Pacific Pivot – DMZ hawaiʻi

June 29, 2012

The Great Pacific Shuffle – US Troops to Move from Okinawa to Guam, Hawaii, Australia

Discussing the so-called Pacific ʻpivotʻ of U.S. policy, Cara Flores Mays (We Are Guahan), Terri Kekoʻolani and Kyle Kajihiro (both with Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice and DMZ-Hawaiʻi / Aloha ʻAina) were guests on the Asia Pacific Forum radio program on WBAI (New York) with host Hyun Lee. Listen to the program here:

The Great Pacific Shuffle – US Troops to Move from Okinawa to Guam, Hawaii, Australia

The US military is playing a game of shuffle in Asia Pacific – planning to withdraw 9000 troops from Okinawa and transfer them to Guam, Hawaii, and Australia – according to a deal reached at the US-Japan summit last month. The plan reflects “US’ attempt to save its long-standing alliance with Japan in the face of unrelenting resistance by the Okinawan people” against the presence of US marines there, according to Kyle Kajihiro of DMZ Hawaii. What does this sudden announcement mean for the people of Guam and Hawaii? How much will the move cost US taxpayers, and will the minority but growing voices of concern in Washington about unlimited military spending check the planned troop transfer? APF talks with Kyle Kajihiro, as well as Terri Keko’olani of the Hawaii Peace and Justice Center and Cara Flores-Mays of We are Guahan.

Guests

Cara Flores-Mays is an indigenous Chamorro small-business owner specializing in creative media. She is an organizer for the grassroots organization “We Are Guåhan”, which has played a significant role in educating the Guam community about the potential impacts of the proposed military buildup. She provides strategy and resource development for the group’s initiatives, including “Prutehi yan Difendi”, a campaign to increase public awareness and support for a lawsuit against the Department of Defense for which We Are Guåhan was a filing party.

Kyle Kajihiro is a fourth generation Japanese in Hawaiʻi and was born and raised in Honolulu. He has worked on peace and demilitarization issues since 1996, first as staff with the American Friends Service Committee, and now with its successor organization, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice. He writes and speaks about the demilitarization movement in Hawaiʻi and has traveled internationally to build solidarity on these issues. In the past, he has been active in anti-racist/anti-fascist issues, immigrant worker organizing, Central America solidarity, and community mural, radio and video projects.

Terri Keko’olani is a native Hawaiian and sovereignty activist/community organizer with DMZ Hawai’i Aloha Aina and the Hawaii Peace and Justice Center.

Listen to the program by downloading the MP3: http://www.asiapacificforum.org/downloads/audio/APF20120604_743_TheGreatPa.mp3

May 8, 2012

Military rethinking location of Guam Marine base

With the U.S. changing its distribution of troops moving from Okinawa, Hawai’i is expected to get up to 2700 Marines, while Guam will get less than originally projected. USA Today Reported that “Military rethinking location of Guam Marine base” (May 2, 2012):

The federal government is rethinking where to put a Marine base on Guam now that fewer Marines will be moving to the U.S. territory from Okinawa, Japan.

With fewer troops and families to house, a local Marine base could be smaller than previously thought, Joe Ludovici, the executive director of the military’s Joint Guam Program Office, said Wednesday.

New environmental impact reviews will have to be done:

New draft and final environmental impact statements will be released in 2014. A decision on where to put the base and firing range would come the following year.

And the ancient Chamorro village site in Pagat may yet dodge the bullet(s):

The changes could also lead to a new proposed location for a firing range.

Under the new plan, 5,000 Marines and 1,300 dependents will move to Guam. The old plan included 8,600 Marines and as many as 12,000 dependents.

The military had been planning to build the Marine base on about 680 acres of civilian land in Dededo, in northern Guam.

The firing range was to go on the site of an ancient village, Pagat, also in northern Guam. The Navy began reevaluating this idea last year after a lawsuit alleged it had failed to adequately consider other locations that would affect the environment and historical sites less.

December 12, 2011December 13, 2011

Obama Channels Teddy Roosevelt

Last week, President Obama delivered a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the same town where Theodore Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in 1910. New Yorker columnist John Cassidy described this speech as Obama finding his voice and defining his theme for the 2012 election:

This is Obama seeking to define the themes he intends to run on next year, to energize his disillusioned base, and to capitalize on a big change in the political climate. Teddy Roosevelt, whose famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 called upon the three branches of the federal government to put the public welfare before the interests of money and property, merely provided a convenient framing device.

Obama even appropriated the 99% vs 1% language of the Occupy movement.

Edward-Isaac Dovere and Jennifer Epstein wrote in Politico that “Barack Obama channels Teddy Roosevelt”:

Yet the Roosevelt that Obama attached himself to in Osawatomie is the one who unveiled the radical anti-corporate philosophy that broke him from the Republican Party. Roosevelt famously declared, “Our public men must be genuinely progressive.”

However, for those of us who are still struggling to remove the colonial yoke placed upon us by Roosevelt, Obama’s new fondness for Roosevelt is not a positive sign.

Roosevelt held to lifelong beliefs in Aryan supremacy. This ideology informed his outlook on the duty of the U.S. to occupy and “civilize” places like Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, Guam and the Philippines. When he was Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt advocated for the occupation of Hawai’i in order for the U.S. to acquire a military base with which to traverse the Pacific ocean. Steeped in the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner and Capt. Afred Thayer Mahan, Roosevelt sought to win domestic peace and prosperity through an imperialist strategy. It seems that Obama is attempting the same.

Obama’s recent high profile foreign policy ‘pivot’ to the Pacific and emphasis on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement are reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt’s “Imperial Cruise” of 1905. In that year he wrote: “Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe.”

Roosevelt believed that Japanese people were sufficiently similar to Europeans in intelligence and character that they could be considered ‘honorary’ Aryans. He negotiated a secret Taft-Katsura agreement with the Empire of Japan allowing Japan to invade and annex Korea and north eastern China while the U.S. annexed Hawai’i, Guam and the Philippines. Roosevelt’s policy decisions set off a chain of historical events that led to a number of catastrophic consequences, one of them was World War II.

Let’s not be distracted by Obama’s populist rhetoric so that we fail to challenge his imperialist foreign policies that are increasing the level of danger and negative impacts for peoples in the Asia and Pacific region.