Skip to content

US military

DOD Continues To Stonewall Information On Defueling Of Red Hill

According to the March 5, 2023 Honolulu Star Advertiser article, titled “Military spending act stirs defueling concerns,” the DNAA REQUIRES, before defueling of the Red Hill jet fuel tanks, a certification from DOD that closing Red Hill will not affect Indo-Pacific military operations.  At this point, 4 months after the passage of the NDAA and until the March 5 Star Advertiser article, despite intense public interest in the defueling and closing of the Red Hill facilities, neither Senator Hirono, Senator Brian Schatz nor Representative Case mentioned the certification requirement in their press releases about the $1 billion for the defueling and closure of Red Hill and $800 million for other military infrastructure upgrades in Hawaii passed in the NDAA for 2023. 

More Ballooneey News

A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing fingers yet. But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool—the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same general area.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center can be found in a location as obscure as its name—down what was once a country lane in rural Panama City, a now-booming resort city in the southwestern panhandle of Florida, 70 miles south of the Alabama border. The center’s complex is as nondescript as its location—a drab concrete post-World War II structure that has the look of a vocational high school on the west side of Chicago. A coin-operated laundromat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road. The center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good—using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordinance—as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals.

New Books By Former Soldiers The US Military Doesn’t Want You To Read

One frequent casualty of war is the confident belief shared by new soldiers that their cause is just and worthy of great personal sacrifice. After Al-Qaeda downed four civilian airliners and caused nearly three thousand deaths on September 11, 2001, US military recruiters were flooded with eager volunteers. Patriotic fervor, coupled with an urge for revenge and a desire to make the world a safer place, motivated many young men and women to enlist. As the reality of simultaneous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan began to sink in, many participants — like Vietnam veterans before them — became angry, embittered, and disillusioned. Some of them have turned to memoir-writing that debunks the whole costly and disastrous $8 trillion project known as the “global war on terror.” Three excellent new book-length reflections on military training, socialization, and combat duty in the Middle East definitely won’t end up on the reading lists of college-level or junior ROTC programs, or even the US service academies.

War With China Could Come As Soon As 2025

Aim for the head.” This is the message blasted out by four star Air Force general and Air Mobility Command head General Michael A. Minihan about the preparation needed for a potential war between the US and China in two years. Gen. Minihan’s rhetoric is reminiscent of his keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air Space & Cyber Conference in September. In that address, Minihan expresses his aggressive mentality stating, “Lethality matters most…When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger.” A memo obtained by NBC News spells out the general’s ambitions for the coming months as the rhetoric and action surrounding the Pacific theater heightens by the day. The general’s memo leaves no doubt regarding his sense of what is to come in the near future.

Google’s Quest To Digitize Valuable Military Tissue Samples

In early February 2016, the security gate at a U.S. military base near Washington, D.C., swung open to admit a Navy doctor accompanying a pair of surprising visitors: two artificial intelligence scientists from Google. In a cavernous, temperature-controlled warehouse at the Joint Pathology Center, they stood amid stacks holding the crown jewels of the center’s collection: tens of millions of pathology slides containing slivers of skin, tumor biopsies and slices of organs from armed service members and veterans. Standing with their Navy sponsor behind them, the Google scientists posed for a photograph, beaming. Mostly unknown to the public, the trove and the staff who study it have long been regarded in pathology circles as vital national resources: Scientists used a dead soldier’s specimen that was archived here to perform the first genetic sequencing of the 1918 Flu.

Amid Community Outrage, Navy Must Release Toxic-Foam Video

As a retired U.S. Army colonel with 29 years of military service, I am very disappointed at the military’s continued lack of transparency on the 2021 jet fuel spills at Red Hill — and now, the lack of sensitivity on the recent spill of 1,300 gallons of a toxic firefighting foam. The AFFF (aqueous film forming foam) apparently billowed up inside an entrance tunnel of the underground jet fuel storage complex, and the foam tide flowed over 100 meters along and into the ground outside of the tunnel and down the hill. Just as with the Navy initially stating there was no video of the 19,000 gallons of jet fuel spewing jet-fuel spill. There are many photos of the release of AFFF/PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as “forever for 34 hours in November 2021 and then having to admit there was a video when it was released by a whistleblower, causing public outrage, the holding back from the public of the video of the 1,300 gallons of AFFF is going to cause even more outrage.

Hawaiʻians Rally Behind The Honolulu Board Of Water Supply, March To Navy

Puʻuloa, Hawaiʻi – Hundreds of people took to the streets today in a “Walk for Wai,” marching from Keʻehi Lagoon Beach Park to the local Navy Facilities Engineering Systems Command Headquarters, in support of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply (HBWS). For years, the HBWS had requested transparency, accountability and immediate action to prevent any further contamination of the island of Oʻahu’s EPA Region IX Sole-Source Aquifer from the U.S. Navy’s WWII-era Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. In a live press conference responding to the November 29, 2022 spill of 1,300 gallons of extremely toxic aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) concentrate at the facility, the HBWS’ Chief Engineer Ernest Lau broke down in tears – and declared that the agency’s requests had now become demands.

One Year After Navy Poisons Water, It Does It Again

One can hardly finish an article about Hawaii’s Red Hill jet fuel disaster before another dangerous incident happens.  While I was completing an article concerning the first anniversary of the November 2021 massive jet fuel leak of over 19,000 gallons of jet fuel into the drinking water well that served 93,000 military and civilian families, on November 29, 2022, at least 1,300 gallons of the extremely toxic fire suppressant concentrate known as Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) leaked out of an “air release valve” installed by the contractor Kinetix onto the tunnel floor of the Red Hill Underground Jet Fuel Storage Tanks complex entrance and flowed 40 feet out of the tunnel into the soil. Kinetix workers reportedly were performing maintenance on the system when the leak occurred.

Film Recounts Latina-Led Fight Against Military Sexual Abuse

Two years ago, city hall plaza in our hometown, Richmond, CA., was the scene of a protest vigil organized by Estefany Sanchez and her two sisters. Estefany is a Richmond resident and an Army veteran whose experience of sexual harassment in the military led her to identify strongly with the tragic case of Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year old soldier at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Guillen was sexually harassed by fellow soldiers, at a base with one of the highest rates of sexual assault, sexual trafficking, suicide, and murder anywhere in the military.  Her complaints to superior officers were repeatedly ignored before she was killed while at work in an armory on the base. Guillen’s assailant, Aaron Robinson, then secretly moved, dismembered, and buried her body, with the help of a civilian accomplice still awaiting trial.

Water Protectors Serve ‘Eviction Notice’ To US Navy Command

Puʻuloa, Hawaiʻi – On the anniversary of the 19,000 gallon fuel spill that led to the poisoning of Oʻahu's sole source aquifer and thousands of families, water protectors from across the island presented an "eviction notice" to Navy leaders for numerous Navy and Department of Defense actions that have continually threatened and harmed the lands, waters, and people of of Hawaiʻi - including the Navy’s ongoing refusal to properly address the existential threat posed by the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. "We aren't dumb. We aren't sheep. We know when we are just being fed lines by military officials in the hopes of keeping us quiet. We let them do that to us for too long, and look at what we've got. Those days are over, maybe forever," stated Kainoa Azama, of the Oʻahu Water Protectors.

COP-OUT27 Hastens Climate Catastrophe

Following international climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, with a parallel People’s Summit I participated in, the focus on military emissions and their lethal undercount has faded in the war fever of the alleged battle for “democracy” and “freedom” in Ukraine. COP27, held in the especially brutal police state of Egypt (thanks, “Arab Spring” color revolution) was swarmed by both fossil fuel lobbyists and private jets. Following international climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, with a parallel People’s Summit I participated in, the focus on military emissions and their lethal undercount has faded in the war fever of the alleged battle for “democracy” and “freedom” in Ukraine.

Firefighters Ought To Have Their Blood Tested For PFAS

Four months have passed since the publication of Guidance on PFAS Testing and Health Outcomes, a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, (National Academies). The National Academies are the premier American institutions created by President Lincoln in 1863 to investigate issues in science for the U.S. government. The National Academies recommends blood tests and medical monitoring for people likely to have high exposure to the toxic chemicals known as per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS). The National Academies specifically addresses the urgent need to reach those who are exposed through occupational routes, particularly firefighters.

War In Ukraine – US Creeping Towards Ever Deeper Involvement

The number of Republican voters who are against the war in Ukraine has steadily increased. In March only 6% said that the U.S. is doing 'too much' for Ukraine. That number is now 48%. The Republicans in Congress have been pressing the Biden administration to better safeguard the enormous amount of weapon and money it is sending to Kiev: Following concerns in Congress and accusations by Russia about weapons smuggling, the Biden administration released its blueprint on Thursday for ensuring that the $17 billion in arms it has so far sent to Ukraine were making it to the battlefield — and not the black market. On October 27, nine months after the U.S. sponsored war started and after $17 billions in weapons and ammo have been sent, the U.S. State department published a: U.S. Plan to Counter Illicit Diversion of Certain Advanced Conventional Weapons in Eastern Europe.

101st Airborne Deployed To Ukraine’s Border ‘Ready To Fight Tonight’

The White House has deployed thousands of American soldiers just miles from Ukraine to prepare for war, according to CBS News. Officers speaking with the outlet revealed they were there for combat against Russia. Brigadier General John Lubas confirmed nearly 5,000 troops from the 101st Airborne recently joined the 100,000 American soldiers already deployed to Europe. Lubas described his troops as being on “full deployment,” and they are preparing to fight Russian soldiers in Ukraine. “This is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment for us. We understand we need to be ready to fight tonight,” he said. CBS Reporter Charlie D’Agata was embedded with the American forces as they conducted military drills – at a forward operating base – within four miles of Ukraine’s border.
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.