Hawaii, Alaska and Territories Team Up Against the Jones Act

 | by  CATHY BUSSEWITZ

Posted: 03/13/2014 11:01 pm EDT Updated: 03/13/2014 11:59 pm EDT

Stewart Sutton via Getty Images

HONOLULU (AP) — Lawmakers from Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Guam are teaming up to pressure the U.S. government for relief from a maritime law passed in the 1920s.

The Jones Act was designed to protect the domestic shipping industry. It states that only ships made in the U.S. and flying the country's flags can deliver goods between U.S. ports.

That means that a cargo ship filled with goods from China can only make one stop in the U.S. at a time. It can't stop in Hawaii to exchange goods before heading to Los Angeles.

Hawaii state Sen. Sam Slom says the law punishes the people of Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawaii with high costs of living.

Representatives from the impacted states and territories met in a videoconference Thursday.

"All of our areas are specifically impacted by the Jones Act," Slom said. "It is now known that the Hawaiian cost of living, primarily because of our additional shipping cost and because of the Jones Act, are now 49 percent higher than the U.S. mainland. And this is becoming unbearable. It's difficult for individuals. It's difficult for families. It's difficult for small businesses as well.

Slom is part of a bipartisan group of Hawaii lawmakers pushing Congress to reconsider the Jones Act or to consider a waiver for noncontiguous states and territories. Slom said it costs about $790 to ship a 40-foot container from Los Angeles to Shanghai, but it costs $8,700 to ship the same container from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Alaskan lawmakers have made a similar request to Congress, but the state hasn't yet seen results, said Alaska state Sen. Fred Dyson. Like Hawaii, the state brings in most of its goods by ship or airplane.

Most of Alaska's goods move along the coast, and freight rates would be drastically reduced if the state could use foreign ships, he said.

The American Maritime Partnership, a coalition that represents vessel owners and operators, unions, equipment yards and vendors, says the Jones Act is critical for economic and security reasons. It says the domestic maritime industry is responsible for nearly 500,000 jobs and more than $100 billion in annual economic output.

The Puerto Rico Senate passed a resolution calling for an investigation of the economic impact of the Jones Act, Puerto Rico Sen. Rossana Lopez Leon said. Studies by the World Economic Forum and Federal Reserve Bank in New York have concluded that the Jones Act hinders economic development in the commonwealth, she said.

"If we truly want to create jobs and boost our economic development, we need to eliminate the implementation of the Jones Act in Puerto Rico," Lopez Leon said.

The territory of Guam is currently exempt from the Jones Act, but because natural shipping lanes pass through Honolulu the law affects Guam.

Rep. Gene Ward of Hawaii said the state isn't asking for much, just a waiver from the rules. "Having something made, flagged, and owned by America is obsolete," said Ward, a Republican.

The cost of building ships in the U.S. is five times higher than constructing comparable ships in Japan and South Korea, said Michael Hansen, president of the Hawaii Shipper's Council, an association that represents the interest of cargo owners. There also are far fewer ships built in the U.S. than abroad.

"The extraordinarily high cost of shipbuilding and the artificial shortage or commercial ships in the U.S. creates a narrow and highly concentrated domestic shipping market," Hansen said.

The group agreed to stay in touch and meet again to coordinate efforts.

"The general population is utterly ignorant of either the Jones Act or its implications for us," Dyson said. "We have a job to do to explain what the savings would be."



 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/hawaii-alaska-jones-act_n_4961203.html

Micronesians Continue To Seek Justice On The 60th Anniversary Of The Castle Bravo Nuclear Test

Michelle Broder Van Dyke BuzzFeed Staff 

posted on February 28, 2014 at 1:55pm EST

  

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. detonated its largest nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll. Sixty years later, the U.S. continues the militarization of the area, and in exchange, Micronesians are allowed limited access to America.

Carl Mydans / Via digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

The U.S. conducted at least 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. The nuclear test conducted at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, Operation Castle Bravo, remains the largest test ever conducted by the U.S. and yielded 15 megatons, almost 1,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Bravo vaporized two surrounding islets and sent a plume of highly radioactive debris floating over the lagoon and into the open water. Atolls downwind of Bikini, including Rongelap and Utirik, hadn’t been informed of the tests but were showered with dangerously radioactive ash, which residents believed was snow — something they had never seen.

In the years following the test, people who were exposed burned from the radiation, became nauseous, developed thyroid problems, had loss of blood cells, and women who were pregnant miscarried. And decades after the bombings, the health problems persist with unusually high rates of birth defects and cancer among Micronesians.

Even today, the fallout impacts the environment, where it is remains unsafe to eat coconuts, other crops, and fish around these islands. As a consequence, most Bikinians have given up the dream of ever returning to their home, and many Micronesians have left their islands for America.

The anniversary of Operation Castle Bravo is a national day of mourning in the Marshall Islands.

The Micronesians were great navigators who journeyed originally from Southeast Asia some 4,000 years ago.

Robert Kiste digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

Robert Kiste

They led subsistence lifestyles off the land and ocean.

The Marshall Islands were ground zero for the atomic testing, but the surrounding islands in Micronesia were also impacted by the nuclear tests and the militarization of the area, during and after World War II.

Shutterstock

Micronesia includes Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), as well as other nations. All of these places have their own cultures and languages.

The Marshall Islands are an archipelago made up of of five islands and 29 atolls, each consisting of many islets, which run in two parallel chains.

Shutterstock

An atoll is a ring-shaped island that encircles a lagoon. The atoll sometimes only partially closes around the lagoon and may be made up of smaller islets.

Most directly affected during the nuclear tests were Enewetak and Bikini in the Marshall Islands.

Carl Mydans

 

Carl Mydans

Carl Mydans

Carl Mydans digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

In 1946, Cdre. Ben Wyatt told the 167 residents of Bikini Atoll that due to their home’s remoteness it had been selected as the site for the first peacetime test of the atomic bomb.  Wyatt assured the Bikinian Chief Juda Kessibuki that an authority “higher than any on earth” would look favorably on such a deed and that it would be “for the good of mankind.”

Less than a month later, the Bikinians packed up all their possessions into a Navy transport.

Carl Mydans digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

Carl Mydans digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

 

 

They said good-bye to their home, but they did not know it would be forever.

Nuclear radiation impacted the surrounding atolls as well.

In 1983, Darlene Keju-Johnson spoke at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Vancouver, giving voice for the first time on an international platform to the injustices Micronesians faced as victims of the nuclear age. 

She spoke in particular for the people who lived in the islands surrounding the nuclear test sites. Keju-Johnson grew up on Wotje, one of many atolls downwind of the nuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak, and she died of cancer in 1996.

In 1986, the U.S. signed the Compact of Free Association with the FSM and RMI.

The 4th Branch / Via the4rthbranch.com

The agreement said the U.S. would promote self-governance and economic development so these nations could be self-sufficient. COFA citizens would also be granted the right to live in the U.S., where they can work or study and are required to pay local, state, and federal taxes. They are also allowed to join the military. In the beginning, they were eligible for many of the same benefits as citizens.

A deal with defense.

U.S. Missile Defense Agency / Via Flickr: mdabmds

The U.S. military remains very active at Kwajalein Atoll, and in 2012 they performed their largest and most complex missile defense test to date.

In exchange, the COFA agreement gives the U.S. exclusive access to the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein, the largest atoll in the world, where the $4 billion Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site is located.

A similar COFA contract was enacted with the Republic of Palau in 1994.

jimney/jimney

This agreement took the longest to reach because the Republic of Palau’s constitution proclaims the nation as nuclear-free. The United States, which neither confirms nor denies the presence of nuclear weapons as a policy, essentially pressured Palau to abandon its commitment to being nuclear-free. 

Even though they are trust territories of the U.S., all three COFA nations are considered self-governing and receive their own seats at the U.N.

Pool / Reuters

Adam Hunger / Reuters

AP Photo/Justin Lane, Pool

Palau, FSM, and RMI are the United States’ closest allies and almost always vote along with the U.S. and Israel even when other allies do not.

Broken promises.

In 1996, Congress restricted access to government programs for certain people in the U.S. who were not citizens, including people from COFA nations. Because of this, many COFA citizens lost their access to health care, even though they are legal residents in the U.S. paying taxes.

Meanwhile, back in FSM, RMI, and Palau, the U.S. had not lived up to its side of the agreement to promote economic development. Radiation continues to affect many islands, and Micronesians remain dependent on American assistance.

Joakim “Jojo” Peter, a Micronesian community leader from FSM’s Chuuk who is currently earning his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii, told BuzzFeed there is still “a lot of frustration” for Micronesians, because they have “guaranteed almost forever” the continued militarization of their home while being denied access to health care.

“The fact that a couple of their island atolls are still not habitable, that is testament to a long problem. The fact that there are still people being treated for long-term illnesses, that is testament too,” Peter said. “If there are two groups here, on one side us, Micronesians, and on the other side the United States, we’ve given all we can to this, and then what are we fighting for — welfare. I mean, the
weight of this is so lopsided.”

jimney/jimney

Additionally, Micronesians are concerned about climate change and rising seas, since their islands have a median height of 7 feet.

Compounded with all of these concerns, more than a third of Marshallese — about 20,000 — and more Micronesians from FSM and Palau have migrated to the U.S. in search of better education, job opportunities, and medical care.

“How do you deal with a culture that has gone through this … the trauma of going through being moved, of radiation,” said Dr. Neal Palafox, a professor at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center with a focus on Marshall Islanders, “the trauma of your culture changing.”

Micronesians mostly move to Hawaii and the West Coast, while a large community has also formed in Arkansas, where Marshallese have sought out higher-paying factory jobs at Tyson Foods.

In addition, Micronesians in seeking different options have disproportionally served in the military, and many people in Micronesia know someone who has died in the military.

           Masahiro Sugano / Via Studio Revolt

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner was born on Marujo but moved to Hawaii when she was 6. She’s a poet who gravitated toward spoken word, as a means to connect with her own culture, which relies heavily on oral storytelling, and new audiences.

In 2012, she represented the Marshall Islands at Poetry Parnassus, an international gathering of poets, with her poem “History Project.”

“I noticed so few Americans noticed anything about nuclear testing that was conducted in the Marshall Islands,” Jetnil-Kijiner told BuzzFeed about writing the poem, “and that’s really frustrating for me and a lot of Marshallese, that no one seems to be aware of this travesty that occurred — and I just wanted more people to know about the horror of it and about what we lost.”

Robert Kiste / Via digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that the Castle Bravo bombing was the largest nuclear bomb, when it was in fact the largest nuclear bomb used by the U.S. (3/1/14)



http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/micronesians-continue-to-seek-justice-on-the-60th-anniversar

Who's Got the Biggest Bombs ?

"1945-1998" Multimedia artwork by Isao Hashimoto
2,053 - This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe. The number excludes both tests by North Korea (October 2006 and May 2009).

About "1945-1998" ©2003
"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country has conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world."

"Do you care, do you care Ronald Reagan?
Overkilling not our style, we want peace"

A song by the group Huarere, performed at a rally during the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific conference in Vanuatu, 1983. From the program "A Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific"

Pågan Island featured on Talk Nation Radio

Michael Hadfield is a Professor of Zoology and Principal Investigator at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, University of Hawaii, and at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center. He discusses the need to save Pagan Island, its people and other species, from the U.S. military. See http://savepaganisland.org


Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from Archive or LetsTryDemocracy.
Pacifica stations can also download from AudioPort.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.


http://davidswanson.org/node/4322 

From urbandictionary.com

  Guahan

 

An island in the Pacific Ocean that is a territory of the U.S. Guam features the highest obesity rate, and highest rate of smokers in comparison the U.S. Over 60 percent of Guam's locals are utilizing goverment benefits because they are too lazy or too unintelligent to work. The local Chamorrons are very proud of their culture. The Spanish invaded Guam in the 1600's. They killed most of the males and impregnated the fat females. Guam was also invaded by the Japanese during WW2. All the local males were killed, or pushed off Two Lovers point. The Japanese efficiently killed all Chommoro males. This corrected thousands of years of inbreading. The gene pool is slowly getting better. However, most local males on Guam possess the intelligence of a small child. The females are actually quite intelligent. Guam features the worst education in the United States. Their Private Schools are the equivalent to inner city public schools in the U.S. The students don't care about their education, because they can apply for Food Stamps and Welfare through the use of U.S. citizens tax dollars. 

I'm from Guahan, so most likely, I'm on welfare. 

by C De Faz September 10, 2010 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=guahan

 you misspelled 'government' & 'inbreeding'