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Hawaii

Monsanto Will Plead Guilty To Illegal Use Of Pesticide In Hawaii

In court documents filed on 9 December in Hawaii, Monsanto agreed to plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes related to the use of a pesticide on corn fields in Hawaii, and the company further agreed to plead guilty to two other charges related to the storage of a banned pesticide that were the subject of a 2019 Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA). Monsanto admitted in a plea agreement that it committed 30 misdemeanor crimes related to the use of a glufosinate ammonium-based herbicide product sold under the brand name Forfeit 280. After using the product in 2020 on corn fields in Oahu, Hawaii, Monsanto allowed workers to enter the fields during a six-day “restricted-entry interval” (REI) after the product was applied.

Governor Orders Operations Of Navy’s Massive Jet Fuel Tanks Suspended

On December 6, after all hell broke loose at each of the five town hall meetings held over several days by the U.S. Navy to try to calm military families who have been drinking and bathing in fuel contaminated water, the Governor of the State of Hawai’i issued an order to the Navy to suspend the operation of the massive jet fuel tanks and within 30 days “defuel” or remove the fuel out of the tanks!  Governor Ige said the public had lost confidence in the Navy. For the past week, rather than providing accurate information about the drinking water contamination, senior military leadership were caught in their own webs of inaccurate information given to the military families affected by fuel in the water…and given to the State of Hawai’i. 

US Navy Families In Hawai’i Find Fuel In Their Home Tap Water

The long citizen protest underscoring the dangers from the U.S. Navy’s 80-year-old leaking 20 jet fuel tanks at Red Hill each tank 20 stories tall and holding a total of 225 million gallons of jet fuel came to a head over the weekend with Navy families around the large Pearl Harbor Naval Base being sickened by fuel in their home tap water.  The Navy’s huge jet fuel tank complex is only 100 feet above Honolulu’s water supply and has been leaking with regularity. The Navy command was slow to alert the community while the State of Hawai’i quickly issued a notice not to drink the water.  Foster Village community members stated that they were  smelling fuel after the November 20, 2021 release of 14,000 gallons of water and fuel from a fire suppression drain line a quarter-mile downhill from the fuel tank farm. 

Navy’s Underground Leaking 20 Story Jet Fuel Tanks Must Be Closed Down

While the U.S. Navy continues to argue that U.S. national security requires that its 80-year-old leaking 20 story underground jet fuel tanks remain open, I argue the opposite--that for U.S. national security reasons the 200-million-gallon facility be closed down before a catastrophic leak destroys the potable water supply for 400,00 residents of Oahu. Once the aquifer is contaminated by a predicted major fuel leak, it cannot be flushed out or be rehabilitated.  U.S. Navy officials have said that the water from a contaminated aquifer would have to be filtered either by a massive filtration system that does not yet exist or individual households would have to filter the water at home. The Navy does not have a filtration system on the island of Oahu and citizens do not have sufficient bottled water or individual household filtration systems should there be a catastrophic leak of toxic jet fuel into our water supply. 

Military Should Return Hawaii Lands

The 65-year leases of 30,000 acres of Hawaii state land by the U.S. military are ending in 2029. The state of Hawaii should not re-lease these lands no matter what the amount the U.S. military offers. The leases on 23,000 acres at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island, 4,370 acres at the Kawailoa/ Poamoho Training Area, 1,170 acres at the Kahuku Training Area and 760 acres at the Makua Military Reservation were given away essentially for free, with the state charging only $1 for each parcel for 65 years! The three areas on Oahu are onethird of the 18,060 federal and state lands used for military training on the island, while the 23,000 acres at Pohakuloa are 17% of the 133,000 acres that comprise the largest military training area in the state and in the Pacific region.

Lawyer’s Groups Support Hawaii’s Case For Ending US Occupation

The Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC), alongside the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) and National Lawyers Guild (NLG), filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief today in support of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s complaint against the United States government, President Joe Biden, and other defendants, due to the unlawful occupation of Hawai‘i by the United States since January 17, 1893. The complaint and the amicus brief request Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, namely for the US to end the occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Missiles And Munitions Headed To Ewa Beach, Hawaii

The United States Army plans to build an enormous weapons facility storing stockpiles of conventional warheads and explosives right next to the residential housing communities of Ewa Beach, Ewa Villages, West Loch Estates, and Ewa Gentry, as well as beside the Pearl Harbor National Wildlife Refuge in Hawaii. This Pacific island paradise already has the largest concentration of United States military bases and compounds in the country, making it one of the most militarized places on earth. Were it to secede from the Union, Hawaii would be a major military power on a global scale. And now, more weapons are on the way. A lot more. The size, scope, and expense of this massive construction project must be considered, as well as the immediate danger placed on the residents of the surrounding communities.

‘Golden Rule’ Peace Boat Sets Sail From Hawaii

After 21 months in the Hawaiian Islands, the historic anti-nuclear sailboat Golden Rule will depart from Honolulu, Hawai’i for the West Coast of the U.S.   The Golden Rule first sailed from California to Hawai’i 63 years ago, in 1958, on her way to interfere with U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 U.S. nuclear bomb blasts from 1952 to 1958.  Under orders from the Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. Coast Guard stopped the boat from leaving Honolulu. The arrest and jailing of the captain and 1958 crew garnered international media attention and increased opposition to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons.  Atmospheric nuclear testing was stopped by the U.S., the UK and the Soviet Union in 1963 with the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. 

Hawaii Is The First US State To Declare A Climate Emergency

The word “emergency” usually conjures images of ambulances with flashing lights, homes going up in flames, or tornadoes tearing through a town. But increasingly, governments are using the word to describe a slower-burning crisis: climate change. On Thursday, Hawaii became the first state to declare a “climate emergency,” joining 1,933 cities, town councils, and countries, including the European Union. According to The Climate Mobilization, a U.S.-based advocacy group, almost 13 percent of the global population now lives in a jurisdiction that has made a similar declaration. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the country’s only island state, and only one in the tropics, is signaling the need for more drastic action on climate change.

18 Years Ago The US War On Iraq Began

Friday, March 19, 2021 was the 18th anniversary of the U.S. government political decision to invade and occupy oil-rich, Arab/Muslim Iraq, a country of 32 million persons.  U.S. elected officials and their advisors decided it would be in the U.S. national security interest to attack and overthrow the Iraqi government.  We saw how the military attack on Iraq which was based on the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, homes, infrastructure and culture and unleased a whirlwind of unintended (or sometimes intended) consequences that we are dealing with even now 18 years later. At the time I was a U.S. diplomat assigned as the Deputy Chief of Mission (deputy ambassador) in Mongolia. 

A Brief History Of US Military Poisoning Of Hawai’i

Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange, a new book by Japan-based journalist Jon Mitchell, is a detailed investigation and documentation of U.S. and Japanese military chemical and biological poisoning and pollution across the Pacific, Asia and South East Asia.  Mitchell’s work doesn't cover the U.S. military poisoning of Hawai'i as that would require a separate volume due to the concentration of the U.S. military bases and their pollution in the state.

Maui Has Begun The Process Of Managed Retreat

With nearly 300 miles of coastline, the Hawaiian islands that make up Maui County face the threat of sea level rise from all sides. It's that assault that has formed the foundation of a lawsuit Maui filed this week against 20 fossil fuel companies seeking compensation for the rising costs of climate change. The lawsuit alleges that the companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips, knew their products produced warming greenhouse gases that threatened the planet but hid those dangers from Maui's people and businesses to maximize corporate profits.

Group Hopes To See New Economy Emerge Based On Hawaiian Values

A new group that wants to reboot Hawaii’s tourist-based economy in the era of the new coronavirus announced a four-step plan Tuesday to come up with ideas by August based on Native Hawaiian cultural values. The ‘Aina Aloha Economic Futures Declaration, which was sent to Gov. David Ige, is the first part of an effort to create a different island economy based on centuries of island-based values. The declaration was authored by 14 members of the community who want “to reboot the entire operating system of our economy,” said Kamanamaikalani Beamer, associate professor of the University of Hawaii’s Center for Hawaiian Studies. So far, the overall concept has been endorsed by more than 550 individuals and organizations. A new island economy needs to be based on values “that have sustained life in these islands for centuries,” Beamer said.

Mauna Kea Is About Who Will Decide the Future

“The mountain brought us together,” Luana Busby-Neff tells me. It’s 200 days into the prayer vigil and blockade that brought the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to a stop in Hawaii. The 14th giant telescope in Hawaii has been met with major resistance. Busby-Neff is one of the Kapuna, or elders, who was arrested in July 2019 for protesting the construction of the TMT. This is the first major Indigenous-led occupation since Standing Rock, and, like Standing Rock, it’s a moment that unites people and understanding with water and land. Thousands have come. Looking through the lens of a battle over the TMT, one also sees a story which is not just about a telescope, but about who gets to decide the future and understand and interpret the world. It’s about whether we will look to the stars or to the Earth. And it is about if we want bombs or water.

Governor Orders Mauna Kea Stand Down

The Thirty Meter Telescope will not be built atop Mauna Kea at this time. Hawai'i Governor David Ige announced in an internal memo this morning that law enforcement personnel will be leaving the site. The telescope, an object of controversy, is still slated to be built. The construction will now be delayed. “They are not abandoning Hawai’i,” Gov. Ige said in a press conference this afternoon. “We believe at this point in time, it made sense for us to bring our state law enforcement home.”

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