Showing posts with label Nuclear free and Independant Pacific. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear free and Independant Pacific. Show all posts
7/13/09
Voices from the frontline: Pacific Islands speakers tour
During July hear first hand accounts of the impacts of climate change on our Pacific neighbours. Oxfam and Greenpeace have combined to bring local leaders from the Pacific nations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) to Australia for a series of public meetings.
"The future of Kiribati is in our hands - we work very hard each year to support and help students to be successsful. But what is the future of our children when our country is being threatened by global warming?"
– Pelenise Alofa Pilitati, a speaker on the tour from Kiribati
All three of these low-lying island states are in grave danger from climate change. Sea level rise, tidal surges, salination of crops and fresh water, coral bleaching and loss of fisheries are already affecting these countries. Some Pacific islanders have also been forced to relocate because of climate change.
The realities of climate change in the Pacific underscore the urgent need for a global agreement on climate change. It is not too late to ensure that the Pacific has a future. To do this the Australian government must take strong action and commit to cut greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2020. To assist the Pacific and other developing nations to deal with the unavoidable effects of climate change the Australian government must commit to pay our fair share into a UN fund to assist developing nations cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
Dates and Venues
Sydney
When: Thursday 23 July, 7 – 8.30pm (registration from 6.30pm)
Where: Mitchell Theatre, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt St, Sydney
Speakers: Reverend Tafue Lusama and Pelenise Alofa Pilitati
Brisbane
When: Tuesday 28 July, 6.30 – 8 pm (registration from 6pm)
Where: Brisbane City Hall, Brisbane Room
Speakers: Marstella Jack, Reverend Tafue Lusama, Pelenise Alofa Pilitati, Sam Reuben (Torres Strait Islands) and John Kris (Chair, Torres Strait Regional Authority)
Melbourne
When: Thursday 30 July, 6.30 – 8pm
Where: Melbourne Town Hall, Supper Room
Speakers: Marstella Jack, Reverend Tafue Lusama and Pelenise Alofa Pilitati
Cairns
When: Sunday 2 August, 4 - 5.30pm
Where: TBC
Other climate change talks
Solving the Climate Crisis Talk
When: Saturday, 25th July, 1pm
Where: Theatre G, Australian Museum, 6 College St, Sydney
Speakers: John Hepburn and Pelenise Alofa Pilitati
The talk is free with general entry to the Museum. General entry is $12 (adults) and $8 (concession).
The Perfect Storm - Australia's role in dealing with the triple crunch of the global financial crisis, climate change and rising food prices
ALP Conference Forum by Oxfam Australia and the Centre for Policy Development
When: Friday 31 July, 6 – 7.30pm
Where: Sussex Room, Crowne Plaza, 150 Day Street, Darling Harbour, Sydney
Speakers: Sharan Burrow, Andrew Hewett, Reverend Tafue Lusama, Ian Dunlop and Ben McNeil
The speakers
Pelenise Alofa Pilitati - Chairperson Church Education Director's Association in Kiribati (CEDAK), Managing Director, Kauaoki Foundation Enterprise, Kiribati
Pelenise says that climate change is about survival for the people of Kiribati. "The future of Kiribati is in our hands - we work very hard each year to support and help students to be successsful. But what is the future of our children when our country is being threatened by global warming?"
Reverend Tafue Lusama - Chairperson Tuvula Climate Action Network, Program Secretary Church of Tuvalu Dept Peace and Justice, Pastor, Christian Church of Tuvalu.
Tuvalu has already seen significant internal relocation of citizens as a result of climate change and could be the first nation in the world to disappear because of rising sea levels. Reverend Tafue is a compelling advocate for action on climate change.
Marstella Jack - Former Attorney General, Federated States of Micronesia
Marstella has recently returned from the United Nations Intersessional meeting on climate change that took place in Bonn. She is acutely aware of why these global negotiations are so important for Pacific nations.
How you can help
source: http://www.oxfam.org.au/We hope that these series of community forums will generate enough public support and media interests, leading up to the Pacific Islands Heads of Government Meeting in Cairns (Australia) in August, 2009.
Please forward this to your friends and networks.
Thank you for your support
4/21/08
Hawaii Needs You
An open letter to the US left from the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
The confluence of two forces--a massive military expansion in Hawai'i and Congressional legislation that will stymie the Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiian] sovereignty movement--will expand and consolidate the use of Hawai'i for US empire. We are calling on the US left to join our movement opposing these threats and to add our quest for independence as a plank of the broad US left strategy for a nonimperialist America. If you support peace and justice for the United States and the world, please support demilitarization and independence for Hawai'i.
Since 1893, the United States has malformed Hawai'i into the command and control center for US imperialism in Oceania and Asia. From the hills of the Ewa district of O'ahu, the US Pacific Command--the largest of the unified military commands--directs troops and hardware throughout literally half the planet. Since the late nineteenth century, the US military has multiplied in our islands, taking 150,000 acres for its use, including one-quarter of the metropolitan island of O'ahu. Moreover, the National Security Administration is building a new surveillance facility nearby, not far from where urban assault brigades, called Strykers, will train for deployment throughout the world. The US Navy is also increasing training over the entire archipelago, including populated areas and the fragile northwestern whale sanctuary. This militarized occupation has a long history. Ke Awalau o Pu'uloa--known now as Pearl Harbor--became one of the very first overseas bases, along with Guantánamo, around the time of the Spanish-American War. We still hold much in common with prerevolution Cuba--a sugar plantation economy and status as the playground for the rich of North America.
We have suffered from the effects of being the pawn for US wars on the world. Our family members languish from strange diseases brought by military toxins in our water and soil. Our economy is a foreign-run modern plantation serving multinational shareholders and decorated generals. We salute a foreign flag, and the education system instructs us to yearn for a distant continent called the Mainland. Tourists imbibe in sunny Waīkikī, while the beaches in the native-inhabited regions are littered with chemical munitions.
But amid our suffering, we have survived. Our tenacity and resilience have historical roots: in 1897, 95 percent of the Kanaka Maoli population signed petitions that helped to defeat a treaty to forcibly annex Hawai'i to the United States.
The last forty years have seen remarkable change for our people, through the advancement of a grassroots struggle against the political occupation and mental colonization of our homeland. We have been successful in several campaigns: in stopping the bombing of Kaho'olawe Island and Makua Valley, in revitalizing the Hawaiian language and culture in our schools and families, in returning to our indigenous spiritual practices and in making Hawaiian sovereignty a dinner-table topic and an actual possibility. These hard-fought wins are successes in the movement for self-determination and also a threat to America's use of Hawai'i as the purveyor of its empire.
It is against this backdrop that the Akaka bill (the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act) is being discussed in the halls of Congress. Named for US Senator Daniel Akaka, the bill is being promoted by Hawai'i's corporate and political elite as a vehicle for racial justice. Yet the bill would turn back one of the most important victories of the last four decades--the rise of Hawaiian self-determination, including independence, as a political possibility--replacing it with the extinguishment of our historic claims to land and sovereignty.
Our conundrum puts us squarely in opposition to the middle ground of American politics, which has arrived at a consensus that Hawai'i will remain a military colony of the United States. Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye is a major purveyor of pork barrel spending for military appropriations and defense contractors. All three presidential contenders have signaled their support for the Akaka bill. And while the far right wing of the Republican Party opposes the Akaka bill, both major parties have no quarrel over the continuance of the empire's use of our homeland.
In light of this American consensus on Hawai'i, we turn to our nearest political allies, US progressive movements, and seek your solidarity for our independence because it is congruent and essential to your hope for a better world. Please join us in opposing the Akaka bill and the militarization of Hawai'i, and please support Hawai'i's independence as part of your vision for a more humane United States and a more just world.
Ikaika Hussey, convenor, Movement for Aloha No ka Aina (MANA)
Terrilee Keko'olani, Ohana Koa/Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific
Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua, assistant professor of political science, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Jon Osorio, director, Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Kekuni Blaisdell, convenor, Ka Pakaukau
Andre Perez, Hui Pu
Kelii "Skippy" Ioane, Hui Pu
Kai'opua Fyfe, director, The Koani Foundation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080428/open_letter
10/1/07
5/4/07
KEY US OFFICIAL URGES KIWI PACIFIC ENTREPRENEURS TO BE PROACTIVE
Date: 3 May 2007
http://niufm.com/?t=3&View=FullStory&newsID=1951
Auckland 6am: A key official in the US Government is urging New
Zealand based Pacific entrepreneurs to seek out business opportunities
in Pacific nations affiliated to America.
David Cohen is attached to the office that oversees the Pacific States
under the US, and is here for the Pacific Futures Trade Conference in
Auckland.
Cohen says there isn't a free trade agreement between New Zealand the
US, but that shouldn't stop Kiwi Pacific businesses.
Cohen says there's billion dollar opportunities in Guam, for example,
with the US relocating its military base there from Japan.
The president of the New Zealand Pacific Business Council, Gilbert
Ullrich, says they've already started to lock down on places like
Guam.
Ullrich says there are two key areas that New Zealand companies can
move into that'll take them into places like Guam and Hawaii, where
the opportunities are.
Our brothers & sisters in Guam & Hawaii would disagree with this US
bullshit completely.
http://decolonizeguam.blogspot.com/
"Students and faculty oppose Navy research," Friday, April 29, 2005
http://starbulletin.com/2005/04/29/news/story4.html
"UH protesters declare victory as sit-in ends," Thursday, May 5, 2005
http://starbulletin.com/2005/05/05/news/story6.html
http://voicingindigeneity.blogspot.com/2007/03/indigeneity-and-militarism.html
Indigeneity and militarism: aloha aina contra empire
In his book “Imperial Grunts,” U.S. conservative writer Robert Kaplan notes the historic interrelationship between the US wars with the first nations of North America and the modern US imperial experience from Indochina to the present: “Injun Country” is the term which he hears from soldiers abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq, a reference to the undomesticated world which the US aims to tame.
The term is important in two respects. First, it signals the American tendency to see the world outside of North America as subject to its assimiliating tendencies, just as it attempted to do with Turtle Island. In this manner, the anti-Indian wars of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries are the template for the new Indian wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly Iran, North Korea, the Mindanao, and China. From this perspective, the unique identities and soveriegnties of the world’s peoples are just open spaces for the projection of US military force, to make way for WalMart, McDonalds, and MTV.
But in another way, the term is important, for it a sign of the resilience and resistance of the world’s peoples against US expansion. In North America, Indian Country has become a way of talking about the places where the US assumes it has control and domination, but the first peoples do not agree. Indian Country is free country – under the jurisdiction of the gun, but still fighting. And so I derive both a sobering appreciation for the power of military power from this term, but also a deeply-rooted faith in the ability for the first peoples of this world, the peoples of the eagle, the condor, and the frigate bird, to sustain our fight against empire, and be victorious in time.
The experiences of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis the militarized empire are multiple and unique. That is, in fact, one of the foundational ideas that indigenous peoples bring to the world: we are not singular, but plural; we obtain our life and very existence from the specificities of our particular ancestors, our particular gods, our named and worshipped sacred sites. As a indigenous person of Hawaii, I can really only speak for myself and my immediate ancestors; I couldn’t casually speak for my next-door neighbors, let alone the peoples of other Oceanic nations, or of the Americas. So in making these remarks, I will try to speak from our own experience in Hawaii, and only by extension refer to other indigenous experiences.
My country, Hawaii, has been under US occupation since the end of the 19th century. US interest in Hawaii is primarily geostrategic. We have the dubious distinction of being used as the headquarters of the Pacific Command, the largest of the U.S. unified commands. In the 161 military installations throughout Hawaii, every aspect of U.S. military activity takes place, including ocean, land, air, and space operations; training; storage; command & control; research; housing; and even specialized rest & recreation facilities for the military. The military-connected population is 17% of the population; by comparison, Native Hawaiians comprise barely 20% of the island population.
On my home island of O‘ahu, the metropolitan island of Hawaii, the US military controls one-quarter of the land in terms of base territory and formal military jurisdiction. Much of the remaining three-quarters is also injected with militarization, with federal highways connecting the bases, discounts for servicepersons in restaurants and theatres, military bases used as place names, military service projects in public schools, and servicepersons living in our communities because of a cost-of-living-adjustment which allows them to outprice local people from the rental market. Oahu is one of the most militarized places in the world, together with fellow Pacific nations such as Guam.
By contrast, to bring out the impact of the military presence on the indigneous economy and culture of Hawaii, let us focus on a place that we have all heard of: Ke Awalau o Puuloa. Many know this place as Pearl Harbor. In our history, Puuloa is known as the food-basket of our islands, with a remarkable series of 36 stone and coral fishponds built along the shore, allowing our people to maintain and replenish a steady supply of fish protein, all within walking distance. In the traditional land apportionment system, each district along the shore of Ke Awalau o Puuloa had access to this incredible resource, because we recognized that this wealth should be shared. Puuloa is also known as the dwelling for our spiritual protector Kaahupahau, a benevolent shark who protected the people of the surrounding Ewa district from other predators.
Juxtaposed against the current (mis)use of Puuloa, we can see how native subsistence wealth has been damaged to make way for US imperial ambitions. Today, Puuloa is a Superfund site, meaning that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared it one of the most polluted areas in the United States. The shared access to the economy of the oceanic resource has also been interrupted, with barbed walls and military police preventing entry to our fishponds.
This story isn’t unique to Puuloa, nor is it unique to Hawaii. At the most recent meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigneous Populations, the indigneous delegates considered the impact of militarism on their territories and peoples. Below is a portion of a longer conference report covering a variety of issues; this excerpt is the full text concerning militarism.
[According to indigneous participants,] militarization often involved the use of weapons and vehicles that polluted ancestral and sacred lands, forests and water, and harmed wildlife. Participants expressed their strong opposition to the dumping of toxic military waste, and even nuclear waste, on their lands, which rendered them unproductive and forced people from their traditional lands. Unexploded ordnance and landmines from conflicts or training exercises also contaminated indigenous peoples’ lands and caused injuries, ill-health and even death to the civilian indigenous population.
One issue that was raised frequently by indigenous people during the session was the use of militarization as a pretext to gain control over the natural resources in indigenous traditional lands without adequate compensation. A large number of participants from many different countries and regions cited cases of the use of the military to ensure access to land, minerals, oil and other resources on their ancestral lands.
Indigenous representatives also voiced their opposition to development projects, which they said were used as a justification for controlling areas that belong to their communities, as well as a justification for the presence of large numbers of soldiers on those lands. Many indigenous representatives spoke of long histories of forced resettlement for military use of their lands. Often this was done with neither consultation nor redress.
A number of participants cited the war on terror as a pretext for militarization, in particular in Arab regions. It was noted that a large military presence was often accompanied by human rights abuses by the military, including rape and sexual harassment that disproportionately affected women and children in indigenous communities. Indigenous representatives gave examples of the resulting climate of violence and fear. They cited a number of cases of military forces committing human rights abuses with impunity. Several indigenous participants expressed their concern about military recruitment of indigenous youth, which, they said, was a threat to their way of life. Whilst in some cases, recruitment might appear to be voluntary, indigenous youth who were living in poverty might see military service as their only option to earn a living.
As you see, the themes raised by indigneous nations are familiar to many of us in this conference. Clearly, many nation-states regard indigneous rights as a lesser right to the interests of developers or the military – this tendency is an example of a recurring problem that indigenous peoples face, which is the reluctance and often outright refusal for states to recognize indigneous land and sovereignty claims. The international law doctrine of self-determination, enshrined in the United Nations charter and in human rights instruments, is poorly applied, if at all, to indigneous peoples. Our movement for demilitarization and peace must be cognizant if this fact. It would also be appropriate to remind the body of the lessons learned in the Pacific, where some in the Nuclear Free Pacific movement objected to the tendency for the Pacific Islanders themselves to raise the issue of decolonization and independence. The natives demanded that demilitarization be coupled with a push for sovereignty, thus the name Nuclear Free & Independent Pacific was born. But this was indeed a line struggle, painful yet necessary.
Aloha Aina
In closing, I’d like to share our indigenous term for describing our movement in Hawaii. We use the words “aloha aina,” literally “love of land,” but also meaning patriotism. It is a word that was born out of the late-19th century struggle against annexation, and was also reinvigorated with meaning in the 1970s movement to stop the bombing of Kahoolawe island. The term also incorporates a vision for ecological sustainability, for community, and shared responsibility for our island homeland. We could never accept the harming of the land which have so much “aloha” for. Nor could we countenance the use of our land, which is the source of all life, to perpetrate violence on others. Our vision is for an independent Hawaii and a demilitarized Pacific that opposes all empires.
Mahalo nui, aloha aina.
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