Social & Racial Justice

December 8, 2011

Moana Nui 2011 conference videos are online!

Videos of the Moana Nui 2011 conference are now online. Of particular interest for the DMZ-Hawai’i / Aloha ‘Aina site is the panel on Militarization and Resistance in the Pacific.

Walden Bello, keynote speech

NATIVE RIGHTS, ECONOMIES, GOVERNANCE–RESISTING GLOBAL POWERS

Passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), coupled with advancing decolonization movements among Pacific Islands peoples, has altered the political geography of Moana Nui. Nonetheless, Pacific Rim economic powers and multi-national corporations continue to dominate our regions. Global trade negotiations in APEC/TPP bring new dangers, as “economic integration” among powerful nations threatens to crush indigenous and small island peoples’ work toward strengthened control. This panel features key leaders from Oceania who have worked to restore Native peoples’ control and management of local resources and economies. They discuss strategies for defending our rights and resources from exploitation.

Moderator: Jon Osorio (O‘ahu, Hawai‘i) Kamakak‘okalani Center for Hawaiian Studies
Nalani Minton (Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Komike, Hawai‘i)
Santi Hitorangi (Practitioner, Hitorangi Clan, Rapa Nui)
Joshua Cooper – (Hawai‘i) UN Human Rights
Mililani Trask – (Hawai‘i) Vice Chair, General Assembly of Nations, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organizations (UNPO)
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Igorot, Tebtebba Foundation, UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Philippines)
Julian Aguan (Guahan, Guam) Indigenous Chamoru Activist, Attorney, and Author
Public 1,2, Public 3, Public 4-6, Public 7,8

MILITARIZATION & RESISTANCE IN THE PACIFIC

The Pacific basin has been a frequent victim of military domination by global powers, fighting for regional political and economic control. 66 years after the end of World War II hundreds of U.S. military bases still spread from Hawaii across the Pacific to Guam, and many other Pacific islands, with dozens more in South Korea and Japan, and one on Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean), all directed at presumed threats from China. Local peoples are outraged. Popular resistance in Guam, Okinawa-Japan, Jeju Island-South Korea, and elsewhere demands removal of U.S. occupying forces. Similar movements exist in Hawaii, where about 25% of total land area is devoted to military purposes, from nuclear ports to training areas to missile sites.

Moderator: Ikaika Hussey
Poetry: Craig Santos Perez: (Chamorro, poet, author, activist, Guahan, Guam)
Bruce Gagnon: (Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space)
Christine Ahn: (San Francisco, California) Executive Director, Korea Policy Institute; Policy Analyst, Global Fund for Women
Dr.Lisa Natividad: (Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice)
Suzuyo Takazato: (Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence)
Kyle Kajihiro: (O‘ahu, Hawai‘i) Hawai‘i Peace and Justice, DMZ Hawai‘i/Aloha ‘?ina
Mayumi Oda: (Japan/Hawai‘i) Artist/Activist
Public 1, Public 2, Public 3

GLOBALIZATION, DEVELOPMENT & GEOPOLITICS

Economic globalization seeks to homogenize (globalize) diverse regional economies within a unified vision of how we should all live; a vision that suits global corporate purposes, rather than local needs, traditions, visions, cultures, workers and environments. Negotiations like APEC/TPP intend for Pacific Rim and Pacific Island nations to merge within one integrated economic machine. NAFTA of the Pacific! It’s our challenge to learn the full details of what’s at stake, how life will change, how our economies will change—-The role of resource, military, tourist and energy development. What is gained, what is lost? And if we don’t want it, how do we organize to protect ourselves, our lands, resources, and local sovereignties.

Moderator: Jerry Mander (Int’l Forum on Globalization);
Joseph Gerson (American Friends Service Committee);
Dale Wen (IFG China Scholar, Beijing-Hamburg)
Anuradha Mittal (Oakland Institute, India/US);
Adam Wolfenden (Pacific Network on Globalization, PANG, Australia);
Ray Catania (Labor organizer/Hawai‘i Gov’t. Employees Association, Kauai)
Yumi Kikuchi (Peace activist, author, Japan);
Public

PACIFIC RESOURCES, LANDS & ECONOMIES

As elsewhere on Earth, the Pacific faces environmental crises from overdevelopment, resource scarcities, climate change, rising seas, destruction of coral reefs (for military ports and mining), loss of arable soils, and other challenges, threatening local communities. Powerful nations of the Asia-Pacific are fiercely competing for regional resources: oil and gas in Indonesia, fish stocks and minerals from the seas, “rare earths” from China, while diminishing fresh water and agricultural lands are torn between local needs, industrial biotechnology, military dominance, and tourism. Trade and investment negotiations like Apec/TPP further threaten the already tenuous hold of small island nations and peoples on their economic and cultural viability. How do we organize together to resist this and regain control?

Moderator: Arnie Saiki (Coordinator, Moana Nui 2011, and ‘Imi Pono Projects, Hawai‘i);
Peter Apo (Office of Hawaiian Affairs);
Jamie Tanquay (Well-being indicators, Vanuatu )
Galina Angarova (Pacific Environment, Russia/Siberia/Mongolia);
Albie Miles (environmental indicators)
Walter Ritte (Anti GMO/Hawaiian Rights activist, Molokai);
Richard Heinberg (Post Carbon Institute, author The End of Growth)
Public

APEC & TPP: WHAT WE MUST KNOW; WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

Local sovereignty, militarization and colonization, forms of development, control and ultimate ownership of resources, worker rights, investment protocols, energy and resource battles are all implicated in the grand bargain sought by great powers and their corporations. We need to learn every detail of these agreements, and their import. And we need to determine what, exactly, we can do about it.

Moderator: Victor Menotti (International Forum on Globalization);
Jane Kelsey ((Aotearoa/New Zealand)?Prof. of Law, Univ. of Auckland; Author of “TPPA – No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific partnership free Trade Agreement”;
Lori Wallach (Public Citizen, Wash. DC);
Yasuo Konda (People’s Action Against TPP, JAPAN);
Walden Bello (Philippine Legislature, Focus on Global South)
Public 1, Public 2

December 5, 2011December 5, 2011

Senate votes to authorize indefinite detention of U.S. citizens

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted to authorize the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens accused of supporting terrorism without due process. Please take action to demand that President Obama veto this dangerous bill!

Coleen Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent wrote in the Huffington Post:

The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our constitutional republic into a powerful, unaccountable military empire. Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 7 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 which allows the military to operate domestically within the borders of the United States and to possibly (or most probably) detain U.S. citizens without trial. Forget that the ACLU called it “an historic threat to American citizens”, this bill is so dangerous not only to our rights but to our country’s security that it was criticized by the Directors of the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Director and the U.S. Defense Secretary! For the first time in our history, if this Act is not vetoed, American citizens may not be guaranteed their Article III right to trial.

The Atlantic published a highly critical article on its blog:

Is it lawful for the president to order any American held indefinitely as a terrorist, without formal charges, evidence presented in open court, a trial by jury, or a standard of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”? The U.S. Senate had a chance Wednesday to assert that no, a president does not possess that power — that the United States Constitution guarantees due process.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged her colleagues to seize the opportunity. “We as a Congress are being asked, for the first time certainly since I have been in this body, to affirmatively authorize that an American citizen can be picked up and held indefinitely without being charged or tried. That is a very big deal, because in 1971 we passed a law that said you cannot do this. This was after the internment of Japanese-American citizens in World War II,” she said. “What we are talking about here is the right of our government, as specifically authorized in a law by Congress, to say that a citizen of the United States can be arrested and essentially held without trial forever.”

[…]

The U.S. Senate refused to affirm that American citizens arrested in the United States shouldn’t be subject to indefinite military detention on the president’s order. Senator Feinstein’s amendment to that effect went down in defeat with 55 historic votes against it.

Here are the senators who lost, the ones who wanted to protect the rights of U.S. citizens to due process:

[…]

That brings us to the senators who refused to affirm that American citizens should not be held indefinitely. They were led by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin, cosponsors of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011. Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican, spoke against the Feinstein amendment on the Senate floor. “It has been the law of the United States for decades that an American citizen on our soil who collaborates with the enemy has committed an act of war and will be held under the law of war, not domestic criminal law,” he said. “In World War II it was perfectly proper to hold an American citizen as an enemy combatant who helped the Nazis. But we believe, somehow, in 2011, that is no longer fair. That would be wrong. My God, what are we doing in 2011? Do you not think al-Qaeda is trying to recruit people here at home? Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield.”

That quote is important, for Graham is saying that as long as terrorists are trying to recruit on American soil, our homeland is a battlefield. That means a perpetual state of war. Here are the senators who refuse to affirm that American citizens retain the right to due process during this war that is supposedly being waged everywhere on earth and that has no foreseeable end in sight:

Hawaiʻi residents should pay special attention. Senator Inouye (D-HI), a person of Japanese ancestry, whose own people were unjustly interned in concentration camps during World War II simply for being Japanese, voted to maintain the indefinite detention provision of the bill.

Please take action to demand that President Obama veto this dangerous bill!

July 8, 2011

The Invisible Army: trafficked humans make the war machine go

Sarah Stillman wrote an excellent article in the New Yorker about the “invisible army” of foreign workers or “third-country nationals” (TCNs) staffing U.S. military bases in war zones. She reports that “armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands.” These TCNs tell horrific tales of abuse and exploitation, but also of resistance. Trafficked humans and modern slavery make the war machine go. Here are some excerpts from the article:

The Invisible Army

For foreign workers on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, war can be hell.

by Sarah Stillman June 6, 2011

More than seventy thousand “third-country nationals” work for the American military in war zones; many report being held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by subcontractors who operate outside the law.

The article follows two Fijian women who were recruited to work in Dubai. They were tricked and found themselves working for the U.S. military bases in Iraq:

Soon, more than fifty women were lined up outside Meridian’s office to compete for positions that would pay as much as thirty-eight hundred dollars a month—more than ten times Fiji’s annual per-capita income. Ten women were chosen, Vinnie and Lydia among them. Vinnie lifted her arms in the air and sang her favorite gospel song: “We’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it. With Jesus on our side, things will work out fine.” Lydia raced home to tell her husband and explain things to her five-year-old son. “Mommy’s going to be O.K.,” she recalls telling him. “Dubai, it’s a rich country. Only good things can happen.”

On the morning of October 10, 2007, the beauticians boarded their flight to the Emirates. They carried duffelbags full of cosmetics, family photographs, Bibles, floral sarongs, and chambas, traditional silky Fijian tops worn with patterned skirts. More than half of the women left husbands and children behind. In the rush to depart, none of them examined the fine print on their travel documents: their visas to the Emirates weren’t employment permits but thirty-day travel passes that forbade all work, “paid or unpaid”; their occupations were listed as “Sales Coördinator.” And Dubai was just a stopping-off point. They were bound for U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Lydia and Vinnie were unwitting recruits for the Pentagon’s invisible army: more than seventy thousand cooks, cleaners, construction workers, fast-food clerks, electricians, and beauticians from the world’s poorest countries who service U.S. military logistics contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Filipinos launder soldiers’ uniforms, Kenyans truck frozen steaks and inflatable tents, Bosnians repair electrical grids, and Indians provide iced mocha lattes. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is behind most of the commercial “tastes of home” that can be found on major U.S. bases, which include jewelry stores, souvenir shops filled with carved camels and Taliban chess sets, beauty salons where soldiers can receive massages and pedicures, and fast-food courts featuring Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Cinnabon. (AAFES’s motto: “We go where you go.”)

The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls, and host dance parties featuring Nepalese romance ballads and Ugandan church songs. A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.

The wars’ foreign workers are known, in military parlance, as “third-country nationals,” or T.C.N.s. Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses. Previously unreleased contractor memos, hundreds of interviews, and government documents I obtained during a yearlong investigation confirm many of these claims and reveal other grounds for concern. Widespread mistreatment even led to a series of food riots in Pentagon subcontractor camps, some involving more than a thousand workers.

Amid the slow withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, T.C.N.s have become an integral part of the Obama Administration’s long-term strategy, as a way of replacing American boots on the ground. But top U.S. military officials are seeing the drawbacks to this outsourcing bonanza. Some argue, as retired General Stanley McChrystal did before his ouster from Afghanistan, last summer, that the unregulated rise of the Pentagon’s Third World logistics army is undermining American military objectives. Others worry that mistreatment of foreign workers has become, as the former U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, who co-chairs the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting, describes it, “a human-rights abuse that cannot be tolerated.”

The women working in these bases are often sexually assaulted:

Late one night in early April, 2008, I knocked on the door of Lydia and Vinnie’s shipping container to find Lydia curled up on the floor, knees to chest, chin to knees, crying. Vinnie told me, after some hesitation, that a supervisor had “had his way with” Lydia. According to the two women’s tearful account, non-consensual sex had become a regular feature of Lydia’s life. They said the man would taunt Lydia, calling her a “fucking bitch” and describing the various acts he would like to see her perform. Lydia trembled, her normally confident figure crumpled inward. “If he comes tonight, you have to scream,” Vinnie told Lydia, tapping her fist against the aluminum siding of the shipping container. “Bang on this wall here and scream!”

The next day, I dialled the U.S. Army’s emergency sexual-assault hot line, printed on a pamphlet distributed across the base that read, “Stand Up Against Sexual Assault . . . Make a Difference.” Nobody answered. Despite several calls over several days, the number simply rang and rang. (A U.S. Central Command spokesman, when later reached for comment, noted, “We do track and investigate any report of criminal activity that occurs on our military bases.”)

“Treat others how you want to be treated” The abuses of human rights have grown so egregious that workers uprisings have sprung up and spread:

In the three years since Vinnie and Lydia returned from Iraq, thousands of third-country nationals have tried to make their grievances known, sometimes spectacularly. Previously unreported worker riots have erupted on U.S. bases over issues such as lack of food and unpaid wages. On May 1, 2010, in a labor camp run by Prime Projects International (P.P.I.) on the largest military base in Baghdad, more than a thousand subcontractors—primarily Indians and Nepalis—rampaged, using as weapons fists, stones, wooden bats, and, as one U.S. military policeman put it, “anything they could find.”

The riot started as a protest over a lack of food, according to a whippet-thin worker in the camp named Subramanian. A forty-five-year-old former rice farmer from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Subramanian worked twelve-hour days cleaning the military’s fast-food court. Around seven o’clock on the evening of the riot, Subramanian returned to the P.P.I. compound and lined up for dinner with several thousand other workers. But the cooks ran out of food, with at least five hundred left to feed. This wasn’t the first time; empty plates had become common in the camp during the past year. Several of the men stormed over to the management’s office, demanding more rice. When management refused, he recalls, dozens more entered the fray, then hundreds, and ultimately more than a thousand. Employees started to throw gravel at the managers. Four-foot pieces of plywood crashed through glass windows. Workers broke down the door to the food cellar and made off with as much as they could carry.

The riot spread through the vast camp. At one point, as many as fourteen hundred men were smashing office windows, hurling stones, destroying computers, raiding company files, and battering the entrance to the camp where a large blue-and-white sign reads “Treat others how you want to be treated. . . . No damaging P.P.I. property that has been built for your comfort.” (According to an investigation conducted by K.B.R., “P.P.I. employees . . . became agitated after being told they’d experience a delay while additional food was prepared.” “Upon full assessment of the incident,” a company spokesperson relayed in a written statement, “K.B.R. notified P.P.I. management of the need for changes to prevent any recurrence and worked with the subcontractor to implement those corrective actions.”)

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 17, 2011

U.S. backs Saudi military intervention in Bahrain

The U.S. has a keen interest in suppressing the popular uprising in the tiny Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain. Since WWII, the U.S. has stationed its 5th Fleet in Bahrain and has propped up the ruling family, which is Sunni and allied with Saudi Arabia. But the Bahraini population has traditionally been Shia and aligned with Iran. Seeing the uprising against the ruling family as Iranian influenced, the U.S. has given tacit support to Saudi military intervention and violent repression of the protests. Here is a recent report from Russia Today:

Rhetoric Versus Reality: US Involvement in Bahrain

by grtv

While NATO continues bombarding Libya, they have quite a different approach with other countries–take for instance Bahrain. The country’s crown prince was in Washington DC last week and made a statement at a briefing with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “We are committed to changes and to find out ways to closer work with the US. We are a very important ally to the US,” said the prince.

Clinton expressed support for Bahrain, stressing it was a very important for the US. While they were talking about reforms, however, dialogue out of Bahrain shows that that is very far from the case overseas.

Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Center for Research on Globalization, joins RT to talk about the matter.

Bahrain is a very interesting place with a tortured history of invasion and conquest spanning millennia. But this history has made the people and culture quite diverse, cosmopolitan and tolerant. There are many parallels that remind me of Hawai’i. The name Bahrain, like Kailua, means “Two Seas”. The pearl industry was a major industry in Bahrain as it was in Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa (Pearl Harbor) during the early-1800s. Like Hawai’i, Bahrain is strategically located, making it a coveted location for a military base and a prime target for war between competing powers. Like Hawai’i, “prosperity” and “modernization” has meant the destruction of the environment and loss of traditional ways of living.

In his article “Bahrain: U.S. Backs Saudi Military Intervention, Conflict With Iran” March 16, 2011, Rick Rozoff describes the U.S. interests in Bahrain:

That Saudi military forces entered Bahrain two days after Secretary Gates left would lead any sensible person to draw the conclusion that the Pentagon chief had discussed more than Iran and Libya with the kingdom’s top two government and defense officials. Though discussions on Iran would not have been unrelated to those concerning a U.S.-backed deployment of Saudi and other Gulf Cooperation Council forces to Bahrain, as some 70-75 percent of Bahrain’s population is Shi’a Muslim by way of confessional background although the ruling family is Sunni.

A Bahraini protester quoted by Reuters on March 15 commented on the Saudi-led military incursion this way: “It’s part of a regional plan and they’re fighting on our (land). If the Americans were men they would go and fight Iran directly but not in our country.”

The U.S. Fifth Fleet, one of six used by Washington to patrol the world’s seas and oceans, is headquartered near Manama, where between 4,000-6,000 American military personnel are stationed. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, U.S. military partners but not hosts of American bases, Bahrain is vital to U.S. international military and energy strategy, and allowing a doctrinal affinity to in any manner augment Iran’s influence in its Persian Gulf neighbor is anathema to the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

The Fifth Fleet’s area of responsibility encompasses 2.5 million square miles of water, including the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean as far south as Kenya. [4] Aircraft carriers, destroyers and other warships are assigned to it on a rotational basis and the fleet is the naval component of U.S. Central Command, sharing a commander and headquarters in Bahrain with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Central Command’s purview stretches from Egypt in the west to Kazakhstan, bordering Russia and China, in the east.

The Fifth Fleet has approximately 30,000 personnel stationed across the region.

The geopolitical importance of Bahrain was demonstrated when the U.S.’s top military officer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, visited several nations in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa last month: Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Djibouti and Kuwait, with a last-minute stop in Bahrain not listed on his itinerary.

[…]

The day after Saudi and Emirati military forces arrived in Bahrain, several thousand protesters descended on the Saudi embassy to demonstrate their opposition to the intervention. As the Reuters news agency reported, “Bahrainis are concerned that their tiny island could become a proxy battleground for a wider stand-off between the Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab countries, all U.S. allies, and Shi’ite-ruled Iran, a U.S. foe.”

In March, when troops fired on peaceful demonstrators, commentator George Galloway discussed “War on Libya, Saudi Arabian Invasion of Bahrain”:

April 28, 2011

Army violated Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations regarding Depleted Uranium

The Army appears to have violated Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations by conducting activities to remove and disturb depleted uranium contamination in the Schofield Range on O’ahu. A letter from the NRC to Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, dated 4/5/11 “APPARENT VIOLATION OF U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION REGULATIONS AND REQUEST FOR PREDECISIONAL ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE” states:

On March 4, 2010, a resident of Hawaii filed a request with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to take enforcement action against the Army if the NRC found that the Army had possessed or released depleted uranium (DU) to the environment without a license. The NRC reviewed this request pursuant to 10 CFR § 2.206, the process by which an individual may petition the NRC to take an enforcement action.

Based on the NRC’s review of the information in its possession, it appears that the Army is in violation of 10 CFR § 40.3, “License Requirements,” in that it appears that the Army is in possession of DU at multiple installations without proper NRC authorization in the form of a specific or general license issued by the NRC. It also appears that the Army performed decommissioning activities at the Schofield Barracks installation without NRC authorization.

As a result:

The described apparent violation is being considered for escalated enforcement action in accordance with the NRC Enforcement Policy.

A “Predecisional Enforcement Conference” will be held on May 10th, which the public may observe by toll free number and online:

The NRC will be holding a Predecisional Enforcement Conference with the US Army Installation Management Command on Tuesday May 10, 2011 at 2:00 pm CST in the NRC’s Regional office in Arlington, Texas. The purpose of the Predecisional Enforcement Conference is to discuss apparent violations of NRC requirements involving possession of source material (depleted uranium from Davy Crockett spotting rounds) without a license.

The public is invited to observe this meeting and will have one or more opportunities to communicate with the NRC after the business portion, but before the meeting is adjourned.

Interested members of the public can participate in this meeting via a toll-free teleconference and view presentations via a website. For details, please contact the individuals listed in the attached Meeting Notice. The Meeting Notice is also available at the NRC’s website at: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/public-meetings/index.cfm

Below are a series of email correspondence between Cory Harden and the NRC.

>><<

From: prvs=092cb6278=Dominick.Orlando@nrc.gov [mailto:prvs=092cb6278=Dominick.Orlando@nrc.gov] On Behalf Of Orlando, Dominick
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 11:45 PM
To: Cory (Martha) Harden
Cc: Michalak, Paul
Subject: RE: Predecisional Enforcement Conference with US Army IMCOM

Ms. Hardin

Attached is the letter to the Army regarding the apparent violation. I think this would be the most useful for your review as it will be the basis for the discussion during the Predecisional Enforcement Conference.

Dominick Orlando

From: Cory (Martha) Harden [mailto:mh@interpac.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 4:42 AM
To: Orlando, Dominick
Subject: RE: Predecisional Enforcement Conference with US Army IMCOM

Hello Dominick Orlando,

Thank you for the notice. Can you recommend any documents on ADAMS that would be good to read beforehand? Amy ML numbers you have would be helpful.

Thank you,

Cory Harden
PO Box 10265
Hilo, Occupied Hawai’i 96721
808-968-8965
mh@interpac.net

From: prvs=0909e5355=Dominick.Orlando@nrc.gov [mailto:prvs=0909e5355=Dominick.Orlando@nrc.gov] On Behalf Of Orlando, Dominick
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 7:46 AM
To: mh@interpac.net; panghi@hawaii.rr.com; Geomike5@att.net; imua-hawaii@hawaii.rr.com; ja@interpac.net; lanny.sinkin@gmail.com; Honerlah, Hans B NAB02; russell.takata@doh.hawaii.gov
Cc: Michalak, Paul; Burgess, Michele; McConnell, Keith; Summers, Robert; McIntyre, David; Klukan, Brett; Sexton, Kimberly; Joustra, Judith; Roberts, Mark; Lipa, Christine; LaFranzo, Michael; Rodriguez, Lionel; Spitzberg, Blair; Evans, Robert; Schlapper, Gerald; robert.cherry@us.army.mil
Subject: Predecisional Enforcement Conference with US Army IMCOM

Good Morning

The public is invited to observe this meeting and will have one or more opportunities to communicate with the NRC after the business portion, but before the meeting is adjourned.

Thank you

Dominick Orlando, Senior Project Manager
Special Projects Branch
Decommissioning and Uranium Recovery Licensing Directorate
Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection
__._,_.___

Attachment(s) from Cory (Martha) Harden
1 of 1 File(s)
ARMYPEC.pdf

November 15, 2010

Court Denies Hawaii’s Request for Dismissal of Suit against Basic Health Hawaii

As Yokwe Online reports, U.S. District Court Judge Seabright denied the State of Hawai’i motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought by Hawai’i residents from the Compact of Free Association (COFA) countries of Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of Palau. The State of Hawai’i cut off health insurance for these residents and instituted a lesser insurance program called Basic Health Hawai’i. This new plan does not cover many of the critical services needed by Micronesian islanders in Hawai’i, many of whom are refugees of U.S. nuclear testing in their home islands or of the intentional economic and social underdevelopment of their islands during the U.S. strategic trust rule over Micronesia. The COFA residents’ lawsuit seeks to restore equal health benefits as provided to other Hawai’i residents.

While the United Nations mandated decolonization for all colonies under UN trusteeship in the aftermath of World War II, Micronesia was a special case under the “strategic trust” of the U.S. Essentially, Micronesia was treated as spoils of war. U.S. military and civilian planners debated how to administer the islands and fulfill the mandate to assist the islands in their process of self-determination. The U.S. wanted to maintain a permanent military presence in Micronesia and Okinawa to maintain hegemony over the Northern Pacific Ocean – the American Lake.

Seabright’s rejection of the State of Hawai’i’s motion to dismiss the COFA lawsuit is a good sign that at least the COFA residents of Hawai’i will get their day in court. Unfortunately the hearing will be too late for the 27 people who have died since September 1, 2009 as a result of being denied critical care.

>><<

Source: http://www.yokwe.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2706

Court Denies Hawaii’s Request for Dismissal of Suit against Basic Health Hawaii

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ruled yesterday to deny the State of Hawaii’s motion to dismiss a class-action suit on behalf of migrants from the Compact of Free Association (COFA) countries of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of Palau.

Earlier this year, the COFA citizens residing in Hawaii filed the class action suit against the State’s Department of Human Services (DHS) officials, challenging the new Basic Health Hawaii (BHH) program which reduces the benefits and services previously provided to critically-ill dialysis and cancer patients.

HAWAII DISTRICT COURT: Order Denying Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim upon Which Relief May be Granted as to COFA Residents

The suit was filed on behalf of the over 7,000 Marshallese, Micronesians,and Palauns who are eligible for the State’s health program.

The Plaintiffs claim, in Korab et al v. Koller et al, filed August 23, 2010, in Hawaii District Court, that the BHH violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it provides less health benefits than the State of Hawaii’s (the “State”) Medicaid program offered to citizens and certain qualified.

It also claims a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”) because BHH is not administered in the most integrated setting appropriate to meet the medical needs of this specific population.

At a hearing on November 2 in regard to Hawaii’s request for dismissal, Judge Seabright said he was struggling over the case. Micronesian community representatives reported that elimination of medical benefits has impacted many, including 27 who have died since Sept. 1, 2009.

The new ruling rejects the State’s characterization of their actions “as simply creating a brand new benefits program where one did not exist.”

The Court stated in the November 10 decision:

For the last fourteen years Defendants have provided COFA Residents the same benefits as those provided to citizens and other qualified aliens, creating a unified program treating citizens, qualified aliens, and non-qualified aliens the same, regardless of federal funding. Accordingly, the issue is not whether a state must create a benefits program for certain groups of individuals where no program exists, but rather where a program involving state funding already exists, whether a state may then exclude certain groups from that program based on alienage.

The Court also said that the Plaintiff’s assertion, regarding BHH’s limitation of benefits requiring them to seek care in a hospital setting, “may be sufficient to state a claim for violation of the ADA.”

– by Aenet Rowa, Yokwe Online, November 11, 2010

September 12, 2010

Peace Crimes

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

John F. Kennedy, 1962

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Source: http://www.truth-out.org/peace-crimes62612

Peace Crimes

Sunday 12 September 2010

by: Diane Lefer, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Hector Aristizábal lay on a table in Medellin, Colombia, his head covered with a black cloth. Twenty-eight years had passed since he was taken from his home by the US-trained military, secretly detained and tortured. Now, he had returned to his birthplace after years in exile in the US to spend a month working with peace and justice groups, and this night he was not in custody, but on stage. “Nightwind,” the play we created in 2004 about his experience and his brother’s abduction, torture and murder by a death squad, has toured the US and the world, including Afghanistan, to raise global opposition to the practice of torture. Performing it for the first time in Medellin, the city where the atrocities took place, Hector was nervous. He worried about the effect on the audience, people who had experienced these horrors first hand, but as he lay with his eyes covered, unable to see, he also felt vulnerable and worried for himself. Every day in Colombia, 20 people are disappeared. Massacres continue, as do right-wing paramilitary links to the Army and to high government officials and to the cocaine trade. Anyone could be in the audience – members of the military or paramilitary, that go on killing with impunity, and any one of them might decide, “This guy thinks he’s going to survive again. Not this time. Let’s finish the job.” Hector believed for the moment he was going to die.

While Hector was sweating it out on stage, I was back in Los Angeles and I was worried, too, because I was reading the text of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, in which the Supreme Court on June 24 decided that training people in nonviolent conflict resolution and international human rights law can lead to 15 years in a federal prison for providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The case was brought because retired administrative law Judge Ralph Fertig wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be prosecuted under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the later provisions of the Patriot Act for continuing his longstanding work in nonviolence with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and in helping that group prepare a case to bring to the United Nations. The Carter Center joined with an amicus brief as much of Jimmy Carter’s work in monitoring elections and entering conflict zones could be ruled criminal. Court after court agreed Judge Fertig’s work was legitimate and protected, but the Obama administration appealed, with Elena Kagan (then solicitor general) offering the argument. The Roberts court once more managed to ignore the Constitution and at the same time overreach. According to Judge Fertig, who spoke to the American Civil Liberties Union in Santa Monica in July, the chief justice chastised Kagan for not arguing the case strenuously enough. The decision went even further than the government’s argument sought in its chilling effect on free association and speech.

In Medellin, I guess it is material support for terrorism when to enter the poorest, most marginalized neighborhoods bus drivers and taxi drivers are forced to pay a “vacuna” – vaccination against getting killed – to the illegal paramilitaries who seek to control who gets in and who gets out alive. Thanks to the Supreme Court, zones where peacemaking is most needed are now off limits. As Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrant rights and national security for the ACLU of Southern California, has pointed out, if the decision in Holder v. HLP had come down in 2004, the provision of disaster relief to tsunami-devastated civilians in the Tamil Tiger-controlled region of Sri Lanka would have been a crime.

I sat with the decision in my hands and thought about Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who intends to introduce a legislative fix, and will no doubt endure a continuation of the personal attacks on him and his Muslim faith.

I thought a good argument can be made (by me, not by the Roberts court) that the US government’s real fear is not of terrorists, but of the “interference” of citizen diplomacy and humanitarian NGOs that provide alternatives to the default military response in conflict zones.

I thought that, as a US taxpayer, I’ve provided material support to state-sponsored terrorism and torture.

I thought of the “Nightwind” performance and discussion Hector and I offered in Los Angeles at a mosque that has been under attack because it was built with Saudi support, and two of the 9/11 hijackers at one time worshiped there. Were there any radical Islamists present? I doubt it, but I rather hope so. What a perfect audience for us to reach with a play that shows a torture survivor ultimately refusing the option of violence.

I thought of the work Hector has done on the West Bank to bring Israeli rabbinical students and Palestinian activists together. Did he first screen the participants to make sure there was no link to Hamas? I don’t think so.

I thought about how tired I am of hearing the Palestinian people blamed for not having produced a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Gandhi. In 1983, clinical psychologist Mubarak Awad established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Five years later, when his work training people in the philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience was having an effect and showing success, an alarmed Israeli government had him deported from the occupied territories.

Meanwhile, in Medellin, the performance continued as Hector carried the audience with him through his pain, his desire for violent revenge and his transformation of that passion and energy into the commitment to work peacefully for justice.

The performance ended, but not the experience. Trained as a psychologist as well as an actor and director, Hector had audience members join him in a workshop he designed to allow them to express their emotions and release pain. People cried, screamed, remembered friends and family members who had been killed or disappeared.

“We need this,” said one of the event organizers. “All of us need healing but the programs we have here now bring together paramilitaries (from the AUC, designated by the US a foreign terrorist organization) and guerrillas (including from the FARC, designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization) and we ask people to tell their terrible stories. Then everyone goes home devastated. They go home alone.”

If you reopen the wound, you have to offer medicine. We want to return to Colombia next year to offer medicine, but if we do that, are we facing criminal prosecution when we return home?

As Hector says in our book, “The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism and Transformation,” “I like to think the work I do now is preparing me to go back to Colombia one day and sit in the same room with a worker, a peasant, a military person whose institution tortured me, a paramilitary like the ones who killed my brother, a guerrilla who would probably want to kill me because of how I criticized his movement and a CEO from a big company that I’ve called evil and we will talk about how we can all work together to rebuild our country.” I guess that makes Hector a terrorist.

I guess governments have figured out it’s easy to justify violence against a violent opponent and a terrorist is, therefore, the preferred adversary. Especially when the terrorist is the nonperson we must treat as radioactive and never talk to.

To governments like our own in thrall to the military-industrial complex and the illusion of military victory and the desire for top-down control, there’s only one reason nonviolent mass movements pose a threat: They work.

Diane Lefer is an author, playwright and activist whose books include “The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism and Transformation” (Lantern Books, 2010), co-authored with Colombian exile Hector Aristizábal and the short-story collection “California Transit” (Sarabande Books, 2007), which received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. She is a frequent contributor of articles to LA Progressive.

August 25, 2010

Suit seeks restored health benefits for Pacific migrants

The Honolulu Star Advertiser reports that Pacific islanders from nations that have Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with the U.S. living in Hawai’i are suing to restore health care benefits for these Micronesian residents who need critical care that would be denied under the separate and unequal “Basic Health Hawaii” plan created for COFA residents. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of creating an unequal health benefit for this group. The article reports that the COFA islanders have a unique status within the U.S.:

Basic Health Hawaii, which went into effect in July, is a reduced benefits package created mostly for Compact of Free Association migrants. Residents of the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Marshall Islands and Palau can travel freely in the U.S. due to a 1986 federal agreement. In turn, the island nations gave the U.S. strategic military rights.

The federal government reimburses those states and territories most affected by migrants from the COFA islands for some of the cost of health, education and social services:

Under the Compact of Free Association, Hawaii, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa share $30 million in funding to alleviate the burden the migrants may place on health, educational, social or public-sector services.

Guam has the largest share of the pot, with $16.8 million. Hawaii has $11.2 million, all dedicated to “supplement state funds to support indigent health care,” according to the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs.

That is not enough for the state, which spends up to $50 million a year on medical assistance for migrants, said state Human Services Director Lillian Koller during a July interview with the Star-Advertiser, after the plan went into effect. The state spends about $130 million a year on total public services to migrants.

What’s not mentioned is that many of the Micronesians in Hawai’i are survivors of the 67 nuclear and atomic tests conducted by the U.S. in the Marshall Islands and are suffering the effects of those blasts. Furthermore, few people understand that the U.S. intentionally stunted the development of the Micronesian island states in order to keep them dependent and loyal to the U.S. in the post-WWII period. The entire north Pacific is a U.S. colony in that sense.

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Source: http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20100824_Suit_seeks_restored_health_benefits_for_Pacific_migrants.html

Suit seeks restored health benefits for Pacific migrants

By Gene Park

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Aug 24, 2010

Dialysis patient Manuel Sound needs 11 prescriptions for medication. Each month, he’s able to fill four.

He’s grateful that he’s allowed dialysis care under the recent Basic Health Hawaii plan, a state-funded plan that has been reduced after a compromise with the community it is targeted for: Compact of Free Association migrants. But it still limits his care.

“I need medication for high blood pressure. I need medication for cholesterol. I need medication for diabetes,” said the 70-year-old Kalihi resident, who moved to Hawaii from Chuuk eight years ago. “I have to talk to my doctor about cutting down on the medication, because sooner or later I won’t be able to afford it anymore.”

A class-action federal lawsuit was filed yesterday in an attempt to restore health benefits to Sound and about 7,500 Pacific island migrants in Hawaii.

The state had initial plans for bigger cuts to benefits, including not covering lifesaving dialysis and chemotherapy treatments. A federal lawsuit from the migrant community, of which Sound was a main plaintiff, forced the state back to the drawing board.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on the state’s previous plan. Chemotherapy is now provided as part of the drug benefits in the current plan, while dialysis will be covered as a federally funded emergency service.

THE CRUX of the new lawsuit’s argument questions the constitutionality of providing inferior benefits due to immigrant status and duration of U.S. residency. The suit also alleges a violation of the American with Disabilities Act in that it forces migrants with disabilities to seek care in a hospital setting. It was filed by Lawyers for Equal Justice and firms Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing and Bronster Hoshibata.

“The state of Hawaii may not discriminate on the basis of national origin,” said Margery Bronster, a partner with Bronster Hoshibata and former state attorney general. “Once the U.S. government allowed COFA residents free access to the U.S., no state could limit those rights.”

State human services officials had not seen the lawsuit as of yesterday afternoon. Department of Human Services spokeswoman Toni Schwartz said officials will read the complaint before issuing any statements.

“There was no serious effort made to try to help Hawaii deal with this burden for so many years,” Koller said. “The little bit we get now doesn’t even come close to what the costs are. It shows a real lack of political will.”

Without the reduced benefits plan, which would save the state up to $15 million a year, layoffs and program cuts could occur, Koller said. The benefits should be funded in full by the federal government, she said.

“We are doing the best we can. We do care about all people who live here,” Koller said, “but we have not been able to garner the help we need to offer what these people deserve.”

Koller and Gov. Linda Lingle have made numerous requests for more funding, to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka.

“Many of these migrants arrive with health conditions that require costly and extensive treatment,” Lingle wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in February. “They also arrive without adequate financial resources and without enough education or training to help them in obtaining employment. … The compact clearly provides that ‘it is not the intent of Congress to cause any adverse consequences for an affected jurisdiction.'”

Hawaii’s congressional delegation did gain the potential to bring in a so-called disproportionate- share allowance to local hospitals. The allowance is $2.5 million per quarter through December 2011.

“They have secured some significant federal resources to pay for uncompensated care provided in Hawaii hospitals that could be used to provide services for compact migrants,” said Inouye’s spokesman, Peter Boylan. “However, the state needs to release the necessary matching resources.”

BASIC HEALTH HAWAII

The Basic Health Hawaii plan, administered by AlohaCare, Hawaii Medical Service Association and Kaiser Permanente, offers four medications a month, including brand-name chemotherapy drugs, and provides the following annually:

» Twelve outpatient doctor visits

» Ten hospital days

» Six mental health visits

» Three procedures

» Emergency dental and medical care, including kidney dialysis