for the boat to keep operating. This was the biggest of many favors she did for Lehman and the company in a campaign many critics believe was designed as much for her own future in the Republican Party as for any concerns about Hawaii. Lehman was likely to be John McCain’s chief of staff, had he won (according to a New York Times report before the election), a position that might have put Lingle in good position for national office, which she apparently craves.

And yet, after last week’s court ruling, the Superferry company showed surprisingly little desire to fight, quickly announced it would suspend all Hawaii service within three days and did. This struck some observers as out of character for such an aggressive, self-important outfit, and raised new questions about the company’s and Lehman’s intentions: What’s up now? Could it be the company actually wanted to get out? Does this confirm that the Hawaii adventure was really only a demo for bigger military options, as many suggest? We will come back to that below.

Anyway, the good news set off celebrations on the islands of Kauai and Maui, which have led the protests against the Superferry. Eighteen months earlier, on the occasion of the boat’s maiden voyage, Kauai was the site of a landmark two-day uprising, where 1,500 protestors occupied the shoreline at Nawiliwili Harbor. They shouted their demands for an EIS, as dozens of surfers leaped into the water and paddled out dangerously close to the catamaran blades of the oncoming 350-foot colossus, stopping it cold in the water. It was a convincing display of determined resistance and daring from a laid-back community not usually known for political action. The boat never came back to Kauai.

Similar joy was displayed on Maui, which had suffered the only remaining Superferry run. After cancellation of service to Kauai, and then also to the Big Island, the Honolulu-Maui-Honolulu run, once daily, was the company’s last hurrah. Three Maui groups–the Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow and Kahului Harbor Coalition–were plaintiffs in both lawsuits that brought the Supreme Court victories. Irene Bowie of Maui Tomorrow said, “It’s unfortunate all this had to take place; I wish the state and Superferry had taken the correct action in the beginning, and followed the law.”

But wait! The battle may not be over. As David Brower, the celebrated leader of the Sierra Club during its heyday in the 1960s, often said, “there are no environmental victories, only holding actions; they always come back.”

First there is the Cheneyesque Governor Lingle, who never admits mistakes, and never quits pushing. She said that ending Superferry service would be “devastating” to Hawaii–she may have meant devastating to herself–and arrogantly re-asserted that Act Two was entirely legal, whatever the unanimous court said.

Lingle revved up the conservative Honolulu broadcast media to blame environmentalists rather than herself for the loss of 236 Superferry jobs. But as one opponent responded, “If it’s illegal jobs the Governor wants, then growing marijuana would be more profitable, better for the environment and doesn’t need absentee owners.”

Lingle announced that her Attorney General will ask the Court to “reconsider” its verdict, and that her Department of Transportation would do the EIS under HEPA that the company refused to do in 2007, hoping to someday lure it back. Lingle is also trying to again persuade the Democratic legislature to save the Superferry via some tricky legal interventions. Opposition leader, State Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser, would have none of it, blaming the whole situation on Lingle for exempting the Superferry from an EIS in the first place. Senator J. Kalani English agreed: “It goes back to the beginning. We [opposition senators] told the Superferry, ‘simply follow the EIS law.’ If they had done that, none of this would have happened.”

Then there’s the Superferry company itself and its absentee owner, John F. Lehman. Most people assumed the court decision would also be “devastating” to the company. But now the sense is growing that it is secretly delighted, for two compelling reasons.

First, the operation has been a commercial flop and the company and its investors are losing money fast in hard times. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, during the past three months the Superferry has operated at below 25 percent of capacity for people, cars and trucks. And according to a citizens’ watchdog commission set up by Act Two, the Oversight Task Force, overall performance figures since the project’s inception are little better. The company itself always suggested 50 percent of capacity as its break-even point (at rates that included a gasoline surcharge), a mark it has only hit sporadically. It just looks like most people are not that into a three-hour boat ride through famously rough waters; the Superferry barely dented the far more popular, and far more fuel-efficient, airplane ridership. It would probably be less headache for Lehman to sell the two boats–each built for about $90 million (and one of which, because of all the cancelled routes, has never begun operating)–and transform a losing enterprise into, maybe, $200 million cash while also eliminating operating costs. Or to lease the boats at a profit to the military, or Singapore, or someplace without activist surfers. The Supreme Court served up the perfect escape route. (A strong rumor has the boats headed for a Guam-Saipan-Tinian career that, alas, would not avoid protestors. There are a lot of anti-military activists on Guam.)

Secondly, there’s the military angle. As we reported on March 16 in The Nation and in our book, The Superferry Chronicles, during the last several years it became apparent that the Hawaii Superferry may have had more to do with military intentions than with its advertised role as friendly local transport for people and avocados between islands. The evidence is circumstantial but strong: Lehman’s military advocacies, a board of directors that’s like a shadow Pentagon and a CEO, Admiral Tom Fargo, who was commander of all US military operations in the Pacific under George W. Bush. What do all those military celebrities have to do with a neighborly ferry service? And why was the boat itself built completely out of scale for Hawaii–way too big, powerful and gas-guzzling, as the numbers are proving–but perfect for trans-Pacific purposes.

The company routinely denies this. At his shut-it-down press conference last Thursday, March 19, Admiral Fargo scoffed at the notion. “Not true,” he said. “We certainly would not have gone to the trouble to paint the Alakai [Superferry] in the manner we did, to appoint her with first-class seats…if that [military use] was our goal.” And yet, there have been innumerable contradictory published statements by other company executives (including Lehman) over the past eight years, that the Superferry might well be used for such military purposes as carrying Stryker tanks among the islands, among other uses. Why deny it? What can of worms does it open?

Most intriguing, for example, is the fact that in November 2008, the manufacturer and designer of the Superferry, Austal US, of Mobile, Alabama, a division of an Australian company, was awarded a huge US Navy contract to build ten new high-speed, light, high-capacity, aluminum-hulled, shallow water catamarans–which except for military accouterments (and that paint job!) are nearly identical to the Superferry design–for the Navy’s Joint High Speed Vessel program. This is one of two Navy programs that contemplate some fifty-five aluminum-hulled boats in the Pacific in preparation for possible challenges from China. This first ten-boat contract with Austal is worth $1.6 billion.

According to the New York Times, Bill Pfister, vice president for external affairs of Austal, credited the Superferry project with helping Austal develop a credible US workforce and construction process. “Building the Superferry was very helpful in demonstrating we can build these ships in the United States” he said. Now they get to build ten more.

Even more important was getting the Superferry into the water in Hawaii and keeping it there to demonstrate its seaworthiness, making it a perfect demo model, a working prototype for the Austal-US contract. So was this a central goal of the Superferry project all along, to help Austal get the contract? Is this why it was so important to avoid an Environmental Impact study, which might have delayed the boat’s deployment? Did Linda Lingle know this? And with the contract established, is this why the company can so willingly leave Hawaii? A lot of people believe that.

Whether, or how, John F. Lehman or any of his corporations, including the Superferry, actually achieves any financial benefit from Austal’s bonanza, remains unknown. Two years ago, however, Lehman bought a shipbuilding company called Atlantic Marine, adjacent to Austal in Mobile, Alabama. So far, however, we have found no reports of further agreements between the two companies for collaborative work on the Navy contract.

So here’s the wrap-up: Assuming Lingle can’t overcome the court, the people of Hawaii are free of the Superferry, possibly forever, and have time to contemplate what kind of alternative ferry service might be desirable–smaller scale, slower, environmentally friendly, locally owned or better yet, publicly owned. And, a new diverse activist resistance coalition has been born. As for Governor Lingle, she has been embarrassed and exposed for her many disgraceful actions, and politically she may now be toast.

And John Lehman? Well, it appears his business acumen is confirmed. He will probably come out of his Hawaii adventure escaping financial harm, and maybe with considerable gain, depending on the sales and/or rental agreements he makes for his giant boats, increasingly admired by potential military clients. And if he does somehow get involved in the Austal production bonanza he helped support, that will bring him personally closer to fulfilling his grandest dreams of expanded US domination of Pacific waters.
About Jerry Mander
Jerry Mander is director of the International Forum on Globalization and co-author, with Koohan Paik, of The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth (Koa).

About Koohan Paik
Koohan Paik is an Hawaii filmmaker and co-author, with Jerry Mander, of The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth (Koa).

Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/mander_paik/print?rel=nofollow

This press release from Congressman Jose Serrano states that the Navy has no intention of resuming training in Vieques.

Congressman José E. Serrano

Representing the Sixteenth District of New York

PRESS RELEASE

-4361

Serrano Announces Navy Has No Intention of Reopening Training Range On
Vieques

March 20, 2009 – Washington, DC – This afternoon, Congressman José E. Serrano received confirmation from the Navy’s Congressional Relations office that the Navy has no intention of reopening Vieques as a training range.

“I am pleased to hear that the Navy has no plans to return to Vieques,” said Serrano. “The people of Vieques have suffered enough. I am glad that the Navy now realizes the harm that has been caused, and agrees that this painful chapter in the history of Puerto Rico must remain closed.”

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Congressman José E. Serrano has represented the Bronx in Congress since 1990. He is the most senior Puerto Rican Member of Congress.