A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles

By BRIAN STELTER

Published: October 23, 2011

Hours after Amy Goodman, the host of the grass-roots newscast “Democracy Now!,” was arrested in Minnesota in 2008 while trying to cover protesters at the Republican National Convention, she was sitting in a network news studio above the convention floor, when a producer said: “I don’t get it. Why wasn’t I arrested?”

Ms. Goodman asked him, “Were you out on the streets?” No, he said, he had been in the studio the whole time. “I’m not being arrested here either,” she said she told him. “You’ve got to get out there.”

For Ms. Goodman, that exchange expresses both a shortcoming of the network newscasts that many Americans consume and a strength of “Democracy Now!,” the 15-year-old public radio and television program. The newscast distinguishes itself by documenting social movements, struggles for justice and the effects of American foreign policy, along with the rest of the day’s developments.

Operated as a nonprofit organization and distributed on a patchwork of stations, channels and Web sites, “Democracy Now!” is proudly independent, in that way appealing to hundreds of thousands of people who are skeptical of the news organizations that are owned by major media companies. The program “escapes the suffocating sameness that pervades broadcast news,” said John Knefel, a comedian and freelance writer who started listening about four years ago and now tries never to miss an episode.

Though it has long had a loyal audience, “Democracy Now!” has gained more attention recently for methodical coverage of two news events — the execution of the Georgia inmate Troy Davis and the occupation of Wall Street and other symbolic sites across the country. Ms. Goodman broadcast live from Georgia for six hours on Sept. 21, the evening of the execution, and “Democracy Now!” reporters were fanned out in Manhattan from the first day of the protests against corporate greed.

“At the time, we had no idea if the protest would even last the night, but we recognized it as potentially an important story,” said Mike Burke, a senior news producer for the program. He noted that “it took NPR more than a week to air its first story on the movement.”

Distribution for “Democracy Now!” — which is live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern — comes from public, community and college radio stations; public access television stations and some PBS affiliates; the noncommercial satellite networks Free Speech TV and Link TV; and from the program’s Web site, DemocracyNow.org, which streams each hourlong newscast in full.

The producers say the program is broadcast on more than 950 stations. But because the distribution is cobbled together and because the program has no commercials, no Nielsen ratings are available.

The media, Ms. Goodman said in an interview last week, can be “the greatest force for peace on earth” for “it is how we come to understand each other.” But she asserted that the views of a majority of Americans had been “silenced by the corporate media.”

“Which is why we have to take it back,” she said, echoing the sentiments of many of her fans.

Friends and former colleagues describe Ms. Goodman as ferocious and persistent, traits that have not changed since the program’s inception in 1996 on five Pacifica Radio stations.

“On the radio, she sounded at times like a giant, at others a giant slayer,” said Jeremy Scahill, now an investigative reporter for The Nation magazine, who practically begged Ms. Goodman to let him volunteer for the program in 1997. She agreed and initially paid him $40 a day from her own pocket. On Facebook he lists the program as his college education.

“What drove us was telling stories we felt were being ignored, misreported or underreported by corporate media outlets,” Mr. Scahill said.

The program slowly gained more stations and, amid a dispute with Pacifica, which was later resolved, it established itself as a nonprofit news organization in 2001. The week of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the program began to be simulcast on television. Since then, Ms. Goodman said, “the growth has just been phenomenal.”

While many media outlets were faulted for playing down antiwar protests after the attacks, “Democracy Now!” covered such events extensively.

Some fans as well as critics describe “Democracy Now!” as progressive, but Ms. Goodman rejects that label and prefers to call it a global newscast that has “people speaking for themselves.” She criticized networks in the United States that have brought on professional pundits, rather than actual protesters, to discuss the Occupy protests.

Last week, no United States television network covered the filing of a lawsuit in Canada by four men who said they had been tortured during the Bush administration and who are seeking Mr. Bush’s arrest and prosecution. But one of the men, Murat Kurnaz, a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, was interviewed at length by Ms. Goodman and her co-host, Juan Gonzalez.

The nonprofit nature of the program means that the producers “never have to worry about how an advertiser might feel,” avoiding potential self-censorship, Mr. Burke said. But it also sharply limits the size of the staff. The program relies on volunteers to transcribe segments and, occasionally, to translate foreign-language interviews.

Ms. Goodman regularly helps raise money for stations that broadcast the program. The Internet has given the program a global audience and the ability to reach that audience for more than an hour a day. On the evening of Sept. 21, the live stream about the execution of Mr. Davis was viewed more than 800,000 times.

The live stream attested to “the hunger for this kind of information,” Ms. Goodman said. “Yet there was no network that was there to cover this moment throughout the night.”

Except, in a sense, “Democracy Now!” was able to be that network, at least for a night.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 24, 2011, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles.

FROM A POLITICS OF PLACE TO A POLITICS OF SPACE: ORGANIZING FOR RESISTANCE AND COMMUNITY CONTROL

By Richard N. Salvador

Department of Political Science

University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Honolulu, Hawai’i

1997 Pacific Networking Conference

“The Big Squeeze: Islands in the New Asia Pacific”

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

November 14 16, 1997

Introductory Remarks

Before I begin, I would like first to thank the sponsors of this conference, the South Pacific People’s Foundation, the Pacific Concerns Resource Center, and the Native Students Union at the University of Victoria. On a more positive note, I would like to rename this conference, at least in my mind, “the Great Deliverance.” As we gather to network, this year in Canada, the conference provides an unmistakable contrast to what will be taking place at the other forum, the APEC Summit in Vancouver. In fact, it has largely been the calculated designs of APEC against which the immediate objectives of this conference have been shaped in response.

Apparent in the designation of our sponsors’ names, I would like also to conclude we have come here from across the Pacific to celebrate an expanded definition of “Pacific Peoples” that is inclusive of both the “Rim” and the “Basin,” to address genuine “Pacific Concerns,” and to collaborate accordingly with “Native Peoples” from across this vast area of the world. We have gathered here to explore issues related thereto and, in the words of the conference brochure, “to explore alternative approaches that are fairer to Pacific Islanders.”

This is a daunting task, especially when we are faced with the tangible consequences of globalization. It is even more disheartening to consider the continuing impacts of this growing international integration of markets for goods, services, and capital. Many Pacific Nations are being compelled to integrate their economies to the global economy with promises of brighter economic futures. But when small, vulnerable communities are asked to remove all internal barriers to international trade, what will be left to replace the little dignity that we have stubbornly refused to acquiesce through several centuries of foreign colonialisms that have permanently disfigured our communal, collective selves?

Indeed, what is left at all when we have sold away the prospect of being the protagonists of our own destinies? I would argue, and no doubt you will all agree, that our unwillingness to let go of such a vital element of our sovereignty during colonialism, has become the foundation of our continued survival. It would seem ludicrous that we might simply let go NOW, only because our political leaders are so invested in maximizing a short term economic advantage. But beyond the immediate pressures being brought to bear on our political leaders, we are all being coerced to integrate ourselves with the globalized economy. A cursory examination of the potential benefits accruing in a globalized market, as is currently being assembled, would amass great economic benefits on the part of many metropolitan countries whose crusade it is to put into place a single world economy. If colonialism is taken to mean the pursuit of metropolitan nations’ goals by means of various forms of coercion, political and economic, then we might correctly perceive a literal “return to colonialism,” inherent in the nature of the politics of global economy.(1)

Before going any further to comment on some practical steps we might choose to take, I have chosen to develop a theoretical understanding of resistance to colonialism, a theoretical framework which I hope will be usefully employed in shaping not only our resistance to colonialism but also to modern, more sophisticated forms, of colonial like global (economic) orders.

A Theory of Resistance

I have been invested, in my educational training, in developing a deeper understanding of colonialism, and resistance to it. I have been grateful for the contributions of many scholars from the so-called “Third World.” In particular, the possibility that the ideology of nationalism might offer relevant notes of caution vis-à-vis the vexing problems of a globalized economy, interests me greatly. However, I should preface these remarks by noting a vital distinction inherent in the emergence of the study of nationalism as a largely negative, even a dangerously reactionary discourse, or what Michael Billig calls “banal nationalism,” and a positive force for reinvigorating formerly colonized places that Ahmad Aijaz describes in his book, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures.(2)

Admittedly, nationalist ideology, as Partha Chatterjee concedes, “is inherently polemical, shot through with tension; its voice, now impassioned, now faltering, betrays the pressures of having to state its case against formidable opposition.” Furthermore, he continued,

“such polemic is not a mere stylistic device which a dispassioned analyst can calmly separate out of a pure doctrine. It is part of the ideological content of nationalism which takes as its adversary a contrary discourse the discourse of colonialism. Pitting itself against the reality of colonial rule which appears before it as an existent, almost palpable, historical truth nationalism seeks to assert the feasibility of entirely new political possibilities.”(3)

It is the latter allusion to the emergence of a politics of liberation from colonialism, which, I argue, has some passing relevance to strategical imperatives vis-à-vis an increasingly globalized economy. To be sure, I am not interested in investing such strategical moves with what are oftentimes perceived to be a dogmatic even fanatical nationalism. As I’ve indicated, there is a practical value of asserting initially the importance of nationalism to a geographically based project of liberation. The immediate and long term theoretical challenge would be to postulate a mastery of this nation based theory of resistance and liberation toward a more dispersed locus, of power, e.g. a global economy. This is where I have tried to conceptualize a politics of resistance tested and reinforced on the ground, that is, in particular contexts within nation-states (a politics of place) in the process of informing a theory and praxis of resistance toward dispersed loci of power (a politics of space). This is where the title of this paper has come from.

As for the utility of a nation based politics and its further claims, Chatterjee added, “it is precisely in the innovative thinking out of the political possibilities and the defence of their historical feasibility that the unity is established between nationalist thought and nationalist politics. The polemical content of nationalist ideology is its politics.”(4) Judging from this, it would almost be a given to conclude that a desirable unity, in this instance, would be in order, and would be uncomplicated. An actual shift from a politics of place to a politics of space, however, would require a much more sophisticated analysis to effect including, of course, activism on the frontlines and constant vigilance toward an inclusive resistance movement. I would much prefer that a constant dialogue be encouraged with the progressive forms of nationalisms in order to arrive at a preferred unity of theory, and politics, of space.

Resisting Unaccountable Global Corporatist Regimes

What is the nature of that which we confront? It is crucial to keep in mind what we have to work against with regard to the global economy. By the World Bank’s own admission,

“Globalization is altering the world economic landscape in fundamental ways. It is driven by a widespread push toward the liberalization of trade and capital markets, increasing internationalization of corporate production and distribution strategies, and technological change that is rapidly dismantling barriers to the international tradability of goods and services and the mobility of capital.”(5)

In the World Bank’s World Development Report 1997, Bank economist Brian Levy compares the emerging global economy to the nineteenth century “Wild West” economy of the United States. His comparison is brief, but the point has been well made. Even the zealous proponents of a single world economy are telling us all to brace ourselves for what is coming. Ironically, Levy lectures on what the State must do, within an emerging global market that seeks to obliterate any semblance of Statist structures.(6)

European researchers describe a similar picture of a nascent state of predicament associated with globalization, in their ruminations about the Pacific. Their conclusions, at a recent conference in Vienna, on the future of the Lomé Convention (an economic agreement between the European Union and select African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries dubbed the “ACP countries,” in existence since 1970 and an expiry date of February 2000), are that “the balance sheet of globalisation is mixed,” that while only a very few countries have benefitted, “it has coincided with growing socio economic inequities between and within countries, and [actual] reversals in human development.”(7)

In his book, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization, Joshua Karliner describes a number of facts about corporate globalization and how progressively corporations have come to dominate the lives of peoples/communities across the planet, contributing massively to environmental destruction, and impoverishing thousands of peoples, ultimately undermining democracy. He writes,

“Transnational corporations companies which operate in more than one country at a time have become some of the most powerful economic and political entities in the world today. More corporations have more power than the nation states across borders they operate. For instance:

• The combined revenues of just General Motors and Ford two of the largest automobile corporations in the world exceed the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for all of sub Saharan Africa.
• The combined sales of Mitsubishi, Mitsui, ITOCHI, Sumimoto, Marubeni, and Nissho Iwai, Japan’s top six Sogo Sosha or trading companies, are nearly equivalent to the combined GDP of all of South America.
• Overall, fifty one of the largest one hundred economies in the world are corporations.
• The revenues of the top 500 corporations in the U.S. equal 60 percent of the country’s GDP.
• Transnational corporations hold ninety percent of all technology and product patents worldwide.
• Transnational corporations are involved in 70 percent of the world trade. More than thirty percent of this trade is ‘intra firm’; in other words, it occurs between units of the same corporation.

“How many are there?

• The number of transnational corporations in the world has jumped from 7,000 in 1970 to 40,000 in 1995.
• While ever more global in reach, these corporations’ home bases are concentrated in the Northern industrialized countries, where ninety percent of all transnationals are based.
• More than half come from just five nations France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States.
• Despite their growing numbers, power is concentrated at the top. For instance, the three hundred largest corporations account for one quarter of the world’s productive assets.”(8)

I should note that the nature and reach of corporations that engage in the production and distribution of goods and services as are essential for livelihoods of peoples should not be unduly under appreciated. Each of us benefit immensely from these economic activities that transgress borders of nation states. Nation states are only recent innovations in the history of humankind (dating back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that codified the principle of territorial integrity of nation states). These were only arbitrary political boundaries that hardly posed any threats to the cross border exchanges of goods and services that have been taking place for as long as human beings have lived on this planet. But for a time, they allowed a veneer of protection (however superficial they were) against which the “local” and “non local” activities of human migrations and economic exchanges defined peoples’s communal (national) spaces. It is apparent that the superficiality of these political boundaries are increasingly fraying under the intense pressures of transnational corporations transgressing all sorts of familiar spaces in the unrelenting search of Profit that profits no one but a few, very select players.

What, ultimately, is the nature of such transgressions of “national” boundaries? Is there a logic to the “typical” politics of economic globalization? Karliner describes yet again the extent of transnationals’ powers and the extent to which they impact peoples and their communities.

“Transnational corporations exert ever more significant influence over the domestic and foreign policies of the Northern industrialized government that host them. Indeed the interests of the most powerful governments in the world are often intimately intertwined with the expanding pursuits of the transnationals that they charter.

“At the same time, transnational corporations are moving to circumvent national governments. The borders and regulatory agencies of most governments are caving in to the New World Order of globalization, allowing corporations to assume an ever more stateless quality, leaving them less and less accountable to any governments anywhere.

“These corporations, together with their host governments, are reorganizing world economic structures and thus the balance of political power through a series of intergovernmental trade and investment accords. These treaties serve as the frameworks within which globalization is evolving allowing international corporate investment and trade to flourish across the Earth. They include:

• The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
• The World Trade Organization, which was created to enforce the GATT’s rules.
• The proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment [MAI].
• The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
• The European Union (EU).

“These international trade and investment agreements allow corporations to circumvent the power and authority of national governments and local communities, thus endangering workers’ rights, the environment and democratic political processes.”(9)

Dr. Jane Kelsey, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa, has written extensively on the nature of the coming global economic order, more particularly on the shape of things to come within the Asia Pacific. Her analyses of APEC provide useful descriptions of what we are up against, and argue, beyond an exclusive focus on the politics of Nation statism, for an agenda of engagement that is global both in nature and scope. Her findings bode ill for the future of the Pacific Basin, and the Rim. I encourage each of you to consult and familiarize yourselves with her writings, for they depict, in a description of the pertinent challenges facing the region, the shape of a new politics to come vis-à-vis APEC.(10)

“Rimsters,” as Bruce Cumings in 1991 called those celebrating the incipient birth of a regional economic forum dominated by the Rim countries, now extol the unrelenting evolution of this regional economic order; back then, as Cumings wrote, there were just “academics trying to find some way to interest fatcats in funding Asian or international studies. ‘Pacific Rim’ was a discourse searching out an incipient material base, targeted upon exporters within Asian markets, or importers of Asian products. It was “a field for transnational technocrats and policymakers.”(11)   In APEC, we have a perfect marriage between the two. Furthermore, today, so called APEC Study Centers proliferate across the Pacific as well as Cyberspace, now with formidable financial backing from big financial places as the IMF and World Bank, including the East West Center in Honolulu, which receives its funding from the United States Congress.(12)  These have pretty much settled in, and now dedicated to justifying the “virtues” of globalization.

Previous to my arrival here I received, via Email from Azziz Chowdry at the GATT Watchdog organization in Aotearoa, a new version of Dr. Kelsey’s paper, “APEC: To Engage or Not To Engage?,” posted earlier to the APEC L Forum. The question is indeed a difficult one to answer, as APEC promises no likelihood of ever being addressed by anyone outside of its informal structure, and discourages initiatives aimed at such engagement. Even the South Pacific Forum, the regional grouping of Pacific Island Nations, with the exception of Papua New Guinea, is not a member, but has an Observer status. Yet as a regional vehicle for effecting international integration of Pacific Basin and Rim nations’ economies into the global economy, and thereby bringing to pass a host of fundamental changes that will bring about a historic transformation of the Pacific as a whole, it is a vital entity. Kelsey writes that the way APEC operates, NGO participation “realistically…is never going to happen,” and wonders whether, in the absence of parity, there is any value to be gained from seeking such participation.

“APEC was born of the market, having been nurtured enthusiastically and protectively by the forces of market liberalisation, especially the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council [PECC]. They have achieved deep integration of the interests and voices of capital into every element of its operation and reinforced the dependency of states on markets. No NGO or people’s forum will ever be elevated to an equivalent position within APEC.”(13)

In spite of its exclusiveness, APEC is a vital entity of sorts in the region, as it becomes the prime vehicle through which an immense amount of transnational capital passes. Twenty years ago, “world money markets traded about $10 billion per day,” while today, “these markets now trade more than $1.3 trillion every day, more than $400 trillion per year.”(14)  APEC’s agenda of creating “unrestricted foreign investment[s],” “minimal controls on big business,” “privatisation of state assets, utilities and services,” “unlimited export of profits,” etc, with their “serious ‘non economic’ flow on effects” are likely to dramatically change the face of Pacific communities forever.(15)

For APEC to be removing all impediments to the free flow of a portion of $400 trillion or more per year, we will need to brace ourselves for the biggest economic typhoon/hurricane that will ever hit the Pacific. Amidst such depressing conditions, we are compelled to ask, what can be “more fairer alternatives for Pacific Islanders” than inundation either by sea level rise caused by erratic global climate change and/or enormous amounts of global capital seeking to establish or exacerbate new dependencies.

Ending the Paralysis, Theoretical Prologue for Action

Have you despaired, and lost all hope? I hope not. I want to return to my theoretical musings about colonial-like economic orders. Can we chart our way out of the paralysis induced by the awesome nature of a transnational phenomenon whose consequences we can only (supposedly) seek to attenuate? In essence, we should ask, is there something inexorable about the myriad processes, and aspirations, of global capital? Are there possibilities even for alterity of imagination? Must we be inexorably led down a path that only promises nothing other than our collective demise? What does this mean then for the kind of work that we must do?

Again, as I alluded to in the beginning of this paper, I have been inspired to hope, by the current theoretical efforts being made in charting a course from within the intellectual debates given birth to by European/American colonialism and the anti colonial struggles that have been on going for many, many years. Judging from the nature, and spatial location, of these theoretical debates vis-à-vis the myriad places where actual liberation struggles are being waged and oftentimes the unfortunate distance between the two one begins to grasp that the foundations of this cacophony between theory and distant practice is at the level of imagination.

It is imagination then, I believe, that must be decolonized. When the Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o first composed the words of his Decolonizing the Mind, he was intending to make an intervention in the shaping of a particular practice, i.e. the production of African literature in the local vernacular.(16) Beyond the politics of language that interests and inspires him, this is a first step in a process of decolonization that then must seek to put in place the foundations for creating a new social, economic, and political order. This stage requires the decolonization of imagination, so that colonially emancipated peoples are free to explore new models for survival.

This is the stance of much of the progressive writings on the politics of post colonialism which try to depict colonial power, and its accompanying justificatory discourse, NOT as an all encompassing reality, but in fact one fraught with extreme ambivalence–what is taken to mean the scattered manifestations of the inability of colonial power to sustain its “unity” in both core and periphery, throughout all of its existence. Such ambivalence, according to Stephen Slemon, “bankrupts” traditional conceptions of colonial power, and allow for the retrieval of “agency” of the oppressed, the periphery, those on the “margins” of a global politico-economic order.(17)  Strategically, this becomes very crucial within the context of a reconfigured global (economic) order/power. We, both in the South and the North, are implicated in an increasingly integrated economic order that threatens to displace us all in the concentration of excessive wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

What is observed is that we have increasingly become detached from the privileged sites of power, and of subservience. A few days before I was to leave to come to Canada, a colleague of mine from Samoa invited me to a private video showing of the life and work of the powerful feminist writer Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde.” I was struck by Lorde’s words when she proclaims that we live in a world of intense contradictions, but that in spite of these, we must continue to reach out, we must not allow ourselves to be so overwhelmed by our individual or local battles that we surrender every ounce of our strength and imagination which might otherwise be of benefit to other struggles elsewhere. Each of us might be fighting overwhelming battles wherever we are, but remember we have a war to win. The fate of humanity, even the fate of the planet itself, cannot be left entirely to the transnational technocrats who demand that we sell bits and pieces of ourselves and the dignity of our communities so that they might more fully enjoy their leisure.

There is a lesson to be learned from this, I think. In contemplating the nature of the myriad processes of globalization, and of the proper responses to them, it should probably be useful to seek to “globalize the theory while localizing the effects,” i.e. efficiently managing local efforts aimed at ameliorating the monotonous, impoverished conditions produced by corporate takeovers of the local, national and/or regional authorities.(18)  Vigilance to efforts at all these levels, therefore, will not diminish, but instead will continue to evolve in ways that both inform and elevate our commitments to a common struggle.

There are countless groups of people organizing themselves everywhere in order to educate themselves about the nature of the economic/political predicament we all are facing, like we are currently doing. These should continue. Yesterday, several groups and individuals met in Montreal to consider and address similar issues as well as to prepare for the APEC Peoples’ Summit. Their objective was to gather “with the aim of building solidarity for people’s empowerment” and “to identify key issues concerning the peoples of the 18 APEC member countries.” We look forward to their findings and commitments for action at the Peoples’ Summit next week.  [note: I have attached, at the end of this paper, as ANNEX 1, a copy of the “Asia Pacific Charter of People's Right: Globalizing Solidarities,” which came out of that Montreal gathering.]

A Common Politics of Survival

Here is where I have pondered the nature of what we must do, or seek to effect in our lived experience of globalization’s impact. Having demonstrated an earlier (and preferred) proclivity for (a) localized agenda(s) for action, I would like to offer some comments on the island nation of Belau. The basis of our decolonization, our resistance to militarism and nuclearism may offer a modest version of the kind of resistance politics we are seeking to cultivate. However modest it may be, I think (or at the very least I would like to optimistically believe, even at the risk of romanticizing my own nation’s decolonization movement) that Belau is in one sense the quintessential exemplar of the kind of nation that we would idealistically desire to see, as a contrast to the rampant militarism and nuclear weapon development that continue unabated in a post Cold War World.

Against the very prominent backdrop of war and the ever present legacies of war’s devastation and against the pronounced aspirations of the U.S. Pentagon’s plan to linger on and loiter around in the Western Pacific, Belau sought to emerge as a nation! Americans didn’t just say no; they said, hell no. And we said in so much roundabout words, NO and to hell with you! The ensuing struggle took the next fifteen years to resolve itself, assassinations of our leaders, bombings and State sponsored terrorism, and the final break up of the mighty Soviet Union and delegitimation of the Cold War (which dictated the nature of politics inside Belau). In the words of a colleague of mine who is completing a political science doctoral dissertation at the University of Hawai’i, a descendant of the victims of Hiroshima, Belau “penned a most subversive plot and sought to impose it on the prevailing global nuclear power configuration.”(19)  The circumstances surrounding Belau’s emergence as a nation state therefore came to symbolize for us the kind of resistance that must be initiated and sustained in the kind of work we must do.

The details of our decolonization movement will be left for another opportunity to share, as we are intent on sharing relevant stories that empower us in terms of economic globalization and the manner in which its menacing tentacles both overpower and disempower our communities. We need to develop a politics of action that transcends the distinguishing features of our nations, as transnational corporations employ these features to divide and conquer our communities. I would like to say that the objectives of such a politics be those that are aimed at reaffirming, as well as re-establishing, our right to survival against these colonial like efforts to consolidate massive economic and political power.

Thus I have borrowed “a common politics of survival” from Bob Aldridge’s and Ched Myers’s book, Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self Determination, to sketch a locally based response to the global processes of imperialism, militarism, nuclearism, and economic globalization/imperialism. Having passed the stage of articulating our political future with the United States, the root cause of our problem may have changed, but the challenge, I submit, is still very much the same–for all of us. It is seeking to assert our right to survive, unmolested as much as possible from the business of imperialism. This seems now to be an ancient struggle. The global integration of national economies is only the latest phase of this “imperialist pillage.”

This was Antonio Tujan’s conclusion at last year’s NGO meetings parallel with APEC Summit in the Philippines:

“Globalization is not simply a generic term for this phenomenon of integration into the global market or of world wide domination. It is an imperialist process of global redivision and increasing economic exploitation. Globalization is an imperialist economic offensive involving the forcible, greater integration of economies into the global system of monopoly capitalism that is now being camouflaged as free market economics.

“At the heart of globalization is this neo liberal program of opening up the whole world further for imperialist pillage, opening up the global market further for transnational penetration and control, restructuring third world economies further and increasing the power and role of the market to serve the demand for more raw materials and cheap labor and sell more first world products.”(20)

Aldridge and Myers’s portrayal of the collateral damage inflicted on indigenous peoples as American imperialism progressed relentlessly, not fully satisfied upon reaching the last tide lines of California’s shores, but stretching all the way to the Hawaiian Islands, thieving, conniving with traitorous conspirators, even overthrowing a sovereign nation, amidst its own empty pronouncements of love of “democracy,” “freedom,” “human rights,” “self-determination” and similar obscenities. They continued westward, exploding atomic bombs in the pristine tropical lagoons of the Marshall Islands, evaporating atolls and shamelessly committing ethno-genocide, all in the name of defending “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights.”

Once firmly established in Micronesia, America sent off its military aircrafts on a mission of death over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands and thousands perished in a genocide that could be labeled “Made in America.” The logic was the same: to defend “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights,” touting these as masks in covering up a vile environmental racism against Asians and Pacific Islanders. The “fruits of [Western] progress,” they loudly proclaimed as though they were really on to fooling someone. But,

“The ‘fruits of progress,’ from the perspective of the underside of history, has been this: countless once flourishing native cultures have been either eradicated, ‘assimilated,’ or decimated and pushed onto reserves. In the totalist systems of modernity there seems to be no place–other than museums–for indigenous minorities who refuse to cooperate with the grand western project of progress. If there is a kind of ‘primal sin’ of modern capitalist development, then, it is the violence, deception and theft perpetrated during the ‘age of discovery.’ It is the legacy that attests to the truth of Walter Benjamin’s dictum: ‘There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’”(21)

The script is suspiciously still the same, to reiterate once more the intensification of a system that unduly benefits a multitude of metropolitan locations, at the expense of smaller nations. Belau wrote a nuclear-free Constitution, becoming the first country in the world to produce such a Constitution. We were rejecting a closer US relationship whose military prerogatives prevailed upon our democratic wishes to denuclearize our island; in essence it was a radical rejection of the prevailing bi-polar Cold War power formation which relied on militarism and nuclear-deterrence to keep in it check. The struggle took over 20 years. During its heyday, throughout the 1980s, we discovered that the neocolonial establishment in Belau, dominated by men, proved useless in the end in standing firm on behalf of protecting our nuclear-free Constitution and the integrity of the political process wherein we waged that nuclear-free movement. Palau’s president was assassinated as a result. Other peoples were killed and government was hijacked by pro-US military advocates intent on carrying out murderous threats against nuclear-free movement supporters. It’s a longer story that cannot be related here. Interested readers can consult one good source, the book by Bob Aldridge and Ched Myers, Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self-Determination. I quote freely from it in prior research for this paper and whose publication information can be found in the Endnotes section below.

For us, the women of Belau took a lead and went into the frontlines, sensing the erosion of their matrilineal leadership roles in the society. They organized themselves, educated themselves about the real stakes inherent in the proposed militarization pact with the United States, and took to the streets to demand principled negotiations with the United States Government. The women sent spokespersons to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. Ultimately, while we were compelled to accept what amounted to a non-choice, we look back at the enormity of the struggle and marvel at how we did it. We held out to the promise of a nuclear free island to the very end, even until the collapse of the former Soviet Union whose existence had shaped the very contradictions being played out politically in Belau.

The women were culturally endowed with the right to lead and in the end did so. Palau society as well as its political process though visibly led by men “is subtly but firmly guided by an undercurrent of matrilineal authority,” as Aldridge and Myers noted in their book. They write,

“Those familiar with Palauan politics are well aware of the reputation male politicians have for drifting back and forth on key issues–very few prominent Palauan public figures have remained steadfast, for example, to the principles of the original Constitutional Convention [which produced the nuclear-free Constitution]. In contrast, the women have assumed responsibility to uphold traditional ideals, and while their leadership is usually exercised through quiet, behind-the-scenes persuasion and influence, when they perceive a threat to the Palauan way of life they are quite capable of taking courageous action”.(22)

The kind of struggle being demanded as a price for constant vigilance in this great effort to thwart the designs of unfettered global capital may be similar to what Belau had to experience before achieving closure, a precarious peace that may just as soon disintegrate, if unfettered global capital only replaces what we feared more than a decade ago, unrestrained foreign money and interest in the progressive demise of our culture and country.

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, the world gathered to consider the impact such unrestrained global commerce was inflicting on humanity and its planetary land base. In 1994, just two years after the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, the Small Island Nations of the world met in the Caribbean to reaffirm that what we all proclaimed in Rio would continue to inspire our programs of ecological restitution and sustainable development that catered to the basic NEEDS, not wants, of human beings. We met there in Barbados “to ensure the means of survival,” as the NGOs reminded the Governments, “not for now only–but for all time.” But “[t]hese commitments,” as the NGOs proclaimed, “were not only about the basic need and right to eat, they were about the loftier human endeavours–justice, equity, acknowledgment, redress and partnership.”(23) Lofty indeed! Well, what has taken place in just the last five years that we are here gathered again to seek that perhaps just a semblance of these “lofty human endeavour” be given due respect? The NGOs in the West Indies continued,

“The world met then [in Rio] to acknowledge the state of all people and the earth itself. We met then to re order our priorities in order that we could guarantee a future not only for humanity but for all life and for the planet itself. We all accepted that the task would be great, the road long and the resolve might falter. But we committed then and we believe we are committed still to a partnership.”(24)

The authors of Resisting the Serpent [in Belau] end their book with William Appleman Williams’s powerful statement about imperial games. Having recently joined with Bob Aldridge and Ched Myers in the continuing international nuclear disarmament struggle, a privilege that I am eternally grateful for, I join with them in this recasting of William Appleman Williams, in this contemporary period:

“Now is the time to learn from them [who lost, i.e. the countless Indigenous/Native Peoples all over the earth who had to become collateral damage to Western 'progress']. What happens if we simply say ‘no’ to empire? Or do we have either the imagination or the courage to say ‘no’ to empire? It is now our responsibility. It has to do with how we live and die. We as a culture have run out of imperial games to play [read APEC, GATT, WTO, MAI]. (emphasis mine).(25)

In spite of the suspicious continuity of objective and method that all too readily betray a curiously similar politics of plunder inherent in these new models of economic globality, we cannot simply rule out globalization’s excesses as illegitimate. For reasons that I have described earlier, the transnational exchange of goods and services has contributed significantly to the material well being of communities within an international division of labor arrangement that allows communities to trade goods and/or services unique to their areas. However, the logic of global capital(ism), by its very nature, all too often exceeds expectations that are humane and just.(26) Thus Sforza Roderick, Nova, and Weisbrot write,

“The Institute for International Economics, a leading advocate of increasing global economic integration, asks in a book published in March, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? And in his now widely read article in the Atlantic Monthly, billionaire financier George Soros sounded alarms about the social disintegration that he argues is the byproduct of rapid economic deregulation”.(27)

There is no doubt even the staunch proponents of globalization are increasingly questioning the way the myriad processes of globalization are leaving countless communities and workplaces in economic ruin, with greater pressures to depress minimum wage, human rights, and worker rights, and environmental protection requirements in “developing” nations as incentives for capital investments. It is extremely important that the kind of work we do will be to identify and expose the weak links in the chain of arguments that globalization proponents use to legitimize transnational control of local economic systems. Politics does not take place within an economic vacuum, but does so in a reciprocal manner, reacting and responding to embedded economic forces. Giving in to the kind of economic forces that are dictated by transnational corporations located within metropolitan locations is, in essence, giving away our sovereignty, as local politics come to mimic/mirror these forces.

I have taken the liberty of including the suggestions and ideas that Dr. Jane Kelsey presents in her “Manual for Counter Technopols,” ideas for actions that challenge corporate rule (See ANNEX 2).

Again, I am grateful for the ever reliable Internet which, I admit, is perhaps one of the best thing that globalization has to offer if only because of the proliferation of essential information being simultaneously produced and circulated around the world in an instance. There are endless opportunities for collaboration, even as we are made aware of the limitations–in whatever form–that are placed on our ability to collaborate and conspire (in the tradition of the positive Aquarian Conspiracy Theory of Marilyn Ferguson–via Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “conspiracy of love”) to bring about a world liberated from the forces that disempower peoples and communities in the process of enriching a select few.(28)  Because the systems of globalization seek to erase human creativity and imagination, they are akin to slavery. Candido Grzybowski, Executive Director of The Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis, writes:

“There is no worse slavery than to be deprived of our ability to think, create, and dare in freedom. There is no greater domination than an imposed way of thinking that cannot be challenged. Nothing is more tragic than to be limited by visions, desires and justifications presented to us as inevitable.

“Globalization is more than a process in human history; it seems to be and to act as a prison for hearts and minds, thoughts and movements. The dominant form of globalization appears as the only way out that nothing could oppose. We are told that anyone who does not adjust to this fate will perish. At least, this is how the concept of globalization has been disseminated by governments, businesspeople, financiers or their ideologues

“We must rebel against this way of thinking. Planetary citizenship requires nonconformist thought and action. The first response to globalization is to acknowledge that it was produced by us, by human beings. It is not a monster to rule over us, but a human invention, with its limitations and possibilities like our own life condition.”(29)

I conclude this brief presentation by acknowledging once again a group of folks who have been organizing themselves and investing a great amount of time and energy in contemplating alternative principles that would govern more humane and just international trade and investment: CUSO, your very own Canadian NGO devoted to assisting many international development projects in developing countries from the Pacific to Africa. Last March when I came to Canada as a guest of the South Pacific Peoples Foundation and the Canadian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to participate in the Indigenous Peoples Roundtable, in preparation for APEC, I heard of a CUSO volunteer on her way to Vanuatu to be a nurse for people with disabilities. This is to be highly commended. Well, through the auspices of the CUSO branch in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Roger Peters offers his “Global Principles Governing International Trade and Investment: An Alternative to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment” which offers the parameters for a more humane international trade/investment arrangement. He describes these as subsets of the three areas of Need, Values and Principles. It is in draft form and was prepared for Community Coalition Against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). I have attached it to this paper as ANNEX 3.

There are endless reasons to be optimistic about the nature of our task. While it may seem that we no longer possess the power to act on our own behalf, we still do and we must respond, not merely react. Grzybowski continued explaining what we must do.

“We must use a different approach to think about globalization, taking alternative globalizations into consideration. For this, the conventional hegemonic way of thinking dictated by neoliberalism and by ‘free market’ consensus is not very helpful. It is necessary that we, as citizens of the planet earth committed to democracy, build our own agenda, our way of viewing issues and tasks, our own priorities. We can’t ignore other approaches and their proposals, but let’s not limit ourselves to them. Let’s face up to them.

“[O]ur strategy must combine actions and proposals to strengthen and mobilize civil society, and efforts to urge governments and multilateral agencies to take the pathway already indicated on the international agenda. The official [i.e. government] agenda should not set the limits of our action. We need to expand our independent spaces for political action, with our own agenda, even at the international level. NGO and social movements, conferences, debates, forums, and networks (including computer networks) should help in the task of emancipating societies, of providing them with autonomy and capacity for exercising their role”.(30)

These, I hope, will assist in the shaping of a politics of space that will help us in asserting our sovereignty from the global reaches of transnational corporations. Thank you very much for the opportunity you have given me to share a few thoughts about organizing ourselves to resist forces that conspire to disempower us. Only through vigilance and activism inspired by a politics of resistance/confrontation against spatially diffused power, can we continue to assert/retain control of our communities.

In conclusion, again, thank you very much.

—-

ANNEX 1

Asia Pacific Charter of People’s Right: Globalizing Solidarities, Groups and Individuals Working to Defend and Assert Pacific Rim Peoples’ Rights

Gathered in Montréal on November 15th, 1997 with the aim of building solidarity for people´s empowerment, this working document was adopted and identifies key issues concerning the peoples of the 18 APEC member countries, the document serves as a starting point and debate on peoples’ rights in the context of globalization.

THE CHARTER OF PEOPLE´S RIGHTS

• Against market globalization
• Against the commodification of our rights
• Against globalization – a war machine used against peoples
• And for People´s Sovereignty,

In solidarity with those struggling,

We assert, therefore, respect for the fundamental rights of all peoples to a decent standard of living, to health, education and work in a society that guarantees equality, solidarity and democracy, and that fully respects the right to development, peace and sustainable development.

We therefore adopt

The Charter of Peoples’ Rights

The right:

• to food, clothing and shelter;
• to health, education and work;
• to full equality, without exploitation or discrimination;
• on the basis of solidarity between peoples and societies;
• through democracy and sustainable development.

We assert:

• that governments are responsible for guaranteeing the full realization of these civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, including the right to development;
• that any policy that does not allow for the realization of these rights, with freedom, of course, but also with equality and fraternity, is a policy opposed to the rights of peoples to development and to a healthy
• and sustainable environment;
• that it is the responsibility of each government to provide unconditional support for the democratic development of all peoples through social justice;
• and that it is the responsibility of each people, in its own context and with its own forms of struggle, to demand these universal rights and give them specific expression.

We see that the realization of these rights is incompatible with the current APEC liberalization project (Kyoto Declaration, Japan, 14 November 1995), and that it will be impossible to apply these principles without fundamental changes to the social system.

* We demand that Governments participating in the APEC “Summit” undertake the implementation of a democratic program to guarantee justice, ensure dignity and provide for the economic, social and cultural wellbeing of all peoples, and protect our natural heritage for the children of our children (Declaration: Manila Peoples Forum on APEC – November 21 24, 1996), and that they ratify and apply international conventions and agreements on human and labour rights (Kyoto, Nov. 1995).

We will struggle to establish, in our countries, a social, economic, political and cultural order that will preserve us from foreign domination and protect us from exploitation and oppression, enable us to develop our natural resources and our talents for the greatest good of our peoples, and rely on international cooperation based on equality, respect and mutual benefit. (Declaration of People´s Conference Against Imperialist Globalization, Quezon, Philippines, 23 Nov.1996)

We will struggle to ensure that in each of our countries, the principles of this Charter of Peoples’ Rights are formally adopted and dictate the actions of those who govern us.

Fair Trade

States must guarantee the conditions of fair trade.

We consider unfair and unacceptable any trade based on violation of the rights of peoples and human beings, including the right to sustainable development, a healthy environment, and food security.

Put an end to the impunity of corporation which violate those rights.

Ways must be found to provide consumers with guarantees that the products they buy are not produced through the social and environmental exploitation of marginalized regions.

National Sovereignty and Democratic Development

We assert that relationships between sovereign states is contingent upon people’s self-determination.

This implies:

• that peoples must participate democratically, freely and genuinely in policy-making;

–including policy development and implementation,

–which cannot be left to the laws of profit and markets;

• that corruption is incompatible with democracy

- and that there is no democracy without accountability;

• that national sovereignty extends to natural resources.

We denounce

– the use of debt as a way of depriving peoples of their right to self-determination and sovereignty.

Social, Economic, Human, and People’s Rights

In response to the multiple violations of rights caused by liberalization policies,

We assert again

• that human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interconnected (Vienna, 1993);
• that the systematic violation of the economic and social rights of peoples is an international crime that must not go unpunished. It is the responsibility of the State to respect, protect and promote all human
• rights and insure the right to due process;
• • that the liberalisation and the intensification of international trade exchanges has led to impoverishment, unemployment and the exclusion of whole sectors of societies, and that women and children often suffer the greatest hardship as a result.

 Right to Land and Food Security

We assert

• that the land belongs to those who cultivate it; and that the right to eat includes the right of access to land, the control of its use and its production;
• that a landholding system is only fair if it guarantees food security for all;
• that food security must have priority over export requirements and debt payments.

 Workers’ Employment

We assert

the fundamental nature of the right to work and of all the rights of working men and women;

that these rights include equal access to paid employment, and fair distribution of income, in safe and secure working conditions;

that these rights include all trade union rights and freedom of association;

that migrant workers should be guaranteed equal treatment as citizens;

that we will struggle everywhere for the adoption of a Charter of Labour Rights and the Right to Work with strong and effective monitoring and implementation mechanisms

Environmentally Sound Development for and by the People

Against imperialist plunder of the Third World and destruction of the environment.

We assert

• principles which imply responsible, equitable, and optimal use of natural resources and protection of ecology and environment from abuse and destruction,
• and which forbids the dumping of industrial and toxic waste, and especially the imposition of technologies, modes of production and consumption unsustainable in less developed countries.

 ANNEX 2     — Tips on How to Oppose Corporate Rule

Reference:

Dr. Jane Kelsey

Associate Professor of Law, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dr. Kelsey has devised what she calls a Manual for Counter-Technopols – containing suggestions and ideas for actions that challenge corporate rule; the following tactics and strategies are excerpted from that manual.

Tips on How to Oppose Corporate Rule [not in any particular order of importance]:

1. Be skeptical about fiscal and other “crises.” Examine the real nature of the problem, who defines it as a crisis, and who stands to gain. Demand to know the range of possible solutions, and the costs and benefits of each to whom. If the answers are not forthcoming, burn the midnight oil to produce the answers for yourselves.
2. Don’t cling to a political party that has been converted to neoconservatism. Fighting to prevent a social democratic party’s capture by right-wing zealots is important. But once the party has been taken over, maintaining solidarity on the outside while seeking change from within merely gives them more time. When the spirit of the party is dead, shed the old skin and create something new.
3. Take economics seriously. Neo-liberal economic fundamentalism pervades everything. There is no boundary between economic, social, environmental or other policies. Those who focus on narrow sectoral concerns and ignore the pervasive economic agenda will lose their own battles and weaken the collective ability to resist. Leaving economics to economists is fatal.
4. Expose the weaknesses of their theory. Neo-liberal theories are riddled with dubious assumptions and internal inconsistencies, and often lack empirical support. These right wing theories need to be exposed as self-serving rationalizations which operate in the interests of the elites whom the policies empower.
5. Challenge hypocrisy. Ask who is promoting a strategy as being in the “national interest,” and who stands to benefit most. Document cases where self-interest is disguised as public good.
6. Expose the masterminds. Name the key corporate players behind the scenes, document their interlocking roles and allegiances, and expose the personal and corporate benefits they receive.
7. Maximize every obstacle. Federal systems of government, written constitutions, legal requirements and regulations, supra-national institutions like the ILO and the UN, and strong local governments can provide barriers that slow down the pace of the corporate takeover.
8. Work hard to maintain solidarity. Avoid the trap of divide and rule. Sectoral in-fighting is self-indulgent and everyone risks losing in the end.
9. Do not compromise the labour movement. Build awareness of the corporate agenda at union local and workplace levels. Resist concessions that tend to deepen co-optation and weaken the unions’ ability to fight back.
10. Maintain the concept of an efficient public service. Resist attempts to discredit and dismantle the public sector by admitting deficiencies and promoting constructive models for change. Build support among client groups and the public which stresses the need for public services and the risks of cutting or privatizing them.
11. Encourage community leaders to speak out. Public criticism from civic and church leaders, folk heroes and other prominent “names” makes corporate and political leaders uncomfortable. It also makes people think. Remind community leaders of their social obligations, and the need to preserve their own self-respect.
12. Avoid anti-intellectualism. A pool of academics and other intellectuals who can document and expose the fallacies and failures of the corporate agenda, and develop viable alternatives in partnership with community and sectoral groups, is absolutely vital. They need to be supported when they come under attack, and challenged when they fail to speak out or are co-opted or seduced.
13. Establish an alternative think-tank. If one already exists, make sure it is adequately funded. Neoliberal and neoconservative think-tanks have shown how well-resourced institutes on the right can rationalize and legitimize the corporate agenda. The need is obvious for one or more equally well supported think-tanks on the left. Uncoordinated research by isolated critics will not suffice.
14. Invest in the future. Provide financial, human and moral support to sustain alternative analysis, publications, think-tanks, and people’s projects that are working actively to resist the corporate agenda and work for progressive change.
15. Support those who speak out. The harassment and intimidation of critics of the corporate takeover works only if those targeted for attacks lack personal, popular and institutional support. Withdrawing from public debate leaves those who remain more exposed.
16. Promote ethical investment. Support investors who genuinely respond to social and ecological concerns. Expose unethical investors who don’t. Boycotts have proved a powerful force in environmental, anti-nuclear and safe product campaigns. Companies that ignore social and environmental concerns can be embarrassed and called to account.
17. Think global, act local. Develop an understanding of the global nature of economic power, and those forces which are driving current trends. Draw the links between these global forces and local events. Target local representatives, meetings and activities which feed into the global economic machine.
18. Think local, act global. Actively support international strategies for change, such as people’s tribunals, non-governmental forums and codes of conduct, and action campaigns against unethical companies and corporate practices. Recognize that international action is essential to counter the collaboration of states and corporations, and to empower civil society to take back control.
19. Develop alternative media outlets. Once mainstream media are captured by the right, it is difficult for critics to enter the debate, and impossible to lead it. Alternative media and innovative strategies must be put in place. Effective communication and exchange of information between sectoral groups and activists are essential, despite the time and resources involved.
20. Raise the levels of popular economic literacy. Familiarize people with the basic themes, assumptions and goals of economic fundamentalism. Convince them that economic policy affects everyone, that everyone has a right to participate, and that alternatives to the corporate agenda do exist.
21. Resist market-speak. Maintain control of the language, challenge its capture by the right, and refuse to convert your discourse to theirs. Insist on using hard specific terms that convey the hard realities of what is going on.
22. Be realistic. Recognize that the world has changed, in some ways irreversibly, and that the past was far from perfect. Avoid being trapped solely into reacting and defending the status quo. Defending the past for its own sake adds credibility to the claims of the right and wastes opportunities to work for genuine change.
23. Be pro-active. Start rethinking visions, strategies and models of development for the future. Show that there are workable, preferable alternatives from the start. This becomes progressively more difficult the longer you wait to respond to the corporate agenda.
24. Challenge the TINA (“there is no alternative”) claim. Convince people–individually and collectively–that there are real and workable alternatives. Present options that combine realism with the prospect of meaningful change. Actively promote these alternatives and have them ready to be implemented when the corporate agenda fails.
25. Promote participatory democracy. Build a constituency for change through alternative information networks and media. Use community, workplace, women’s, church, union, First Nations and other outlets to encourage people to take back control. Empower them with the knowledge they need to understand the right-wing forces affecting them and how they can fight back most effectively.
26. Hold the line. The corporate takeover is not yet complete. Social programs have not yet been entirely dismantled. Unions have not yet been destroyed. Not all environmental protections have been eliminated. There is still time, through sustained and co-ordinated action, to hold the line.

*

ANNEX 3

Global Principles Governing International Trade and Investment:

An Alternative to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)

Draft prepared for Community Coalition Against the MAI.

by Roger Peters, November 5, 1997

Need

We now live in a global economy where international trade and investment link the economies of all countries and determines the current and future state of the world’s communities and peoples. The bulk of this international investment is made up of the savings, pension funds and shareholdings of ordinary citizens.

There is a need therefore for a comprehensive agreement on international trade and investment, which all countries would be invited to sign, that regulates the activities of international corporations and investors to the world’s overall benefit while providing some protection for investment and a common set of rules.

Such a global agreement would differ from the currently proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in that it would set legally binding international community standards and then provide investment rules based on these standards. The MAI, on the other hand, sets common rules to protect investors’ rights but with only voluntary exceptions for community interests.

Values

Rules governing trade and investment should be based on the following values:

• democratic decision making and governmental accountability to a nation’s citizen
• social citizenship and the collective responsibility for our fellow human beings
• the need to preserve and protect our environment
• the subordination of private corporations and property rights to the common good
• the ability to reasonably benefit from our labor and investment

Principles

The principles governing trade and investment should be as follows:

1. It is the democratic right of communities, through their governments, to set the rules regulating all international trade and investment, and to approve these rules through legally binding national and local consultation.

2. All investments would be treated equally but be covered by a common set of rules, but would be required to meet legally binding international standards and performance requirements. A comprehensive set of international standards should be established which govern all trade, investment, and business practices. These standards would be based on current international agreements and seek to set the highest standards for the following community values:

• protection of human rights as set out in the U.N. Declaration
• universal access to education, health care, and social services
• a living wage
• a safe and equitable workplace
• protection and repair of the world’s environment and resources as set out in Agenda 21
• public health and safety
• protection and community ownership of land and natural resources
• the rights of aboriginal peoples
• hazardous and dangerous products (inc. land mines, chemical weapons, nuclear waste, etc)
• the right to collective action

3. In addition, communities and countries, through their governments, should be able to make policies that provide special protection of, or incentives for, local development and protection of natural resources. This would include:

• financial and economic policies and budgets that serve community needs
• limitations on property rights and intellectual property
• provision of public funded education, health care, energy and public services
• preferential treatment of local business, public corporations, cooperatives, agriculture, etc.
• allocation of land and resources as parks and reserves
• special rights of aboriginal peoples
• control of the movement of capital
• rights to reward environmental and social responsibility over and above international standards e.g. special designation of high efficiency products or Eco logo and preferential buying policies
• regulation of the sale and content of products based on social impact, environmental impact, public health and safety, or….e.g. minimum recycled material content, banning of MMT
• preferential treatment of local cultural industries

4. Communities, through their governments, should be able to set legal performance requirements for domestic and international investment, business practices and development in the form of regulations to meet the above standards. Communities would also be free to sanction other governments and corporations which do not meet these standards and are not in compliance with U.N. and other international declarations, laws and agreements.

5. Any disputes between communities, country governments and investors would be referred to a fully independent disputes tribunal which would hear and resolve the dispute in the community or country affected through an open and democratic public process.

—-

ENDNOTES [for references in "From a Politics of Place to a Politics of Space..."]

1) “Return to Colonialism” is a title of a recent analysis of the prospects of the Lomé Convention which stipulates trade relations between Europe and some Pacific Nations, and the character of current European development assistance vis a vis the member States of Africa, Caribbean, and the Pacific (ACP). See Greenidge, Carl B., “Return to Colonialism: The New Orientation of European Development Assistance,” DSA European Development Policy Study Group, DP#6, Brussels: ACP Secretariat, May 1997.

2) See Billig, Michael (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. See also Aijaz Ahmad (1994). In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature. London and New York: Verso, especially pp. 37 39.

3)  Chatterjee, Partha (1986). Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p. 40.

4) Chatterjee, P. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, Ibid.

5) Qureshi, Zia, “Globalization: New Opportunities, Tough Challenges.” Finance and Development, A Quarterly Publication of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Washington, D.C., March 1996.

6) See World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, New York: Oxford University Press. See also Brian Levy’s summary article, “How Can States Foster Markets?” in Finance and Development: A Quarterly of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, (September 1997), pp. 21 23.

7) “Globalization and Development,” Proceedings of the 8th General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), September 1996, Vienna, Austria. In Lomé 2000, No. 3, October 1996, p. 1.

8)  Karliner, Joshua (1997). The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization. (Sierra Club Books).

9) Karliner, Joshua, The Corporate Planet, Ibid.

10) I should also alert you, if you don’t already know, of the very fine work that came out of last year’s APEC Peoples’ Summit meetings in Manila, Philippines. The Philippine organization BAYAN maintains a website where you can access these materials.

11) In Cumings, Bruce, “The Political Economy of the Pacific Rim,” Keynote Address to the 15th Annual Conference on the Political Economy of the World System, Honolulu, Hawai’i, March 28, 1991, p.2.

12) The East West Center, in Honolulu, Hawai’i, was established in 1960 by act of the U.S. Congress to foster cultural and technical understanding between East and West. The APEC Study Center used to be run by the Center’s International Economics and Politics Program. It has been relegated to another part of the Center, due do recent budget cuts. One can also access these study centers over the Internet.

13) Kelsey, Jane, “APEC: To Engage or Not to Engage?” [I have quoted from Jane Kelsey's article, posted onto the APEC Forum Listserve. I thank the GATT Watchdog organization for providing me with Kelsey's piece. (October 23, 1997).

14) In "Global Economy Out of Control, World's New Players Floundering," The Honolulu Advertiser, September 28, 1997, p. A1.

15) In Kelsey, Jane, "APEC: To Engage or Not to Engage," Ibid.

16) See Thiong'o, Ngugi Wa, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. (1986). London: Heinemann.

17) See Slemon, Stephen, "The Scramble for Post Colonialism," (1994). In De-Scribing Empire: Post Colonialism and Textuality. Edited by Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson, New York: Routledge, pp. 15 32 (22).

18) See Galtung, Johan, "In Search of Self Reliance," (1986). In The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making. Edited by Paul Ekins. New York: Routledge, p. 100.

19) Masahide Kato is now writing a doctoral dissertation about resistance to imperialism, by using filmic images in the popular culture to explore the extent of peoples’ resistance. In particular, his explorations of the contributions of Bruce Lee and Bob Marley offer potentially new arenas in both martial arts and reggae music as well as other media in which to track popular resistance to various projects of empire.

20) In Tujan, Antonio, Jr., "APEC and Imperialist Globalization," Address given at the 1996 APEC Peoples’ Summit in Manila, November 1996, p.1. [Posted in BAYAN’s homepage.] Accessed November 10, 1997.

21) In Aldridge, Bob and Ched Myers (1990). Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self Determination. Baltimore, MD: Fortkamp Publishing Company, p. 191. Walter Benjamin’s quote comes from his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” (1969). In Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, pp. 256ff.

22) Aldridge, Bob and Ched Myers (1990). Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self Determination, Ibid., p. 7.

23) In “Statement by NGOs to the Main Committee at the [U.N.] Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States,” Bridgetown, Barbados, 25 April 6 May 1994, p. 1.

24) In Ibid.

25) Williams, William Appleman (1980). Empire as a Way of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 212ff. As quoted in B. Aldridge and C. Myers, Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self Determination. Ibid, pp. 192 193.

26) See Greider, William (1997). One World, Ready Or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster.

27) Sforza Roderick, Scott Nova, and Mark Weisbrot (1997). “Writing the Constitution of a Single Global Economy: A Concise Guide to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment.” Global Policy Forum, The Preamble Center, New York City.

28) Ferguson, Marilyn (1980). The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, p. 19. In describing a personal experience of naming a book devoted to a movement dedicated to the miracles of the human brain and the collective ability to transform human societies, only if the opportunity is nurtured, Marilyn Ferguson “came across a book of spiritual exercises in which the Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, said he wished to signal his comrades, ‘like conspirators,’ that they might unite for the sake of the earth.” After much pondering and speculation, she called this the Aquarian conspiracy.

29) In Grzybowski, Candido (1995), “Civil Society’s Response to Globalization,” Rio de Janeiro, p. 1. (In Corporate Watch Action Alert Site). Accessed November 10, 1997.

30) Grzybowski, Candido, “Civil Society’s Responses to Globalization,” Ibid, p. 4.

© Copyright 2011 Richard N. Salvador

NGO PRESENTATION TO THE NPT REVIEW CONFERENCE PREPARATORY COMMITTEE

UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK, APRIL 8-19, 2002

NGO PRESENTATION TO THE NPT REVIEW CONFERENCE PREPARATORY
COMMITTEE, NEW YORK, APRIL 2002

INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES ON NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION

SPEAKER: Richard Salvador, Pacific Islands Association of NGOs (PIANGO)

Mr. Chairperson, delegates, distinguished panel members and NGO colleagues, I would like to take this opportunity again to express my thanks for allowing us to address you on the continuing relevance of the fate of Indigenous peoples in this forum. I also thank my colleagues, the organizers of these NGO Presentations, for being patient with the submission of this presentation. My name is Richard Salvador and I represent the Pacific Islands’ Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. In this capacity, I have been involved in and serve on the Global Council of the Abolition 2000 Network, which many of you are familiar with.

During the preparations for this presentation, via email discussions across continents and oceans, me and my colleagues struggled to find relevant words to capture the real essence of our message and still stay within the narrow confines of the NPT. This is a difficult process when we attempt to confine an issue with broad implications on the environmental and human health contexts of Indigenous peoples’ existence into the narrow limitations of the NPT. You will begin to see why when you take a broader view of what nuclear power and nuclear weapons production have done to Indigenous peoples.

I shall briefly share the story of one group of Indigenous peoples, the Adnyamathanha of Australia, and their problems with uranium mining, which produces the raw materials for nuclear weapons and nuclear power and the terrible situation they are forced to live in. But this is, as we know, just one aspect of a larger story of nuclear colonialism that undermines livelihoods of Indigenous peoples.

Often we feel short-changed whenever we are asked to present our case before the NPT States Parties because of so many structural limitations inherent in the real focus of the NPT itself. This is a treaty whose purpose seeks to monitor the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and related nuclear technologies; these are activities whose ultimate consequences exceed the clearly defined goals of the NPT in its attempts to control and safeguard these dangerous materials. As such, the NPT fails to address critical matters that profoundly affect Indigenous peoples’ safety and human rights. The real issue for many Indigenous peoples who have been victimized by the Nuclear Age is that of responsibility on the part of NPT States Parties for so much environmental devastation and negative human health consequences. I need only to list some of the critical areas of Indigenous peoples’ experience with uranium mining, the results of these mining activities, nuclear testings and nuclear power storage to illustrate a terrible situation that the Nuclear Age has bequeathed to us. In this instance, we call on NPT Member States to take very seriously the responsibility for what they have inflicted on Indigenous lands and peoples around the world. If we cannot address the importance of any continuing responsibility for what the Nuclear Age has inflicted on Indigenous peoples, who will do so? And where will they do it?

Firstly, I want to share the moving story related to us, by Ms. Jillian Marsh, a member of the Adnyamathanha of Australia and this year’s Co-convenor of the NGO Presentation on Indigenous Peoples. She was unable to come and join us but she helped us to frame the issues as they really are in the context of the NPT. Her peoples’ story strikes a chord in a terrible situation that appeals to our sense of humanity and calls into question everything this Treaty CHOOSES not to address, the true story behind the untold sufferings of the Nuclear Age. This and future conferences of the NPT Parties must be held accountable for what nuclear weapons production and nuclear technology have done. There are also responsibilities that each States Party must accept. In this instance, we call on Australia, the United States, and Canada to rethink their responsibilities for the terrible toll uranium mining companies from these three countries are inflicting on the Adnyamathanha People.

The Adnyamathanha People are dealing with the first stage of the nuclear fuel cycle – uranium mining on their land. Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of the US company, General Atomics, opened the Beverley Uranium Mine in February 2001 after decades of planning and thwarted attempts. Also on Adnyamathanha land, the Honeymoon Uranium Mine owned by Southern Cross Resources, a Canadian company, has been aggressively pushing forward in an attempt to start mining this year. The processes of establishing a uranium mine on Indigenous lands within Australia are at the heart of what makes this industry so problematic. There are evidence that these mining activities, as in many similar places where Indigenous peoples live, exact a toll so heavy only accusations of genocide seem appropriate. As an Adnyamathanha person involved in managing cultural heritage over the past 10 years, Ms. Marsh has witnessed a steady decline in the hopes and aspirations of other Adnyamathanha concerned about cultural heritage, specifically their rights to land and their rights to be recognized as spiritual trustees of their land.

Over recent years the process of these mines becoming operational has seen repeated attacks on the Adnyamathanha people. Women and men are being physically assaulted in Native Title meetings, in the presence of lawyers employed under Commonwealth funding grants to administer Native Title. Children as young as 9 years old are being sprayed in the eyes with capsicum spray by police at a site of protest, whilst adults are being confined in police vehicles for up to 7 hours in 40 degree celcius heat, without water. Public meetings are being held by mining companies accompanied by armed police and chaired by the current local member of Parliament. At the request of members of Parliament, Adnyamathanha people are “escorted” from the meeting by armed police for demanding an independent Chair. These experiences are far from peaceful, and do not empower Adnyamathanha in relation to managing their heritage in a culturally appropriate manner. Bullying, bribery, emotional and physical abuse, racism and prejudice are the terms of reference used by the Australian government, the mining industry, and the legal system. Those Adnyamathanha who openly challenge the legal system and the government policies as an inadequate and inappropriate framework for consultation are punished, marginalized and reputed as “radical” and “unreasonable”.

To many of us, the story of the Adnyamathanha is a sad but familiar one. It is estimated that 70% of uranium deposits around the world are located on Indigenous peoples’ lands. Over 70% of uranium mining are done on Indigenous lands, according to Winona LaDuke (See hers and Ward Churchill’s chapter “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” in M. Annette Jaimes (ed.) The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992). Arjun Makhijani, scientist and president of The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, has also shared how uranium-mining extraction is fraught with racism (See his “Racism, Resources and Nuclear Weapons: Some Reflections on the Rodney King Case“).

But this is just one aspect of the effects of nuclear chain. As for nuclear testing, of the eight nations in the world that have detonated nuclear weapons during the last 55 years, five have used the lands of indigenous peoples. The United States, Russia, Britain, France and China have tested their nuclear might on lands held sacred by the people of First Nations. The Western Shoshone nation of North America, the Marshall Islanders, and other South Pacific Islanders, Australian Aboriginals, the Kazakhs, and Tibetans are but a few of those whose land has been consistently contaminated with nuclear poison (see Fact Sheet, “Indigenous Peoples and the Nuclear Age: Making the Connections,”  Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom).

In the Pacific Islands, an area which I represent and come from, and know something about, the situation is equally devastating. Marshall Islanders are struggling still to deal with the very real effects of US’s atomic tests. These tax this small Micronesian island’s resources as a small island developing state. We ask that America not simply walk away from assuming its continuing responsibilities for the damages inflicted by the atomic tests just because Marshall Islands is now an independent nation… While America has been somewhat open with the results of its tests, it has been much slower for the Polynesian islands ruled by France. We commend France for what it has done so far in terms of acknowledging some damage to the environment and strongly urge the French Government to continue on this positive path toward opening more of the archives of its nuclear tests in Fangataufa and Mururoa.

Nuclear tests on native lands include:

• A total of 106 nuclear tests have been conducted by the US in the Pacific, plus an additional 24 tests in the Christmas Islands just off Australia.
• 12 atmospheric tests were detonated in Australia between 1952 and 1957 by the UK, three at Monte Bello, two at Emu Field and seven at Maralinga.
• 14 nuclear tests were conducted in Algeria by the French, 4 atmospheric and 10 underground. From 1966 – 1990, a further 167 tests were conducted by the French on the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in Polynesia.

Other affected communities include:

• The Kazakhs. Of the 713 tests conducted by Russia, 467 were at the Kazakhstan Test Site.
• Tibetan people. Lop Nor, near Tibet in the Sinkiang Province is home to the Uighur people, and also the place of Chinese nuclear tests.
• The Sami. An indigenous community in Norway whose practice of life as herds people was radically altered by their (continuing) experience of Chernobyl. Lichen, a main food source for reindeer, in their region was heavily contaminated by radioactive rain, causing the contamination of their herds (WILPF Fact Sheet, ibid).

With most of the mining activities taking place on these lands, combined with a legacy of environmental racism in uranium mining extraction, added to nuclear testings and nuclear waste storage, the combined result is tantamount to a legacy of genocide.

The international community has a right to know and an obligation to understand the devastation and disregard the nuclear industry perpetuates within the lives of Indigenous peoples.

While the NPT seeks to address the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the world while making provision for the peaceful uses of nuclear technology in Article IV, it fails to recognize or address the disproportionate impact of these activities on indigenous people and lands. The nuclear industry continues to perpetuate on-going and systematic invasion of Indigenous Peoples’ countries and the destruction of Indigenous lands and cultures. While the threat of use of nuclear weapons by the eight nations who hold these weapons of mass destruction serves to create a real fear in the world, in indigenous communities the existence of uranium mines, nuclear waste dumps and nuclear test sites are a daily threat to life and to the continued existence of culture.

All of these lead us to question the very notion of right to “peaceful use” in the NPT. Only a narrow reading, even a denial, of the real life, non-peaceful situation Indigenous communities face as they struggle to survive with the leftover poison of the Nuclear Age allows NPT States Parties to deliberate year after year about the proper “safeguarding” practices with little notice of the actual impacts of nuclear weapons production and technology on entire nations of peoples.

As previous Indigenous speakers have raised to your attention in previous NPT forums, these activities are only one segment within the cycle of the nuclear industry. The negotiation and decision-making processes that take place in the context of mineral exploration and commercial mining, the storage of nuclear waste, and the conducting of atomic tests which mostly take place on Indigenous lands are far from peaceful. Article IV’s reference to the “peaceful” uses, development, research and production of nuclear energy which are considered to be an inalienable right of all Member States of the Treaty need to be considered in the context of a more fundamental God-given inalienable right of human beings to life, liberty, and security.

Dr. Rosalie Bertell has conducted studies on the true impacts of the Nuclear Age on the environment and human health. She “has attempted to piece together a global casualty list from the nuclear establishments own data. The figures she has come up with are chilling – but entirely plausible” (See Eduardo Goncalves, “The Secret Nuclear War,” in The Ecologist, March 22, 2001).

Dr. Bertell’s work has been extraordinary in terms of what it’s exposed:

• “Using the official radiation risk estimates published in 1991 by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and the total radiation exposure data to the global population calculated by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in 1993, she has come up with a terrifying tally: 358 million cancers from nuclear bomb production and testing 9.7 million cancers from bomb and plant accidents 6.6 million cancers from the routine discharges of nuclear power plants (5 million of them among populations living nearby).
• “As many as 175 million of these cancers could be fatal. Added to this number are no fewer than 235 million genetically damaged and diseased people, and a staggering 588 million children born with what are called teratogenic effects diseases such as brain damage, mental disabilities, spina bifida, genital deformities, and childhood cancers. Furthermore, says Bertell, we should include the problem of non-fatal cancers and of other damage which is debilitating but not counted for insurance and liability purposes12 such as the 500 million babies lost as stillbirths because they were exposed to radiation whilst still in the womb, but are not counted as official radiation victims. It is what the nuclear holocaust peace campaigners always warned of if war between the old superpowers broke out, yet it has already happened and with barely a shot being fired. Its toll is greater than that of all the wars in history put together, yet no-one is counted as among the war dead.
• “Its virtually infinite killing and maiming power leads [Dr.] Bertell to demand that we learn a new language to express a terrifying possibility: The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it: omnicide” (Eduardo Goncalves, “The Secret Nuclear War,” ibid.; see also R. Bertell, “Victims of the Nuclear Age,” The Ecologist, November 1999, pp.408-411).

In light of these, there has never been any “peaceful use” of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology. Indigenous peoples have spoken out about their situation, calling for justice in whatever way it can come. The “Declaration of Salzburg” is one of many documents which describe the real impacts of the Nuclear Age by Indigenous peoples themselves. It is a Declaration produced by the September 1992 World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg. This Declaration was accepted by the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and it is now an official UN document, available in English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese, copies of which may be obtained from the Center for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland (E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1994/7, 6 June 1994). We ask that you take this Declaration as the collective voice of Indigenous peoples on these matters and seek to resolve the outstanding issues of environmental pollution and negative human health. The Declaration and an accompanying Statement are found here:

Declaration of Salzburg: http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/salzburg.htm
Indigenous Peoples’ Statement: http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/indig.htm

We ask that NPT States Parties offer in good faith to meet with representatives of Indigenous peoples suffering from nuclear poisoning as a gesture of acknowledgement. For many festering wounds, acknowledgement of the problem is an important initial step to healing. Whatever solutions are forthcoming for many Indigenous peoples on these matters, for which we continue to seek, acknowledgement by this and future NPT conferences will help to increase awareness and add fuel to international efforts to deal with the ongoing legacy of nuclear weapons production and fuel chain.

We also request that NPT States Parties expand current discussions on NPT and IAEA safeguards mandates to include some critique offered by those who critically examine the actual impacts of nuclear technologies. This will be seen as a step toward accepting the responsibilities for the serious damages inflicted on Indigenous peoples and their immediate environmental surroundings.

In light of these, we recommend that at this and future prepcoms before 2005, NPT States Parties consider enabling a delegation of Indigenous people to have direct input on matters before the NPT on crucial areas where their environments and livelihoods have been severely devastated. Without appearing to be hopelessly over optimistic, we recommend that you remain open and willing to cooperate with NGO groups to explore all possible solutions because even absent direct input to NPT matters, the possibility exists for this and future NPT conferences to mandate, as an initial step, open-ended discussions between States Parties and Indigenous peoples on the best ways to proceed. Policy-wise, this conference could mandate a process whereby States Parties work directly with Indigenous peoples to ameliorate negative impacts of nuclear technology and then report at NPT conference.

At the Review Conference in 2000, a colleague of mine, another woman from Australia, Ms. Jacqui Katona, a representative of the Mirrar Aboriginal people, spoke to you regarding the creation of a committee through which Indigenous peoples could directly make their concerns known. Some States positively responded to the idea. We hope that there are still interests in pursuing this as a policy matter for this and the next prepcom.

Finally as a person representing the Pacific, I must say something about military colonialism in general. There is need to address the proliferation of missile technology and the continued use of Pacific Island nations for military use and control. What I have described above, nuclear colonialism, is like a cancer that must be rooted out at its root. There is little that we meaningfully distinguish between uranium mining and its draconian practices, testing of nuclear weapons AND colonialism. Indeed the two are like synonymous concepts as far as we are concerned. From where we stand, the two are systems of resource extraction and misuse/abuse of our lands which, in the final analysis, strip us of our dignity and violate our human rights. The narrow constraints of the NPT do not even begin to touch on so many important, and related, issues. We strongly urge you to consider these our regional concerns, expressed by our respective civil society groups, in your deliberations.

I end by saying that we have all come here from around the world, from across great distances, both representing governments and our communities where many of us are engaged in the daily struggles of survival as communities. The mass of the world’s population have entrusted us all, therefore, with a serious responsibility to consider the troubling manner in which countless nations have treated the earth and peoples by scorching and or polluting the planet beyond Nature’s immediate ability to heal itself – in pursuit of “security.” But there can never be real security when security is based on a narrow, anti-environmental, and therefore, unsustainable model of peace and security. A critical assessment of the concept of security and the means by which Nation-states pursue security is in order, and we hope that this NPT forum will contribute to a re-thinking of current models of security.

From start to end of the nuclear chain, we in many Indigenous communities have borne the brunt of the nuclear age. There is hardly any security when our environment is polluted beyond repair and a portion of humanity becomes the sacrificial lambs for a military-imposed “peace.” We urge you to help us move to new levels of empathy, understanding, and peaceful co-existence.

Thank you all for your attention.

Copyright © 2011 Richard N. Salvador

SPEECH
Third Preparatory Committee Meetings
of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation
United Nations, New York
May 1999

Indigenous Peoples Speak Truth to Power: Environmental
and Human Health Aspects of the Nuclear Age

By Richard N. Salvador
Republic of Palau

Member, International Coordinating Committee

Abolition 2000: A Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Mr. Chairman, may I follow the lead of my French colleague by adding further diversity to the language here in beginning my statement by quoting from the poetic words/prayer of an Indigenous colleague? I feel they are appropriate words to begin my presentation here:

“Pray that we touch the Earth with kind and gentle hands,
That Freedom will be found in this and other lands,
And that Peace will reign all over the Earth.
May the changing of the seasons
Bring friends to your fireside,
Happiness to you heart,
Peace to your pathway,
And good health throughout your years.
May your camp forever be safe and warm,
Secure away from harm and storm,
And that good things will come your way,
To warm your heart each and every day.
May the warm winds of heaven
Blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit
Bless all who enter there.
May your moccasins
Make happy tracks
In many snows,
And may the rainbow
Always touch your shoulder.”
(By Wolf Spirit)

Wolf Spirit’s prayer “that we touch the Earth with kind and gentle hands,” must also be taken as an admonition to heed the warnings of humanity’s combined actions against the Earth; from all corners of our globe, we witness major earth changes that bode ill for our continued survival.

However, the most catastrophic consequences both on the environmental as well as human health have been those generated by the Nuclear Age alone. For many Indigenous communities worldwide, the tale is a grim one, and should we as Indigenous peace advocates had a choice in the matter, we would rather focus our energies on work closer to home, like social and economic development and ensuring access to proper education for our peoples. However, the grim statistics of the Nuclear Age necessitate that we come to regional and international forums like these to continue to “tell the story” of those of us who form the underside of this history.

In spite of having our interests thwarted here time after time, however, we as Indigenous peoples continue to come here to seek redress of the violations of our fundamental human rights and right to self-determination as Peoples. We look to the noble aspirations of the UN Charter and all subsequent efforts to strengthen the resolve of this Institution in our struggles.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Delegates of this the Third NPT PrepCom, for extending to us representatives of NGOs an opportunity to share our views and offer some of our ideas about ensuring a world without the threats posed by nuclear weapons.

Indigenous peoples have borne the brunt of nuclearism through the nuclear fuel cycle. This began with the uranium mining on their lands, often doing the mining themselves with little or no protection, to having nuclear tests carried out on their lands, and culminating in their lands being used as radioactive nuclear waste dumps. We recognize that we are not the only ones who have been affected by this process. Nevertheless, with 70 percent of the world’s uranium resources located on the lands inhabited by Indigenous Peoples in Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America, and a vast network of mining extraction of these uranium resources, fraught with racism and irresponsible environmental practices, the net result is a toxic legacy of genocidal proportions!

For each ton of uranium oxide, several thousand tons of “tailings” remain behind as low level radioactive waste; ust in one single site in Igloo, South Dakota, something on the order of 3.5 million tons of exposed tailings line the banks of a river and a creek near a city. Wind and rain spread the carginogenic dust to the surrounding water, air and soil, thus contaminating agricultural and animal meat by-products and foods for human consumption.

This legacy of environmental disaster has exposed hundreds of Indigenous communities to serious environmental and human health hazards. Why is such a legacy justified, and or allowed to exist, even as the United Nations and States Parties to the NPT proclaim the urgency of “curtailing” the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

As the World Uranium Hearing held in Salzburg, Austria in September 1992 concluded “The territories of indigenous peoples, impoverished developing countries, and the global commons are frequently targeted for storage or dumping of waste, thus compounding international injustice.”

Injustice is the key word here! Injustice in any part of the world and against any portion of humanity is an affront to humanity everywhere! The injustices of the Nuclear Age must be acknowledged and addressed by the international community. To do violence to the environments upon which Indigenous peoples have lived upon for millennia, is to commit the most appalling injustices against them, for it is by deliberate choice that many of them choose to abstain from industrialization.

Justice considerations must often compel us to confront the international political economy of resource extraction and utilization and the attendant violence that is perpetrated against communities standing in the way of resource acquisition. We see a direct connection between nuclear violations of our lands and colonialism. What we are experiencing is a foreign economic and political regime, imposing itself and depriving peoples of their rights to self-determination.

As Indigenous peoples, our demand for nuclear abolition is also a key component of our struggle to bring an end to the violence of colonial rule. As developments of recent years have shown, the fates of Indigenous and non-indigenous communities are intimately tied together.

It is time that local, national, regional and international bodies own up to the problems created by nuclear weapons and fuel production and begin a healing process that is overdue. States Parties to the NPT have and should bear the responsibility for ensuring that such a process begin and be supported.

You have before you the task of finding practical ways to stem the tide of proliferation of instruments of death that lie dangerously close to your own doors. But any such effort must also re-visit the roots of nuclearism. We in the Indigenous communities around the world challenge this body to consider the national and global arrangements of power served by weapons of mass destruction.

As you deliberate in this the third year of your preparatory deliberations for the Formal Review in the millennial year, we urge you in the most strongest language possible to speak truth to power, to confront the bases of the threats to our collective security, and to propose radical changes to the manner in which Nations rely on out-dated military strategies that threaten the deaths of millions of peoples and on the obliteration of our natural environment in order to maintain “security.”

We strongly support those recommendations proposed in the Resolution submitted to the European Parliament in October 1997 by the Uranium Tour of Indigenous Peoples. The Resolution was subsequently adopted by the European Parliament and called for:

• an independent study about the uranium imports/exports, analyzing the impact of uranium mining and processing on health and environment, on the rights of Indigenous peoples and on waste production of the mining operations in regard to the respective country of origin;
• a ban of all imports of uranium from mines where the land rights of Indigenous Peoples are being compromised;
• a call to the governments of countries and the private companies involved to respect Indigenous Peoples inherent right to self-determination as well as their right to land, water and resources, including their right to end all ongoing and planned uranium mining activities on their territories or lands, and that the degree of clean-up and/or reclamation be determined and prescribed at the local level and by local people;
• a call for initiatives to reform Article 1 of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the creation of a new United Nations International Solar Energy Agency, and in any case to repudiate the May 1959 Agreement between the World Health Organization (WHO) and IAEA;
• a call to the international community to halt the construction of new nuclear power plants and to phase out all existing civilian and military plants;

In addition, we also support the following recommendations put forward by Indigenous peoples at the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg: a call upon governments and, within their respective spheres of responsibility and competence, transnational and other corporations, organizations, communities and individuals:

1. To recognize and respect the inherent right to self-determination of indigenous peoples, including their right to determine and control, without external interference, the nuclear process as it affects their societies and territories;
2. To provide reparations for peoples, communities, and individuals victimized by the mining of radioactive minerals, the use of nuclear weapons, or the storage or dumping of nuclear waste. To make every conceivable effort to alleviate risks and damage caused by past and existing uses of radioactive materials;

Thank you very much for your attention, and for the privilege of speaking to you.

* Richard N. Salvador, member of the International Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000: A Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Co-Convenor of Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, Issues and Concerns; Co-Convenor of Working Group on International Issues and Linkages, both of the recently-created Abolition USA: US Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

** For more information about the NPT and related nuclear nonproliferation issues including official NPT documents, working papers, speeches, etc, click on this link to the British American Security Information Council (BASIC): (BASIC) or type this in your browser: www.basicint.org

Copyright © 2011 Richard N. Salvador

Legacy of Nuclear Testings in the Pacific:
Re(Visiting) Los Alamos and New Mexico, Production Site of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Beyond the Bomb:
A New Agenda for Peace and Justice
12th Annual National Congress
August 5-9, 1999
Albuquerque, New Mexico
[A project of the Peace Action and the
Peace Action Education Fund]

Richard N. Salvador
Member of Coordinating Committee,
Abolition 2000: A Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

http://www.abolition2000.org/

In her book, Putting the Earth First: Alternatives to Nuclear Security in Pacific Islands States, Ronni Alexander writes,

“When we speak of nuclear testing in the Pacific, we are of course referring to the use of the Pacific Ocean, an area of our environmental heritage covering one-third of the globe, and its inhabitants, for the testing of the most deadly and powerful instruments of war ever invented–nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. The reality of nuclear testings…[and their lingering consequences are] truly mind-boggling [and worth examining] if only as examples of the insidious ways in which technology can come to overpower reason” (Alexander 1994, p.15).

Both the direct and indirect violence of atomic/nuclear testings continue to victimize the human inhabitants of what has been termed many times as an “aquatic continent.”

I shall briefly address issues having to do with a number of indirect ways in which, I believe, the inherent violence of bomb explosions and the experience of militarism during World War II, have imposed on the collective psyche of Micronesians, and thus have impacted their political histories. I want to raise those issues later because I believe they need to be understood as the on-going legacies of colonialism.

I would like to extend Alexander’s analysis beyond the actual effects of nuclear testings to an interrogation of the logic of colonialism and why, in the first place, such testings were thought to be “legitimate” in the first place. By doing this, I thought I could somehow relate to you what we in Micronesia and the Pacific have sought to do within the context of our larger struggles for liberation from the Bomb, but particularly, for political liberation from colonialism. It shall become apparent to you why we have considered it essential that ending colonialism was, first and foremost, the most important strategy in our struggles for freedom in the Pacific. Those of you who went to Tahiti in the French-Occupied Polynesia in January 1997 to attend that year’s Abolition 2000 meeting, you heard how Gabriel Tetiarahi, the leader of Hiti Tau, connected the violence of colonial rule to the maintenance of nuclear facilities in the Pacific.

This is where we begin, and this is where end our stories, as we journey beyond our shores to tell the stories of the Pacific. In spite of the name itself, Pacific stories, unfortunately, are not necessarily about peace. For more than 400 years, Pacific Islanders have lived, and continue to live, under various colonial regimes. Our anti-colonial and anti-nuclear struggles, therefore, have been closely intertwined from the very beginning.

In any event, I am happy to have come here and to participate in the conference. I appreciate the efforts of Peace Action Director Gordon Clark, other Peace Action staff, and everyone of you for making it possible for us to come here to learn from each other, and to continue conversations about how we can help to prevent more Hiroshimas and more Nagasakis. Those are two crucial, but unfortunate, events that have brought us here 54 years later. But I come here also to tell about what had to happen in Micronesia before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed.

Alexander further wrote in her book that,

“Most accounts of the history of the…nuclear age begin with the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. This act, whether viewed as one of the last act of World War II or the first of the Cold War, unquestionably marks the first actual use of a nuclear weapon in a combat situation. However, what most historical accounts do not take into consideration is the fact that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could not have taken place without a certain amount of preparation. Just as no bomb is useful without some mechanism for carrying it to its intended target,’ so technological development at that time limited the distance a bomber, even one specifically designed for its mission, could travel. Thus the involvement of the Pacific in nuclear affairs, and the concomitant dawning of the nuclear age,’ began not with the bombing of Hiroshima, but with the capture of the Micronesian islands, particularly Saipan and Tinian [in what is now the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas] in July of 1944. The existence of an American airfield in the middle of the Pacific made it possible to drop the atomic bombs on Japanese territory; without those bases, it would have been impossible to carry a bomb of that weight all the way to Japan and make a safe return” (Alexander, ibid, p. 17).

A more complete analysis of the nuclear age must therefore give equal weight to places where actual preparations for the use of nuclear bombs took place. Even more so, we must look further back to the Indigenous victims of uranium mining, which made possible nuclear weapons in the first place. Indigenous peoples indeed have borne the brunt of nuclearism: from the uranium mines, to nuclear testings, to exposures to radioactive wastes–nuclear power by-products of sustaining highly ecologically unsustainable lifestyles in richer countries, Indigenous lands are all-too-often places of choice for these activities.

To properly begin a true dialogue that explores the consequences/impacts of the nuclear age generally and Hiroshima in particular, we must then look to the areas and islands of central and western Pacific. For while it is harrowing that Japanese cities became the ultimate target, Micronesians (Marshallese) and French-Polynesians have never really overcome the disastrous consequences of the nuclear testings that made the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible. In the French-Occupied Polynesia, some 180 tests were conducted for over 30 years beginning with atmospheric testing in the Tuamotus in 1966. Only sometime later did the testings move underground in the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. But unlike the Americans, in the case of documentation of test results and effects on environmental and human health, the French have always been and continue to be secretive about their own tests in Polynesia. Like the Marshall Islanders, Tahitian peoples who were exposed, including former test site workers, have been dying slow, excruciating deaths; but oftentimes they are unable to receive proper medical treatment because French authorities still officially deny that the nuclear tests did in fact cause any significant environmental or human damage.

At the conclusion of World War II after Japan’s defeat, Micronesia was taken by America. In January 1946, “the US Naval Military Government selected the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands chain for the first series of nuclear tests–known as Operation Crossroads–which were intended to demonstrate the destructive capacity of the atomic bombs on a fleet of wartime ships” (Robie 1989, p.142). In July 1947, the US Government became our “Administering Authority,” with the blessings of the UN. Immediately after the war, there had been eleven territories under UN supervision. Micronesia became administratively the “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands,” and consisted of the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands (which included the islands of Kosrae, Pohnpei, Truck/Chuuk, Yap, and Belau), and the Marianas Islands (which include Guam, Saipan and Tinian). In Belau (Palau) where I come from, we were spared the harrowing experiences of the atomic testings. Kwajalein, Bikini and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands, however, were chosen for a supply base and a smaller command center, respectively, and which were used for the bomb testings. “The Marshall Islands suffered the most from these military occupations and tests… Kwajelein also became a vital link in the supply route for American forces during the Korean War” as well as a base for missile tests later. On Saipan, the main island of what is now the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Central Intelligence set up a camp “which operated a secret training for Chinese nationalist guerillas” who were “part of an unsuccessful plan to invade the Chinese mainland” (Robie, ibid, p.144).

Micronesia therefore was where the beginnings of important aspects of US military activities took place–integral aspects of US military strategy in the western Pacific–the beginnings of a “strategic concept at work in U.S. Asia-Pacific policy” ever since, which as Joseph Gerson has written, are shaped and influenced by “the goal of maintaining and increasing U.S. power and advantage in the region” (Gerson 1999a ). In the Marshall Islands, the US tested a total of 66 atomic and hydrogen bombs between 1946 and 1958. “Six islands were vaporized by nuclear weapons and hundreds of people were irradiated. Today, more than 40 years later, many islands are still uninhabited. Many Bikinians and Rongelapese (who were downwind of the bomb explosions) remain exiled peoples” (Alexander 1994, pp. 28,30).

In his book, Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, David Robie writes,

“…the more than 2000 islands of Micronesia have played a vital role in modern strategic history. Japanese aircraft launched their attack on Peal Harbor from Micronesia, plunging the United States into the Second World War. And it was from Tinian Island in western Micronesia that the Enola Gay took off with its deadly weapons for the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended the war and ushered in the nuclear age. The islands of Micronesia have been used by Washington ever since as pawns to enhance its strategic posture” (Robie, ibid, p.142).

This “strategic posture” was largely the result of a Cold War strategy that relied on massive military might. It emerged as well from a rational calculation of the use of deadly power. Cold War strategy, Alexander observed:

“…required an assessment of both the political and military potential of the atomic weapon in a strategic sense. While the political assessment was made in the context of East-West rivalry, the military assessment required taking note of both the strengths and weaknesses of the new weapon. Two of these weaknesses, the scarcity of bombs and the limited range of the only available delivery vehicle, the B-29 bomber, served to govern US strategy in the first years after World War II, and prompted an all-out effort for research and development, including an ambitious testing program. At the same time, US confidence in its ability to maintain its nuclear lead was bolstered by a new-found strength, the efficacy of which had been demonstrated by the Manhattan Project” (Alexander, ibid, p.18).

A comprehensive program of nuclear research was necessary therefore. However, there had been concerns within the US Congress about safety issues. After considering this however, the US Atomic Energy Commission told Congress in 1953 that “tests should be held overseas until it (can) be established more definitely that continental detonations would not endanger the public health and safety” (Weisgall 1980, p. 76). Micronesia, having been captured from the Japanese, was the most natural place. Bikini, one of over 20 atolls scattered over close to 400,000 square miles of ocean which make up the Marshall Islands, was chosen to carry our “Operation Crossroads, the first series of tests were conducted near the surface of the atoll, in July 1946. These first tests consisted of two 23 kiloton detonations, one named “Able,” the other “Baker.

“The explosions gouged out a crater 240 feet deep and 6,000 feet across, melted huge quantities of coral, sucked them up and distributed them far and wide across the Pacific. The island of Rongelap (100 miles away) was buried in powdery particles of radioactive fallout to a depth of one and a half inches, and Utirik (300 miles away) was swathed in radioactive mist. Also in the path of the fallout was a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No 5, and all 23 crew rapidly developed radiation sickness” (Alexander 1994, pp.22,23,24). Jonathan Weisgall, in “Nuclear Nomads of Bikini,” noted that according to one report, “Baker’ alone left 500,000 tons of radioactive mud in the lagoon (Weisgall, ibid, p.84.).

But the “US navy [only] sent ships to evacuate the people of Rongelap and Utirik three days after the explosion. These (and other) Pacific people were used as human guinea pigs in an obscene racist experiment – a particularly sharp snapshot of colonialism and the horrors wrought by the arrogant mindset which goes with it,” as a Peace Movement Aotearoa/New Zealand Action Alert put it (Peace Movement Aotearoa, March 1999).

These two tests were just two of the total 66 nuclear tests that the Department of Defense announced it conducted between 1946 and 1958, 23 of them at Bikini Atoll and 43 at Enewetak, located in the northern Marshall Islands. “Operation Sandstone” was the name of the series of tests conducted at Enewetak Atoll between April and May 1948. A 49 kiloton blast code-named “Yoke,” yielded “an explosion which was more than twice the size of any prior atomic bomb detonation.” There was something significant about “Operation Sandstone,” as Alexander observed. Partly quoting from Harvey Wasserman’s and Norman Solomon’s book, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, Alexander wrote,

“Operation Sandstone was significant in that the tests, conducted jointly by the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, evidently did result in substantial improvements in the efficiency of use of fissile material,’ and according to Herbert York this success’ boosted morale at Los Alamos and helped garner further support for the laboratory in Washington. As a result, the construction of a new laboratory, located nearby on South Mesa (New Mexico), was authorized as a replacement for the wartime facilities which were still being used.’ This response is an example of the way in which the nuclear industry and nuclear strategists developed their own momentum. Each successful explosion not only helped create the mystique of American nuclear preeminence, but also spoke to the possibility of the development of more and more powerful weapons, resulting in greater insecurity not only for the people involved in the tests, but for the entire world” (Alexander, ibid., p. 24).

Other series of tests, “Operation Greenhouse,” for example, were conducted at Enewetak in April and May 1951. On November 1, 1952, “Mike,” the name of a “cylindrical bomb measuring 22 feet in length and 5 and-a-half feet in diameter, and weighing 23 tons was exploded on the island of Elugelab.” The detonation yielded a force of over 10 megatons, nearly one thousand times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The island of Elugelab completely disappeared. The US Government listed the Mike explosion as the first detonation of an “experimental thermonuclear device” (Wasserman and Solomon, pp. 80-84). A total of six islands would simply vanish as a result of further tests of similar magnitude. The Mike bomb paved the way for the development of future hydrogen bombs. “Operation Castle” was when these bombs were tested between March and May 1954, using Bikini and Enewetak Atolls. The operation included “Bravo” (15 megaton), “Romeo” (11 megaton), “Union” (6.9 megaton), “Yankee” (13.5 megaton), and “Nectar” (1.69 megaton).

Again, according to Alexander:

“The first shot, Bravo, the largest single nuclear explosion conducted by the United States, with a destructive capability more than one thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb, was detonated on 1 March 1954. The explosion was so powerful it vaporized several small islands and parts of islands in Bikini Atoll and left a hole one-mile deep in diameter in the reef. Years later, some Bikinian leaders would return to Bikini and weep openly at the sight of the sandbars and open water, all that remained of the islands destroyed by the Bravo shot. They would declare that the islands had lost their bones.’ Bravo coated Rongelap and Utirik Atolls with two inches of radioactive fallout” (Alexander, ibid., 28).

To this day, peoples of Rongelap, Bikini, Enewetak, and many in the Marshall Islands continue to suffer from cancer, miscarriages, and tumors. “Eighty-four percent of those who lived on Rongelap who below 10 years old at the times of the explosions have required surgery for thyroid tumors” (Alexander, ibid., p.30).

Movement for a Nuclear-Free Belau (Palau)

As someone who is intimately involved in anti-nuclear movements and know of the health consequences of radiation exposure, I grieve today for my Marshallese Sisters and Brothers. By a kind hand of fate perhaps, my island nation of Belau was spared the harrowing nightmare of nuclear testings. However, we were not spared the full brunt of what is described as nuclear colonialism. By the end of the 1970′s, over a decade after the official creation of a larger Micronesian effort to decolonize (Congress of Micronesia), it was clear to us what the monstrous legacy of nuclearism had done just a few thousand miles to the east of us in the Marshall Islands. (Subsequent nuclear catastrophes would contribute to strengthening the anti-nuclear movement). Marshall Islands, the French-Occupied Polynesia, and several places around the world that had been unkindly dealt by nuclearism impressed themselves strongly upon our minds, to say the least.

In our movement to decolonize, we wrote a Nuclear-Free Constitution in April 1979. Overt and covert American efforts to sidetrack issues and or at the least undermine Belau’s position on anti- nuclearism were unconvincing; via various diplomatic and not-so-diplomatic means, they failed initially to arrest what was quickly becoming a popular movement against what was felt to be outright colonial behavior. The history of the Constitutional Convention that produced the world’s first nuclear-free Constitution offered an explicit rejection of American demands, which were to compel Belau to acquiesce to US military and nuclear requirements. The increasing anti- base movement in the Philippines, where the US maintained its largest foreign military base operation, contributed to the tensions between Belau and America. Belau was always seen as a potential fallback area in the event the Philippine people did successfully evicted the US military. Belau, the Philippines, Guam, Kwajelein and other parts of Micronesia were parts of the network of what was described as a “forward military strategy” which aimed to project US military strength as close as possible to the Asian mainland and throughout the Pacific Ocean. This was part of a grand strategic plan outlined in a US National Security Action Memorandum No. 145 (NSAM-145), signed by John F. Kennedy in April 1962, and designed to formally incorporate all of Micronesia within US’s political and military network in the Pacific.

NSAM-145 provided the political context in which Kennedy would, over a year later, send a mission to Micronesia to plot the contours of a colonial conspiracy which had been faithfully adhered to by subsequent US administrations. The mission was headed by a Harvard University Business School professor named Anthony M. Solomon. The Mission’s report came to bear his name. “The Solomon Report,” as Bob Aldridge and Ched Myers would later describe it, was “the blueprint for US neocolonialism in the Pacific [and] provides disturbing reading on American political ambitions” (Aldridge and Myers 1990, pp.22, 23). Resisting this grand colonial scheme, we attempted to create a Nation-state. The next 15 years proved to be a painful period of radical political and social transformations, as we struggled to preserve our nuclear-free Constitution amidst aggressive US Pentagon attempts to undermine it.

It is impossible to describe a 15-year movement here, in a page or two. I will only refer you to the extensive report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Belau in November 1993, sent there to observe the November 9th 1993 plebiscite on the Compact of Free Association, the treaty negotiated by Belau and the US which details the economic and military conditions of a treaty- relationship between the two (see UN Trusteeship Council Document T/1978, December 1993). This is the treaty the United States was adamant in compelling Belau to adopt, and is the treaty which after 15 years and 7 attempts to say “NO” to it, was finally “approved” in 1993. The treaty has essentially laid to rest the nuclear-free provisions of Belau’s Constitution for 50 years; the US, in return, will give Belau some economic assistance only for 15 years.

The crucial issues to consider here, or in similar nation-building efforts, are those of democratic principles and military imperatives. Between 1983 and 1993, Belau peoples exercised their democratic right to freely express their common wishes in founding a nuclear-free island nation. In all of these democratic exercises, we said “No” each time. US military imperatives overrode all of those and undermined democratic practice. But this is not something new. Cultures of militarism and nuclearism are, by nature, cultures of secrecy; they erode openness and democracy and make indispensable a culture of death and terror, which legitimizes militarism and production and use of weapons of mass destruction. “The theory and practice of nuclear deterrence have been extremely hostile to democratic practice…National military strategies…have often required the absence of free democratic thought” while, on the other hand, a commitment to “[n]uclear disarmament and demilitarization will allow communities to participate more fully in both the political sphere and civil society” in working to ensure a world free of the nuclear dangers that confront us (Salvador 1998).

Belau’s first popularly-elected president, Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated, partly as a result of the intricate web of Compact of Free Association politics and internal power struggles shaped by America’s obstinate military policies.

As a result of that November 1993 plebiscite however, the Compact of Free Association was approved. The Compact came into force on October 1, 1994, a day hailed as “Independence Day.” A year later, Belau joined the South Pacific Forum, an organization of Pacific Island Governments. In December of 1995, Belau joined the United Nations. As a result, in the South Pacific Forum and within the United Nations, Belau will assume responsibilities for keeping the issue of nuclear disarmament alive. One of the stipulations of the Compact of Free Association which made possible its passage in 1993 was that the United States would only seek to exercise its right to militarize (which implies the stationing of nuclear weapons) “during periods of crisis or hostilities.” To be sure, a May 6, 1993 Letter of Assurances from the then US Secretary of State Warren Christopher failed to explicitly define what such “crisis” or “hostilities” would be. In any event, the stipulations expressed in Secretary Christopher’s letter were incorporated within and legislated into binding Belau law. A greater portion of these assurances would rely on the “good faith” of the United States and the Belau Government, in accordance with the provisions of stated military objectives of the Compact treaty (see Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9, Sections 5, 6). Regional peace, we must then conclude, will depend to a greater or lesser extent on the responsibilities of these two nations to decrease (or de-escalate) the potential for actual military conflict or violence.

It is worth noting at this time that for the basic international legal instrument mandating global nuclear disarmament, the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)–”forming the integrated network of unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral treaties and other standard-setting arrangements that seek to control/curb the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction”– nuclear disarmament is premised on the “good faith” efforts by Nuclear Weapon States to take unilateral or multilateral initiatives to achieve disarmament (Bailey, et. al. 1999, p.3). Highlighted in Article Six of the NPT, such a premise has been a controversial issue because of lack of action to pursue good faith initiatives to disarm. That premise of good faith, however, was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and remains vital to the trust that must be built within on-going disarmament efforts. The nuclear disarmament challenge in Belau would be to compel “good faith” compliance to US and Belau laws.

For Belau and the United States, respectively, Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9 (signed by our president on July 16, 1993), US Public Law 99-658 (approved on November 14, 1986) and US Public Law 101-219 (approved December 12, 1989) are the American legal mandates of the Compact of Free Association. In addition to this July 1993 Belau law which merely restated some interpretations and positions of the Belau Government vis-a-vis the Compact of Free Association as well as subsidiary agreements to it developed in Hawaii and Guam, and authorized what became the final Compact plebiscite, for Belau’s part, we are bound as well by the legal imperatives elaborated in the two US laws referenced above.

In January 1997, at its regional meeting in Moorea, French-Occupied Polynesia, the Abolition 2000 network passed a resolution denouncing the military/nuclear option of the Belau/US Compact of Free Association, and the undemocratic process within which it was “approved.” More importantly, the Abolition 2000 resolution stated “that any attempt to use the option for nuclear purposes would violate the Pacific nuclear-free zone as well as violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would risk adding to the genetic damage already perpetuated on the Pacific peoples” (see Abolition 2000 Resolution 1997).

British Tests in Australia, Kiritimati (Christmas) and Malden Islands in the Line Islands. Jacqui Katona (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Organization, Mirrar peoples) from Australia will be reporting on these.

In French-Occupied Polynesia, the French have conducted a total of 153 nuclear weapons tests, in addition to those conducted in 1995. There is a lack of official information about the tests, so no comparison with how the Americans have done in Micronesia is done. Maybe Jacqui Katona would be able to share what she knows about Moruroa and Fangataufa, and the Te Ao Maohi (French-Polynesians) anti-nuclear movement. Lysiane Alezard, from Le Mouvement de la Paix in Paris, should also be able to share more information.

Those of you, however, who either went to Tahiti for the Abolition 2000 conference or who have hung around the UN or in various places and have listened to Gabriel Tetiarahi or other Tahitian peoples, know of similar problems that French nuclear test site workers face. Amidst the difficulties in Tahiti however, Hiti Tau has worked along with peoples from a university in Belgium to gather personal information and testimonies of previous nuclear test site workers, now published in the book Moruroa and Us: Polynesians’ Experiences during Thirty Years of Nuclear Testing in the French Pacific (See De Vries and Seur 1997). Theirs is a narrative of struggle as well as a triumph of collective grassroots action. It speaks as well to the role of networking within the international anti-nuclear information infrastructure, of which this gathering is part.

What can we conclude from all of these?

Unfortunate as we Micronesians were–being unwilling hosts to the preparations, testings, and launchings of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations–over the years, within our demilitarization and nuclear-free struggles, we have been constantly reminded of our role within the world-wide struggle for demilitarization and denuclearization. While we grieve for the on- going legacy of human and environmental health resulting from nuclear testings, a greater portion of our nuclear-free Pacific struggles has been inspired by what Betty Burkes described in her talk at an Abolition 2000 conference in Northern California in 1997: that we are constantly “making inquiry into the culture of war and violence we inhabit, check out how we participate and are organized to acquiesce in our own exploitation” (Burkes 1997). At least we have tried to work along with Japanese, Native peoples, and other victims of the nuclear age in forging common struggles of resistance against nuclearization and militarization everywhere.

We recognize the responsibility for tailoring our struggles in ways that inspire peoples in comparable sites of struggle. As far as we have been able, we have sought to wage our struggles non-violently. Being witnesses to the violence and brutality of nuclearism–and the colonialism which legitimizes nuclear violations of our islands in the first place—Pacific Islanders sensed early on that a struggle for genuine justice had to reject the adoption of violence as a means to end the violence we saw around us. Colonialism provided the ruthless infrastructure from which we yearned to be free from political oppression.

It was owing partly to the nature of Pacific peoples to reject the principle of violence. Violence killed all in its path, and here we were struggling to survive. Instinctively, decisions were made for a nuclear-free Pacific movement to respond accordingly. A friend in Hawaii, recently reflecting on this tendency, rejects violence as a means to achieving resolution of the sovereignty movement there, commented to our Allies group, “Violence begets more violence and the resulting desire for revenge leads to twisted thinking such as Milosevic explaining that the reason he can conduct ethnic cleansing is because of what happened 600 years ago” (Rolf Nordahl).

We need to make the connections between the violence of colonialism and a culture of militarism which allows the militarization/nuclearization of colonial outposts, and funnels resources away from more urgent social needs in Western nations. Moreover, we need to constantly interrogate the many justifications for militarism–and its role in economic affairs.

Writing about “the flowering of armaments,” in a critical political economy of the role of weaponry in international trade, John Ralston Saul reports in his book, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West: “We are living in the midst of a permanent wartime economy. The most important capital good produced in the West today is weaponry. The most important sector in international trade is not oil or automobiles or airplanes. It is armaments” (Saul 1992, p.141). Saul does not necessarily add anything new to what we already know about the trade in weapons and all sorts of killing industries, except to reiterate a backwardness in and or the lack of higher moral values that ought to influence the trading of goods and services (see one review of Voltaire’s Bastards). After all, as Saul reminds us, Seymour Melman and others have been writing about these issues for 20 years (see Melman’s book, The Permanent War Economy). John Stanley and Maurice Pearton, Steven Lydenberg, Robert De Grasse, William Hartung, Carol Evans, James Adams, and Martin Navias also have provided compelling analyses of military spendings and economic waste (See list of their books in the Works Cited section at the end). “The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute publishes an annual accounting of arms sales, while The Council of Economic Priorities in New York has addressed the subject in a number of reports which hold to the old liberal approach–that arms are a waste of money and that statistics prove it” (Saul 1992, p. 597f).

“Militarism’ seems to us abstract, and by no accident,” wrote Bob Aldridge and Ched Myers in a preface to their book, Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self-Determination. “For nowhere else are the concrete mechanisms of the military-industrial-academic complex so sanitized, so overlaid with official mystification. How else could the citizenry of the world’s largest debtor nation continue to accept and subsidize such huge levels of military spending? Militarism, to extend the metaphor, has colonized our minds.’” They continue:

“But our domestication is most troubling when it deludes us to think that militarism, apart from an overt foreign intervention and short of nuclear war, is at best an economic boom and at worst a victimless crime. The fact is, without a strategic missile ever being launched, militarism is wreaking destruction upon human life and culture. Perhaps North Americans might see this more clearly if we suspend our scenarios of what might happen to our world in the event of all-out war long enough to listen to the voice of those whose worlds have already been ravaged” (Aldridge and Myers 1990, p. xx-xxi).

Beginnings of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement

“The grassroots Pacific anti-nuclear movement was launched at the first Nuclear-Free Pacific conference at Suva [Fiji] in April 1975, backed by the Against Tests on Moruroa (ATOM) committee which had been formed in 1970. It consisted of people from the Pacific Theological College, the University of the South Pacific and the Fiji YWCA. The committee was merged into the Pacific People’s Action Front in the mid-1970s and then the movement went into decline. It surfaced again as the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) in 1983. Other Pacific anti-nuclear groups existed already but the Suva conference established a Pacific-wide network. This movement proved to be a major factor in persuading Pacific governments to take a stronger nuclear-free stand and shaping public awareness and opinion throughout the region. A draft People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free Pacific was produced at Suva and influenced the then New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk to call for a nuclear-free zone treaty at the 1975 South Pacific Forum–an ideal that took a decade to be realized. After the draft was reaffirmed at a second conference in Pohnpei [the capital of what is now the Federated States of Micronesia] in 1978, the third meeting two years later at Kailua [O'ahu], Hawaii, expanded the group’s identity as the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement. Resource centres were set up in Honolulu and Port Vila [Vanuatu]. The fourth–and biggest–congress was held in Port Vila during 1983 in recognition of the Vanuatu Government’s support of a niuklia fri pasifik, as it is expressed in pidgin” (Robie, ibid, p. 146-147).

At the opening of this conference in Port Villa, Vanuatu, then Deputy Prime Minister Sethy Regenvanu told the delegates that, “We are seeking a Pacific…free of every last remnant of colonialism… [F]reedom and independence will have no meaning if our very existence is threatened by the constant fear of total destruction” (Robie, ibid, p.147).

Here in Vanuatu, the People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific, adopted in Hawaii, was reaffirmed. The Charter’s Preamble declared the following:

1. We, the people of the Pacific want to make our position clear. The Pacific is home to millions of people with distinct cultures, religions and ways of life, and we refuse to be abused or ignored any longer;

2. We, the people of the Pacific have been victimised for too long by foreign powers. The Western imperialistic and colonial powers invaded our defenceless region, they took our lands and subjugated our people to their whims. This form of alien colonial political and military domination unfortunately persists as an evil cancer in some of our native territories such as Tahiti-Polynesia, Kanaky, Australia and Aotearoa. Our home continues to be despoiled by foreign powers developing nuclear and other means of destruction, oppression, and exploitation that advance a strategy that has no winners, no liberators and imperils the survival of all human kind;

3. We, the people of the Pacific will assert ourselves and wrest control over the destiny of our nations and our environment from foreign powers, including Trans-National Corporations;

4. We note in particular the racist roots of the world’s nuclear powers. We are entitled to and we commit ourselves to the creation of a just and equitable society;

5. Our environment is further threatened by the continuing deployment of nuclear arsenals in the so-called strategic areas throughout the Pacific. Only one nuclear submarine has to be lost at sea, or one nuclear warhead dumped in our ocean from a stricken bomber, and the threat to the fish and our livelihood is endangered for centuries. The erection of super ports, Nuclear Testing Stations, may bring employment but the price is destruction of our customs, our way of life, the pollution of our crystal clear waters, and brings the ever present threat of disaster by radioactive poisoning into the everyday life of the peoples;

6. We, the people of the Pacific reaffirm our intention to extract only those elements of Western civilisation that will be a permanent benefit to us. We wish to control our destinies and protect our environment in our own ways. Our usage of our natural resources in the past was more than adequate to ensure the balance between nature and humankind. No form of administration should ever seek to destroy that balance for the sake of a brief commercial gain;

7. We, the people of the Pacific will strive to be politically, economically, and spiritually self-determining. This includes the right to secede from oppressing nations.

The Pacific anti-nuclear movement, like the movement of Indigenous peoples to assert their rights, was partly a “response to the West’s persistent colonial domination in violation of the United Nations Charter’s call for decolonization at that time and the West’s Cold War pretext for use of the Pacific islands for devastating nuclear testing.” By that same year, “the United Nations Cobo Report [in Geneva] concluded that discrimination against indigenous peoples was due to their lack of self-determination, that imposed assimilation was a form of discrimination, and that the right of indigenous peoples to cultural distinctiveness, political self-determination and secure land resources should be formally declared by the UN” (Blaisdell 1998a).

As a result of previous work then on-going, the UN created, under the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, in order to address, among other things, the continuing abuses of the world’s Indigenous peoples by existing Nation-states. That working group completed, after 12 years of work and intense lobbying in Geneva, the Pacific and around the world, a draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples are still working to get it passed by the United Nations. More significantly, that working group provided an additional forum wherein we attempted to broaden discussions and debate regarding our anti-nuclear struggle, hoping to develop international consensus for final cessation of foreign domination in our homes. We look forward to the future with hope when all the final vestiges of colonialism will have been eradicated.

So it has been that our anti-nuclear movement has been inextricably linked to a struggle to bring about an end to colonialism and neocolonialism. Had Pacific Islanders been able to freely self- determine their political futures–taking serious consideration of informed consent in a climate devoid of fear and economic blackmail–there would absolutely be no doubt we would have rejected hosting the preparations and testing of other foreign countries’ dangerous nuclear bombs in our island homes.

This past month, on July 9, we had Constitutional Day in my island nation of Belau; we celebrated the full 20 years since we wrote what was once a nuclear-free Constitution! A mere twenty years have taught us so very much, haven’t they? A grassroots global nuclear abolition movement has been created and continues to grow; moreover, a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons within the United States has been created, and will be formally launched in October. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, issued a legal advisory expressing the general illegality of nuclear weapons. For us in Belau, the struggle was long and painful. Assassinations, killings of innocent civilians, and official involvements (of officials in both the Belau and US Governments) in the breakdown of law and order, now vindicate the rightness of the Nuclear-free idea, once radical, unrealistic, now chic (See Butler, Edwards and Kirby 1988, “Palau: A Challenge to the Rule of Law in Micronesia,” for a description of the systematic breakdown of law engaged in by “top government officials”). Now a broad spectrum of mainstream organizations and individuals are working to create a nuclear-free world, largely because we have now come to understand the depth of the crisis of relying on weapons of mass destruction to ensure “security.”

For Micronesians generally, it made sense to do the right thing. For Belau peoples particularly, we must have either been ready and willing to pay the price or crazy enough to stand up to the US Pentagon. Whatever the case may have been, 20 years after we wrote that Constitution, on July 9, 1999, the young peoples of Belau–many of them children of those who authored the Constitution as well as our nation’s Founding Fathers—hosted a Constitutional Forum wherein the surviving members of the 1979 Constitution Convention–spoke about their experiences during the convention, and the challenges now facing the island nation. With all that we have seen take place in the last 20 years, it was encouraging to know that we had been vindicated.

In July 1978 however, just a year before we authored our own nuclear-free Constitution, the UN General Assembly was scheduled to hold its 10th Special Session between May 23 to July 1, devoted to disarmament. Surprisingly, and by consensus, the General Assembly adopted a Final Document about 20 days ahead of schedule–something unheard of in current multilateral disarmament forums.

That Final Document declared:

“Mankind today is confronted with an unprecedented threat of self-extinction arising from the massive and competitive accumulation of the most destructive weapons ever produced. Existing arsenals of nuclear weapons alone are more than sufficient to destroy all life on earth. Failure of efforts to halt and reverse the arms races, in particular the nuclear arms race, increase the danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yet the arms race continues. Military budgets are constantly growing, with enormous consumption of human and materials resources. The increase in weapons, especially nuclear weapons, far from helping to strengthen international security, on the contrary weakens it. The vast stockpiles and tremendous build-up of arms and armed forces and the competition for qualitative refinement of weapons of all kinds to which scientific resources and technical advances are diverted, pose incalculable threats to peace. This situation both reflects and aggravates international tensions, sharpens conflicts in various regions of the world, hinders the process of detente, exacerbates the differences between opposing military alliances, jeopardizes the security of all States, heightens the sense of insecurity among all States, including non-nuclear-weapon States, and increases the threat of nuclear war…” (United Nations Office of Public Information 1978, pp.4-5).

An accompanying programme of action identified several key actions and proposals for disarmament work to proceed.

I recount that 1978 declaration on disarmament in order to highlight the fact that Nation-states cannot be trusted. Twenty years is a bit too long to wait on a sincere promise made to halt development of weapons of mass destruction. If ever, since 1978, the world has witnessed an increase of nuclear arsenals and the threats now facing humanity have increased as a consequence of the arms race conducted since that time. We now only have approximately 20 weeks before the new millennium comes, making it ever so crucial that we join together as representatives of civil society to develop a more progressive grassroots agenda for a nuclear-free world.

Legacies of Nuclear Colonialism; Envisioning/Ensuring our Future

This is the legacy of what we in the Pacific have been witnesses to: the violence of colonial aggressions and nuclear colonialism, and the resulting effort to re-think the whole basis of planetary security. Thinking along shared responsibilities of caring for our planet compels us to network far and wide with sympathetic allies who inspire us and help us in a common effort to bring sanity, every precious bit of sanity, to the way we live on this planet. Genuine peace can come when we allow a sense of justice to guide our affairs vis-à-vis one another, and more crucially, in the way we relate with our precious Mother Earth. “We are a culture organized around death, war, profit, and violence,” Betty Burkes proclaimed, “where power is based on the principle of power-over others. Power over is the power of punishment, weapons, competition, the power of annihilation that supports all the institutions of domination. Nuclear weapons serve the preservation and continuance of that culture.” However, “to realize a secure and livable world for our children and grandchildren and all future generations, the stated goal of Abolition 2000,” Burkes continued, “requires that we make some inquiry into the culture of war and violence we inhabit, check[ing] out how we participate and are organized to acquiesce in our own exploitation” (Burkes, ibid.).

Describing what was at stake at a US nuclear disarmament meeting in Chicago last year when the US Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was being established, Jackie Cabasso, one of Abolition 2000′s Founder, wrote in Abolition 2000: Speaking Truth to Power: “We had lots of questions: What exactly does abolition mean. How long would it take?,” etc., etc. There were many questions then. “We recognized,” Cabasso continued, “that a nuclear weapons free world must be achieved carefully and in a step by step manner,’ and we spelled out the steps. But we were unyielding in our objective: definite and unconditional abolition of nuclear weapons.’ From the basement of the United Nations in New York we faxed out the Abolition 2000 Statement” (Cabasso 1998, pp.2-3).

The rest is history! Abolition 2000 is now a global movement with more than 1,300 organization members around the world. Many individuals who were involved in founding the global Abolition 2000 network have created a US campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. Such a short history, less than 5 years–speaks volumes to what a caring and active grassroots movement can do in 5 years what more than 180 Nation-states cannot do in 20! But this disparity of action–and excessive amount of rhetoric–on the part of Nation-states, must also tell us something fundamental: that there may be an unfortunate lack of concern and or sincerity on the part of governments collectively to achieve anything to reduce the increasing dangers humanity faces. It is up to us then, including all concerned peoples and grassroots movements around the world, to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Failing to do so and remaining indifferent to this global effort to rid the world of nuclear arms is to participate in a conspiracy of silence that is ultimately deadly.

Back in late 1970s, early 1980s, my elder sister Paula came to school here in New Mexico. She also played volleyball at New Mexico Highlands University. I don’t know much about New Mexico except that I recall hearing about a certain Italian named Agostino who lived as a hermit in a mountain called Hermit Peak in the last century. One day, he was found murdered. Personally, with my involvement in anti-nuclear work, my trip to Albuquerque seems to be rather strange; it is like returning to the scene of a crime, so to speak. In Belau, Marshall Islands, indeed all Micronesia and the entire Pacific, our political misfortunes were directly and or indirectly related to the number of weapons of mass destruction being produced and worked on here in New Mexico. I take this issue very personally, as everything that I and my Brothers and Sisters in Belau and around the Pacific value politically, culturally, spiritually have been and continue to be challenged in the extreme by the arrogance of power, maintained by the ability to threaten to murder the mass of humanity. Threatening to mass-annihilate peoples in order to defend a certain “way of life” should be crimes against humanity. It is the same logic that inspired colonial excursions across the globe in the past 500 years. The excessive amount of financial resources used to sustain nuclear arsenals is a larceny of the mass of peoples who toil daily in America to pay taxes that are then diverted from urgent social needs to maintaining ever-increasing arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. It is a moral bankruptcy that is driving all these policies; the bankruptcy knows no boundaries as we are all deeply impacted in many ways. We have, in essence, all returned to the scene of a crime, and we do so largely to find within ourselves the will to live as human beings.

My condolences to the murdered Agostino, but coming here to learn from each other, to revisit the institutions/production sites of weapons of mass destruction and terror hopefully will help us all to more systematically come to understand the modus operandi of the culprit who is murdering humanity and the planet, reason with Him, and begin a process of healing that can ensure our survival even to the year 3000 and beyond.

From the Pacific, I bring greetings of love, and messages of solidarity to Peace Action members. Thank you and best wishes to all of us in our individual and collective journeys.

[END]

ANNEX

THE FOURTH NGO PARALLEL FORUM COMMUNIQUÉ

The NGO Parallel Forum brought together representatives of community groups, churches and indigenous peoples organizations from around the Pacific, and was held between 14-17 August 1998, in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.

The fourth NGO Parallel Forum included participants from the following countries and territories of the Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim: Federated States of Micronesia; Republic of the Marshall Islands; Guam; Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas; Ka Pae’aina (Hawaii); Papua New Guinea; Bougainville; Solomon Islands; Vanuatu; Republic of the Fiji Islands; Kingdom of Tonga; Cook Islands; Te Ao Maohi (French Polynesia); Aboriginal Australia; Australia; Aotearoa (New Zealand); East Timor; Philippines; First Nations Canada; Japan; United States of America.

The NGO Parallel Forum preceded the official South Pacific Forum Heads of Government meeting, which will be held between August 21-28 in Pohnpei. It was organized by the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC), and hosted at the Micronesian Seminar by the Federation of Non-Government Organizations in the FSM, and the FSM Women’s Associations Network (FSMWAN).
Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC)

NGO PARALLEL FORUM COMMUNIQUÉ
August 14-17, 1998
Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia

Twenty years ago, the second Nuclear Free Pacific and Independent Pacific Movement Conference met in Pohnpei. This meeting in 1978 brought together representatives of community groups, churches and Indigenous peoples organizations from around the region. They discussed: the protection of our Pacific environment; developing our communities; respecting the right of self-determination for indigenous peoples; and struggles for independence by colonized Pacific peoples. Some of those representatives later became Prime Ministers, Heads of State and prominent community leaders in the region.

Twenty years on, non-government and community groups are meeting again in Pohnpei at the Fourth NGO Parallel Forum, to set forward our visions and concerns. The issues raised in 1978 are still on our agenda today.

Economic Development
The theme of this year’s South Pacific Forum highlights economic issues. Economics should be about people. Economic development must work to support the things we value most: our land and waters, our health and education, our culture and values, our children’s future.
In 1971, the first South Pacific Forum meeting of Pacific Heads of Government agreed on a vision of an integrated Pacific, which was based on common values unique to Pacific island countries. This vision was termed the Pacific Way’.

This vision has been confronted by the political and economic interests of Australia, New Zealand and other major economic powers, who have attempted to derail its realization. This was shown with the results of the July 1998 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM). The Forum’s Economic Action Plan is based on narrow economic models which take little or no account of the central importance of systems of customary land tenure or the traditional “subsistence” economy for Pacific peoples. IMF Structural Adjustment Programs and the APEC Non-Binding Investment Principles are not a sound basis for Pacific island development.

Despite two decades of political independence, our economies are still based on the exploitation of our people, labor and natural resources, with no respect for traditional economies. We are being caught up in a fundamentally flawed model that takes little account of the diversity or strengths of island societies.

The current economic models endorsed in the FEMM communiqué represent a form of colonialism based on exploitation:

• which demands privatization and promotes individualism in societies that are essentially communal;
• which puts profits before people;
• which values competition instead of cooperation;
• which defines progress’ in terms of GDP rather than health, education and quality of life.

We therefore call upon Forum Island governments to revive their original vision of the Pacific Way.

• We support increased trade between Forum Island countries through Bilateral Trade Agreements which can build a web of relationships leading to healthy integration in our region. We support co-operation among Forum Island countries, but co-operation without domination by imposed economic models.
• We view with caution the FEMM initiative which calls for a free trade agreement between Forum Island countries, as we fear it may not be based on mutual respect, fair trade and appropriate environmental standards.
• We support the Forum’s policy for the inclusion of other Pacific countries in a future ACP-EU Development Co-operation Agreement, including the French-occupied territories (New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna) and the remaining Forum Island countries (Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Cook Islands and Niue).
• We call on Forum countries and international donors to implement the “20/20″ concept endorsed by the 1995 UN World Summit on Social Development, to increase spending on health, education and the social sector, and to ensure that progress on implementing this target be monitored.

Nuclear Free Pacific

We are totally committed to a Pacific that is free of all nuclear activities. We are strongly opposed to the trans-shipment of plutonium and high level nuclear waste through our Pacific Ocean, and ongoing threats to dump nuclear waste in our islands. There are many actions that can be taken:

• We call on the Forum to develop a regional strategy to effectively oppose all aspects of the nuclear cycle in our region.
• We call on the Forum to convene a conference to review, amend and strengthen the Rarotonga Treaty for a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, involving Forum member governments, the nuclear powers, special experts and non-government and community representatives.
• We urge the Forum to press France for further studies and ongoing monitoring of Moruroa, Fangataufa and neighboring atolls after the end of nuclear testing, especially looking at health and environmental issues. The recent IAEA report on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls fails to address France’s ongoing responsibilities for compensation, clean-up and the health of former test site workers and neighboring island communities.
• We call on the Forum to use the Post Forum dialogue to press the nuclear powers to fulfill their obligations under the SPNFZ Treaty and Waigani Convention protocols and respect the sovereignty of Pacific Island States.
• We call on Forum Island countries to acknowledge the economic difficulties facing the Marshall Islands, to support its efforts to find development alternatives without relying on the nuclear waste trade. The nuclear and toxic waste trade must not be a private sector growth area for the region.
• We ask Forum Island countries to tell Australia not to mine uranium at Jabiluka in the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, against the wishes of Aboriginal landowners.

Decolonization

As we move towards the end of the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, many Pacific peoples are still seeking the right to self determination, sovereignty and independence.

In the past, the South Pacific Forum actively supported colonized countries to gain their independence. Forum members must continue to take a leadership role in the decolonization of the region. We therefore state:

• Bougainville must remain on the Forum agenda. We acknowledge the current peace process and endorse the United Nations Observer Mission on Bougainville, and the Regional Neutral Peace Monitoring Group under the auspices of the South Pacific Forum, involving monitors from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Vanuatu. The process of peace and reconciliation needs ongoing involvement by Forum member countries to maintain the current cease-fire. We urge the formation of the Bougainville Reconciliation Government, as part of the democratic process to self-determination and independence for the people of Bougainville.
• We call on Forum governments to support the UN Decolonization Committee’s stand-alone resolution on Guam at this year’s debate at the UN General Assembly.
• We ask Forum governments to accept the petitions from countries around the region and internationally, which call on the Forum to include French-occupied Polynesia on its agenda. As with New Caledonia, we urge the Forum to send a Special Mission to French Polynesia to learn more about recent developments, and to initiate the re-inscription of French Polynesia on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories.
• We call on Forum governments to recognize the Kanaka Maoli people’s right to self-determination, and to include Ka Pae’aina (Hawai’i) on the Forum agenda. In 1998, the centenary of the United States’ purported annexation of the islands, the Forum should support the re-inscription of Ka Pae’aina (Hawai’i) on the UN list of non-self-governing territories.
• We call on the Forum to take the cue from the Melanesian Spearhead Group and put West Papua on its agenda, with a view to re-examining decolonization as well as human rights and environmental abuses. With current changes in Indonesia, action by Pacific Governments on East Timor and West Papua has become urgent.
• Forum members should actively support United Nations and European Union initiatives for East Timorese self-determination, including release of all political prisoners, withdrawal of Indonesian military forces and support for direct East Timorese participation in negotiations on the future of the country.

Human Rights

Despite 50 years of action since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the violation of human rights continues in East Timor, West Papua, Bougainville, and other countries in the Pacific.

There are other denials of fundamental rights in our region – the intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples over their resources are under direct threat by bio-pirates, pharmaceutical companies, mining and logging companies and foreign fishing fleets. Therefore:

• We welcome initiatives by Forum members to establish national Human Rights Commissions. The Forum should support these important initiatives and reaffirm the international principles that human rights are universal, indivisible and inalienable.
• We call on Forum members to speed up the process of ratification and implementation of CEDAW, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on Biological Diversity and other international instruments relating to human rights and indigenous peoples rights. The Forum Secretariat should develop gender policy in consultation with regional and women’s NGOs, with the view to establishing a Forum Secretariat Women’s Division.
• We ask Forum members to endorse and implement the principles of the UN Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• We call on Forum Island countries to lobby in support of the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, the Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the Kanaka Maoli of Ka Pae’aina (Hawai’i). The international human rights agenda includes the collective rights of indigenous peoples in our region.
• We call on Forum Island countries to oppose the extinguishment of Aboriginal bloodline rights to land, law and custom under the Native Title Act and 10-Point Plan in Australia.
• We urge Forum Island countries to lobby in support of Aboriginal efforts to bring a court case to the International Court of Justice, regarding the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, disputing Australia’s interpretation, application and fulfillment of the Genocide Convention.
• We call on the Forum to develop a regional strategy to protect intellectual property rights. While promoting economic activity in the region, Forum Island countries must protect the intellectual property rights and traditional knowledge of indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples are struggling every day to protect their resources and knowledge, and we urge member governments to develop national legislation to halt the theft of natural resources and heritage (from kava to medicinal plants, and even to the level of genetic material under the Human Genome Project).

As participants to the Fourth NGO Parallel Forum, we thank our hosts in Pohnpei: the Federation of Non-Government Organizations, the FSM Women’s Associations Network, and the Micronesian Seminar. We acknowledge the honor of the presence at our closing ceremony of the Governor of Pohnpei State, Governor Del Pangelinan.
Provided by Richard Salvador.

—

Works Cited

[for references in Legacy of Nuclear Testings in the Pacific:Re(Visiting) Los Alamos, Production Site of Weapons of Mass Destruction]

“Abolition 2000 Resolution Against the Military/Nuclear Option of the Republic of Palau-United States Compact of Free Association,” (Moorea, Te Ao Maohi, January 20-28, 1997). See website of Abolition 2000: A Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. http://www.napf.org/abolition2000/index.html. See also List of Tahiti Resolutions (Abolition 2000), http://prop1.org/2000/9702tres.htm
Adams, James. Engines of War. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.

Aldridge, Bob and Ched Myers. Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self-Determination. Baltimore, Maryland: Fortkamp Publishing Company, 1990.

Arias, Oscar. “Demilitarization: An Indispensable Component for Development,” Text of speech at American Friends Service Committee during conference devoted to producing a Code of Conduct for Arms Sales to Third World Countries (which attempts to link arms sales to human rights record). Philadelphia. November 15, 1997. Available on the Internet: http://www.afsc.org/ariasapg.htm

Bailey, Emily, Richard Guthrie, Daryl Howlett and John Simpson, The Evolution of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, 5th edition. (Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation). Southhampton, UK: The Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, 1999. http://www.mcis.soton.ac.uk/programmes/Bb1e6fin.pdf

Blaisdell, Kekuni. “The Indigenous Rights Movement in the Pacific: 1998 Marks the Centennial of the U.S. Colonial Expansion in the Pacific and Caribbean,” published by In Motion Magazine, 1998a. Available on the Internet: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pacific.html.

Blaisdell, Kekuni. “Decolonization: Unfinished Business in the Pacific (Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organizations Discussion Paper for the Regional Seminar of the United Nations Decolonization Committee,” Nadi, Fiji, 16-18 June 1998. Published by In Motion Magazine. Available on the Internet: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/fiji1.html

Butler, William J. and George C. Edwards and Michael D. Kirby. Palau: A Challenge to the Rule of Law in Micronesia: Report of a Mission on Behalf of The International Commission of Jurists and The American Association for the International Commission of Jurists. New York: The American Association for the International Commission of Jurists, 1988.

Burkes, Betty, “What can one Abolitionist Movement Learn from Another? Comparing Abolition of Nuclear Weapons with Abolition of Slavery,” Text of speech at a Northern California Abolition 2000 Conference, February 22, 1997.

Cabasso, Jacqueline, “Abolition 2000: Speaking Truth to Power,” Text of speech at US nuclear demilitarization campaign planning meeting, October 9-10, 1998. Chicago.

Churchill, Ward and Winona LaDuke, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” in M. Annette Jaimes (ed), The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

De Grasse, Robert, Jr., Military Expansion–Economic Decline. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1983.

Evans, Caron. “Reappraising Third World Arms Production,” in Survival (March 1986).

Gerson, Joseph, “U.S. Asia-Pacific Hegemony and Possibilities of Popular Solidarity, Fresh Look: Re-examining the role and impact of US bases in Asia-Pacific Seoul, South Korea,” June 26-27, 1999a.

Gerson, Joseph, “Architecture of U.S. Asia-Pacific Hegemony: The U.S.-Japanese-Chinese Triangle,” Presentation at The Second Annual Conference on Alternative Security in Asia Pacific: Prospects and Dilemmas held in Manila, Philippines. July 22, 1998. Available on the Internet: http://www.afsc.org/nero/jgmanila.htm.

Hartung, William. The Economic Consequences of a Nuclear Freeze. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1984.

Lydenberg, Steven. Weapons for the World. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1977.

Melman, Seymour. The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1978.

Moruroa and Us: Polynesians’ Experiences during Thirty Years of Nuclear Testing in the French Pacific, published by the Documentation and Research Centre on Peace and Conflict, Lyon, France, 1997.
(Summary: “‘Moruroa and Us’ is the final report about the experiences of the Polynesian test-site workers and islanders who lived in the vicinity of Moruroa and Fangataufa. The report is the result of a sociological research conducted by Hiti Tau and the Eglise Evanglique and supported by Pieter de Vries and Han Seur of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.)

Navias, Martin. Ballistic Missile Proliferation in the Third World. London: IISS/Brassey’s, 1990.

Peace Movement Aotearoa (New Zealand), “Action Alert – Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day,” March 1999.

Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9, Fourth Olbiil Era Kelulau (4th Congress), Third Special Session, May 1993. “An Act to State the interpretations and positions of the Republic of Palau as to the Compact of Free Association between the Republic of Palau and the United States of America…” See especially, Sections 5 and 6.

Robie, David. Blood on Their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific. Leichhardt, NSW, Australia: Pluto Press, 1989.

Salvador, Richard N. “Indigenous Peoples Speak Truth to Power: Environmental and Human Health Aspects of the Nuclear Age,” NGO Statement to the Third Preparatory Committee of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Formal Review, May 10-21, 1999. New York. Available on the Pacific Islands Report website.

Salvador, Richard N. “Nuclear Colonialism and Environmental Racism: An Indigenous Perspective,” NGO Statement to the Second Preparatory Committee of the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty 2000 Formal Review, 27 April to 8 May 1998. Geneva, Switzerland. Available on the Pacific Islands Report website.

Saul, John Ralston. Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Toronto and New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Stanley, John and Maurice Pearton, The International Trade in Arms. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], 1972.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], The Arms Trade with the Third World. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1977.

Wasserman, Harvey and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, 1945-1982. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1982.

Weisgall, Jonathan. “The Nuclear Nomads of Bikini,” Foreign Affairs 39, 1980.

United Nations Office of Public Information, “Final Document of Assembly Session on Disarmament 23 May-1 July 1978,” New York: United Nations Headquarters.

United Nations Trusteeship Council, “Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Palau, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, 1993.” In Official Records of the Trusteeship Council, Sixtieth Session, Supplement No. 1 (T/1978).

Copyright © 2011 Richard N. Salvador

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Nuclear Colonialism and Environmental Racism:An Indigenous Perspective
Text of Intervention at the 2nd Preparatory Committee Meetings
Leading to the Year 2000 Formal Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
27 April to 8 May 1998
United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland

Richard N. Salvador
Member of Coordinating Committee
Abolition 2000: A Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
[From Republic of Belau]

Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Delegates to the 1998 NPT PrepComm, I am thankful for this opportunity to represent NGOs for a nuclear free and independent Pacific and all colonized people in the world to communicate our sentiments and positions towards the long overdue need for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

I would like to speak to you today as an Indigenous person from the Pacific. For peoples from my region and for indigenous peoples all over this planet, the effects of the nuclear fuel chain are an assault upon our lands, our lives, our cultures. Native communities in Canada, Aboriginal communities in Australia and bushmen in Namibia are still waiting for justice concerning their inherent right to self-determination, as promised by the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

For a dozen millennia, the vast Pacific has been our home. As island peoples, we have lived in our mother’s keeping and she in ours. But with the dawning of imperialism, our islands have been overrun by Europeans, by Americans and by Asians. The power and might of these colonial powers were crucial in exploiting and maintaining the Pacific as the nuclear arena, testing ground and dumpsite of nuclear materials.

The colonial stranglehold began with the taking of ports and bases in the 18th and 19th centuries. It escalated with the Second World War and it continues with superpower nuclearization of the region, nuclear testing, toxic dumping, ocean and land mining, and the latest form of exploitation, mass based corporate tourism. This is what we mean when we describe Nuclear Colonialism. It describes the use of modern technology to perpetuate the historical devastation of Indigenous lands.

In my island nation of Belau (Republic of Palau), we determined to create a nuclear-free island nation. That seemed like a noble idea, but as soon as we began to set in motion the building of our nation, our UN Administering Authority [United States] made a mockery of our genuine practice of democracy. We conducted more than ten referenda to deny the American Pentagon’s plans to strike down our nuclear-free Constitution. We soon found out that the promotion of democracy was a mere rhetorical ploy. We said “NO” each time we had a referendum on the question of allowing nuclear weapons in our territory. Our first president was assassinated, and the results of each subsequent referendum were thrown out, the reason being that military imperatives took precedence over the democratic wishes and aspirations of a nation and people.

The phrase “environmental racism” is of relatively recent origin, but the practice of siting hazardous waste production and disposal in communities of color is nothing new. Environmental racism is continuations of the discrimination people of color endure at all levels of society, from housing and education to employment, health care and legal services. Environmental racism forces people of color [in the United States], in the words of Rev. Ben Chavis Jr., “to bear the brunt of the nation’s pollution problem.” Examples of environmental racism abound. Called by some “human sacrifice zones”, these are areas where mining occurs, where pesticide use is rampant, and of course where the pollution of the military, the biggest source of pollution on earth, accumulates and is stored.

Nuclear weapons, the focus of the NPT, are not possible without digging uranium from the earth. We believe that uranium should be left in the hands of Mother Earth – no other force is capable of containing the toxic menace of radioactivity. 70% of the world’s uranium resources are located in the lands inhabited by Indigenous Peoples in Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. These people are severely affected by the negative impact of mining activities.

The nuclear cycle connects the Indigenous and independence struggles with each other: Uranium mining begins on Aboriginal and Native American land; testing has been carried out on Moruroa, Fangataufa, the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan and Nevada; MX missiles are ejected into Kwajalein waters; U.S. military bases are located in Guam, Hawaii, Okinawa, South Korea, Australia, and until 1991, the Philippines; US military spy bases are located in Aotearoa-New Zealand, Australia and the Antarctic.

Jabiluka is a proposed uranium mine which lies within the physical (although not legal) boundaries of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. The traditional owners, the Mirrar people, have categorically stated they oppose the construction of the Jabiluka mine. Yvonne Margarula, senior traditional owner of the Jabiluka region, has this to say about the mine: “The Jabiluka deposit is ten minutes from our communities, 500 meters from a major wetland system and is enclosed within Kakadu National Park. One spill from the proposed mine will mean that natural and cultural values of Kakadu National Park would be obliterated forever….We want the Australian government to understand and act on obligations which belong to all of us to protect our country.”

We reaffirm the correctness and relevance of the 1997 Moorea Declaration by Abolition 2000 which states that “colonized and indigenous people have in the large part, borne the brunt of this nuclear devastation – from the mining of uranium and the testing of nuclear weapons on indigenous peoples land, to the dumping, storage and transport of plutonium and nuclear wastes, and the theft of land for nuclear infrastructure.”

We therefore come here to the table as victims of the nuclear age. While it is difficult to transcend the nature of what it is to be the sacrificial lambs of military imposed “peace,” we seek to transcend mere victimization in demanding and calling for a final cessation to these genocidal acts of nuclear colonialism. We are inspired by the work of the recently deceased Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who spoke of strategy on behalf of oppressed peoples working to liberate themselves from the oppression that dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed. Being the victims of the nuclear age, we ask you to listen to the suffering voices silenced by attribution of priority to a precarious “peace” maintained by military means. The Pacific, like most Indigenous communities around the world, is heavily militarized. Genuine peace can only begin to emerge when the nations of the world start to dismantle military and nuclear installations now dominating the entire Pacific from Guam to Hawaii to French Polynesia.

Nuclear disarmament can begin to heal the wounds imposed on communities not only in the South, but in the Northern countries as well. The theory and practice of nuclear deterrence have been extremely hostile to democratic practice. Nuclear disarmament and demilitarization will allow communities to participate more fully in both the political sphere and civil society. National military strategies, on the other hand, have often required the absence of free democratic thought. As you meet here, we urge you to take strong and courageous leadership in de-legitimizing what, for a whole generation, gripped our imagination as we tottered in so close a proximity to total nuclear annihilation. As we have heard oftentimes, the end of the Cold War has provided a historic opportunity to rid ourselves of this “near-death” experience with planned obsolescence of the human race.

Both the NPT and subsequent efforts to re-visit it, including the 1995 formal review, produced many promises, which you all undertook to achieve. Integrity in this instance is crucial, and we urge you all to be true to those promises. With the next formal Review of the NPT in the year 2000, it will not only be logical to set ourselves on a new footing in human history; it will also be a crucial symbol for beginning a new millennium with serious efforts to begin negotiations toward nuclear disarmament.

Discussions on nuclear stockpiles must eventually give way to development issues. In the Pacific and in many Indigenous communities worldwide, it is crucial that forms of political autonomy, liberated from the dominance of military and nuclear installations, be the basis of this new discourse of development. In connection with nuclear disarmament therefore, we urge you to support bringing to pass the end of colonialism, and our right to decolonization. Self-determination of peoples and their communities must be the basis of state relations in the coming millennium.

I am saddened by the absence of many Pacific Island nations here. Marshall Islands Ambassador Laurence Edwards called attention, at last year’s NPT PrepComm, to the inability of many small island nations to come to Geneva. But he called for the creation of an Intersessional Working Group, which would set in motion negotiations toward nuclear disarmament. This will be the most significant accomplishment of this NPT, and we strongly urge you to do this. The South Pacific Forum, in Rarotonga last September, expressed their support of the enhanced NPT review process, and called for more action to be taken on pursuing other efforts to proceed with the current efforts under NPT. We urge you to do the same.

Distinguished Delegates, within the next two weeks we also urge you to make the following steps that will pave the way to disarmament and our liberation from nuclear colonialism and racism:

1. For parties to the treaty to support and respect the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaties in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia as an important disarmament measure. In the spirit of Article VII of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which upholds that it is the “right of any group of States to conclude regional treaties in order to assure the total absence of nuclear weapons in their respective territories”, the NPT PrepComm should support the process of establishing such zones. Protocols must be signed now without further conditions.
2. As an expansion of the international cooperation outlined in Article IV of the NPT, with due consideration for the needs of our areas of the world, we recommend that the PrepComm urgently request parties to the Treaty in a position to do so to contribute to the environmental cleanup of the radioactive waste and contamination that are the inevitable consequence of the extraction and use of nuclear materials.

We wish to assert our right to preserve the nature of our relations with the earth, as we have for generations as Indigenous peoples. The fate of the earth rests on the proper care of the lands and waters, not by threatening to destroy the earth and its inhabitants in order to maintain dominance and hegemony. The wisdom of Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the earth is the reciprocal obligation to care for the land, as it will in turn care for us. The voices of Native peoples, much popularized in these frightening times, speak a different language than old world nationalism. Our claims to uniqueness, to cultural integrity, should not be misidentified. We are stewards not of weapons stockpiles but of the earth, our mother, and we offer an ancient, umbilical wisdom about how to protect and ensure her life.

The following are words from the Final Communiqué of the Pacific Islands Non-Governmental Forum, meeting in parallel with the South Pacific Forum Summit in Rarotonga, Cook Islands in September 1997:

“Our waters are sacred waters which sustain all life forms The sea is where all life comes from. The ocean unites us all, as peoples of the Pacific. The land is our life, our history, our culture, our future generations. Our ancestors cared for these life forms, respected them and were their guardians. They are our guardians still. Our air and waters are sacred – we are not the dumpsite of the world.

“The end of nuclear testing in the Pacific does not mean the end of the nuclear age. We will return from Rarotonga to our homes, to press for an end to the transshipment, storage and dumping of nuclear wastes in the Pacific, the clean up and ongoing monitoring of contaminated areas and support for test site workers affected by nuclear testing.”

We, therefore, urge you to consider these our regional concerns, expressed by our respective governments and civil society, in your deliberations. We have all come here from around the world, from across great distances, both representing governments and our communities where many of us are engaged in the daily struggles of survival as communities. The mass of the world’s population have entrusted us all, therefore, with a serious responsibility to consider the troubling manner in which countless nations have treated the earth and peoples by scorching and or polluting the planet beyond Nature’s immediate ability to heal it — all of these by exploding nuclear weapons or disposing of their waste products in sensitive regions of the world. Countless Indigenous communities have and continue to be places of choice for mining the polluting uranium that is then used in generating nuclear power or developing nuclear weapons, many of which have been tested on Indigenous communities. From start to end of the nuclear chain, we in many Indigenous communities have borne the brunt of the nuclear age. We urge you to help us move to new levels of empathy, understanding, and peaceful co-existence.

The potentiality of an actual nuclear war, or of a nuclear accident, or of the utilization of nuclear materials by terrorists have increased the likelihood of more nuclear dangers in recent years. We need to morally respond to these threats of collective annihilation in like manner, that is, to set ourselves about the business of utilizing the enormous scientific and technological expertise at our disposal including developing the political will, toward eliminating these instruments of mass destruction. We have come here to consider as well the possibility for reflecting on the enormous bankruptcy of the spirit that allows the pursuit of narrowly-defined “national security” which relies on mass destruction of the planet and all its inhabitants in order to assure “security” of select nations.

By choosing to engage in re-thinking prevailing notions of State “security,” we can HOPEFULLY begin to transcend this debilitating spiritual paralysis, which has the potential, if sustained long enough, to subject humanity to extinction. In short, we are in need of a serious transformation of collective human consciousness. Among some of the mass technical details of moving forward with programs of disarmament, we hope that you will also address the moral imperatives underlying our anxieties about the role of instruments of mass destruction in global security. “Mutually Assured Destruction” cannot be anything but a mad, desperate attempt to pre-empt one’s enemies from claiming for himself the illusion of survivability in a situation of total annihilation. We need to acknowledge the greater moral superiority behind the de-legitimation of the Cold War strategy of assurance of mutual destruction as a sane military strategy. This is suicidal and cannot be the sole determining logic of State relations in an increasingly inter-dependent world.

The International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world, has already decreed in its advisory opinion of the general illegality of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. It is in the short- and long-term interests of this body (and indeed to the future survival of humanity) that you must act decisively to match the ICJ’s legal advisory with a moral force far exceeding the utility of the endless legal instruments that have been set in place to prevent, perchance, our inadvertent annihilation as a species. To this end, we commend your role in these crucial discussions on the fate of the planet and of humanity.

Thank you.

Richard Salvador
Abolition 2000 Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

*Richard Salvador wishes to acknowledge the kind assistance of three colleagues who assisted him in writing this intervention at the NPT PrepComm:
— Ms. Myrla Baldonado, Nuclear-Free Philippines Coalition, Philippines
— Mr. Roger Smith, NGO Committee on Disarmament, New York
— Ms. Felicity Hill, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Geneva.

Copyright © 2011 Richard N. Salvador

Climate symposium focuses on best science for public policy

Monday, 17 October 2011

I am an English teacher at a Hawaii DOE school and have taught English in Hawaii for over 6 years. I am also originally from the Pacific island nation of Belau (or Palau) which is active regionally and internationally in addressing climate change and potential sea level rise.

My government’s elected president recently requested the United Nations, during his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2011, to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice that would seek to clarify what the legal responsibilities of States under international law may be in ensuring that activities carried out under their jurisdiction or control do not emit greenhouse gases that will damage other nations.

In my class earlier today, I had a discussion with my students about the APEC Summit here in Honolulu in November. We read the feature front-page story about APEC from today’s Star-Advertiser (October 17, 2011) about the security issues surrounding the Summit in and around Waikiki, the Hawaii Convention Center, and urban Honolulu. But I went beyond the local irritations of these security matters and engaged my students in a brainstorm exercise to identify regional issues the APEC Summit will likely cover. We had a great time doing the activity. They came up, all on their own, with 15 different agenda items. They were: 1) energy (fossil-fuel and alternative energy sources); 2) trade policy; 3) economic development policy, both international and domestic; 4) environmental issues; 5) development of the private industry; 6) climate change & sea level rise; 7) culture & tourism; 8 ) tariff and other import/export taxes; 9) pollution; 10) human rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights; 11) free trade policy; 12) food security (with some input from myself); 13) financial policy; 14) market access; 15) technology & patents. We had a great discussion and I promised my students that when APEC Summit nears, I would look for someone more knowledgeable about APEC to come speak in our class.

I am familiar with APEC. I participated in both the lead up to the 1997 APEC Summit in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and the APEC Peoples’ Summit there. I was initially invited by the Canadian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to participate in an Indigenous Peoples’ Roundtable when that Government was developing its regional and domestic policies vis-à-vis APEC. I was never a member of any government delegation, but participated or spoke in various side events on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver, BC, including at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I spoke mainly about matters and challenges facing Pacific Islanders and what I thought about globalization. This was late-1990s, in the heyday of mass anti-globalization movements. I remember speaking about communities and sharing ideas about how local communities throughout the Asia Pacific might work together and collaborate more effectively to manage their resources even as global forces threaten to engulf them from all sides.

It has been 14 years since that particular APEC Summit. I have learned a lot.

Globalization, like anything else in life, is both good and bad. Globalization is good to the extent that we seek to globalize such things as respect for human rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, environmental protection without condition, fair trade practices, and other basic standards of decency that respect peoples, cultures, and nations.

Today, I saw many of my Native Hawaiian friends and colleagues, other friends and colleagues from the university as well as from around the community come outside the APEC Climate Symposium and protest. I went inside to observe some of the technical presentations given by eager climatologists and other earth and weather scientists and meteorologists regarding how they are helping to improve their science of climate change. As the title of the Symposium put it, they are engaged in “harnessing and using climate information for decision making.”

I felt sad about what I felt was a great disconnect between the protesters and the issues being covered in the APEC Climate Symposium. I subsequently engaged a symposium participant and presenter from Viet Nam about my feelings and we both agreed that protesters should not have been outside protesting.

Though there may be, it seemed that no official leader or cabinet level government leader was there. Otherwise, you would see more security personnel. As it was, only the University of Hawaii security officers were there and many of the presenters seem to be scientific and technical experts reporting on their work and sharing ideas about to improve their technical capabilities in predicting global disasters and forecasting possible climate instabilities in our region.

Thus, this was where I felt the presence of an intense disconnect between protesters and experts working to improve upon our collective regional ability to more correctly predict unstable climate changes and potential disasters.

If those who oppose APEC should want to protest against everything APEC and globalization stand for, I feel that they should target the presidents and prime ministers when they come in November because they are the women and men who stand most conspicuously for, and in favor of, globalization. Whatever protest energy Honolulu can muster toward affecting regional economic changes, they should be channeled directly at elected officials and other policy makers who can make a change. Scattered, dispersed, and greatly diminished bodies of protesting activists here and there do disservice to the traditions of effective social movements of Hawaii’s past, some of which I supported and or participated in myself. I wonder whether these protests can be more fully coordinated and mobilized so that come early November, Hawaii’s civil society can stand up and make a huge difference where it matters.

I feel strongly that the APEC Climate Symposium can educate many of us in Hawaii. Participants there are the climatologists and scientists working at the forefront of climate science, they are folks who posses the technical expertise to convince the rest of us as well as the many others who doubt the reality of global warming just because they don’t access to scientific data needed to make informed decisions about what really is going on with climate changes. These experts and scientists are here presenting their findings and helping to improve our human and scientific abilities to predict and deal with climate instabilities which all threaten our well being as folks who live and survive on or near the seas. This large Pacific Ocean of ours is both our breadbasket of bounteous foods but it can pose significant dangers to us when we least expect it. We have to improve upon our ability to live as oceanic creatures as well. We need to understand better the behavior and characteristics of the ocean. We also need to understand the natural and erratic climate patterns that modern industrial processes have created for us.

Therefore, as members of the Asia Pacific community, we must educate ourselves about who our potential allies can be and learn to offer both intellectual and moral support to them, if we cannot collaborate at the technical level of expertise they work at.

I support the work of APEC Climate Symposium 2011 at the East-West Center and hope that all will be well as participants meet here in the land of Aloha to share what it is they can teach us and what we can do to support their work. Therein, right there in the heart of this climate science work, is the essence of Aloha, isn’t it? Isn’t this what Aloha is about? Let’s globalize Aloha too. Let Hawaii rise and teach the rest of Asia Pacific that we are open-minded enough to support work that promote our common goals and supportive of common interests.

These climatologists and scientists are working to harness climate information so that, when they are improved and reliable, they can inform critical decision-making. Somewhere along this path of insight and potential collaboration, is where we can discover the common elements of improving the quality of our lives as we live on the verge of our vast Pacific Ocean, itself reeling from planetary climate instabilities.

I look forward to joining any protest in early November that brings to the fore issues of our common humanity, issues that bring respect to the center of our efforts to build our regional economies, and environmental justice to those on the receiving end of environmental injustice and environmental racism. I am proud of the historic civil society struggles and movements that most Pacific Islanders have engaged in over the years as they’ve battled colonial injustice and environmental racism and I have spoken out against these at various regional and international events in the Pacific and around the world, including at the United Nations. These are the movements we must ensure will and should continue well into the future.

For now, I request tolerance for and toward APEC Climate Symposium 2011 participants. With the work they do, they are potential allies.

Mahalo,

Richard Salvador
Honolulu, Hawaii

If you have not watched the film documentary “Meltdown: The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse”, you should. It’s highly recommended. From CBC-Canada – a 4-part Documentary that does a wonderful job of documenting how the global financial meltdown was allowed to take place and what the global impacts of it was.  I caught the 4th-hour episode on Aljazeera last week and then followed the links to the following below.

Richard Salvador
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Meltdown – 4 episodes

HOUR 1: The Men Who Crashed the World

Greed and recklessness by the titans of Wall Street triggers the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. It’s left to US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, himself a former Wall Street banker, to try and avert further disaster.

HOUR 2: A Global Tsunami

The meltdown’s devastation ripples around the world from California to Iceland and China. Facing economic ruin, desperate world leaders are at each other’s throats.

HOUR 3: Paying the Price

The victims of the meltdown fight back. In Iceland, protestors force a government to fall. In Canada, ripped off autoworkers occupy their plant. And in France, furious union members kidnap their bosses.

HOUR 4: After the Fall

Investigators begin to sift through the meltdown’s rubble. Shaken world leaders question the very foundations of modern capitalism while asking: could it all happen again?

Click Link Here to Watch Videos

Meltdown: After the Fall – Investigators begin to sift through the meltdown’s rubble. Shaken world leaders question the very foundations of modern capitalism while asking: could it all happen again?Watch 45:05

Meltdown: Paying the Price – In Iceland, protestors force a government to fall. In Canada, ripped off autoworkers occupy their plant. And in France, furious union members kidnap their bosses.Watch 45:06

Meltdown: A Global Tsunami – The meltdown’s devastation ripples around the world from California to Iceland and China. Facing economic ruin, desperate world leaders are at each other’s throats.Watch 45:05

Meltdown: The Men Who Crashed the World – Greed and recklessness by the titans of Wall Street triggers the largest financial crash since the Great Depression.Watch 45:06

—end—

Personal Reflections about the Pacific AlterNatives Conference in March 2009 at East-West Center (originally shared with the Belau Bridge and Pan Pacific listservs).

French radical democratic theorist Jacques Rancière theorizes a history of “wrong” that often assumes the nature of politics, as starting point, in most instances of democratization (see his The Politics of Aesthetics, 2004).

We see this as the fundamental struggle in Western societies. However, it explains to a large degree what is taking place in postcolonial (and still-decolonizing societies). Though it implies to a degree Rancière’ democratization ethos, the very process of decolonization rests on the assumptions of addressing a history of wrong as well. For us though, throughout the Pacific region this implies going beyond mere politics of decolonization. For us, this necessarily entails the imagination of alternative structures and “thought-worlds,” to borrow a term from Peter Brown in his analysis of competing ideologies of Christianity and paganism (in his Authority and the Sacred, 1995). Other commentators of the same in the USA describe such history as “continuing to haunt the American democratic experiment” (Michael J. Shapiro, Deforming American Political Thought: Ethnicity, Facticity, and Genre, 2006).

Rancière is theoretically dense for the most part but he seems to articulate, as I see it, a clarity in and through which to view a form of democratization that makes visible the invisible, gives voice to the voice-less, making possible a space and place for political articulation, and thus a possibility of a politics of inclusivity rather than its opposite. [I give credit to my political theory professor Dr. Michael Shapiro for helping me to understand theory & the political and to see things from angles most of us don’t get to consider at all.]

Here at this link, you can see descriptions of the conference. Click on Program on top of the page to see information on presenters and presentation titles: Pacific Alternatives: Cultural Heritage and Political Innovation in Oceania.

The conference last week embodied for me so many instances of re-imaginations of various alternatives to politics, issues of cultural survival, Indigenous forms of governance vis-à-vis the prevailing Westphalian State-form, and the colonial legacies of social organization we vet even as we imagine new forms that are relevant for us Pacific Islanders. True to political imaginaries like those hinted at by Rancière and others, I sensed the makings of a renaissance of culture and political innovation that are not exclusivist.  For us in the Pacific, the continuing project of decolonization is one we cheerfully accept because it is fundamental to our own political democratization, and largely because this is “our time.”  However, we have a bigger challenge of rising above the difficult challenges in rejecting exclusive nationalism and harmful politicking that largely defined many formerly colonized societies around the world.

For us, alternative and positive social imaginaries can be expressed in and through creative cultural and political innovations.  Ralph Regenvanu’s keynote address (“Imagining the State as a Vehicle for Cultural Survival“) on the evening of March 24 was significant in this instance because of what folks in Vanuatu have done in enlisting their visions of cultural survival, how they imagine the State as (one?) vehicle for ensuring cultural survival into an activist community-based project of culture-preservation. Ralph’s recent election as a member of the Vanuatu Parliament hopefully will ensure that this effort will benefit at a new level of engagement. Ralph’s colleague in Belau (Tina Rehuher, a CPIS alumni) who directed the Belau National Museum for many years was also recently tapped by the Belau president to be a Minister of Community and Cultural Affairs, a cabinet level position that I suppose brings her work to a State-level opportunity to argue for cultural preservation. So the expectation must be high in Vanuatu as well as in Belau!

Vanuatu and Belau I suppose exemplify what is taking place throughout the Pacific, illustrating the very possibility of what Rancière theorizes as progressive act of democratization if we take account of all that happens politically — alongside programs of cultural survival.

I suppose all Pacific Island nations and territories face the same political challenge of democratization. While they address a history of wrong in their decolonization efforts, I hope many Pacific societies remain open to all possibilities of political and cultural governance that are not exclusivist. In a question posed by CPIS Professor Terence Wesley-Smith to a Belau National Museum representative, he wondered what the Belau National Museum and the Belau Government were doing to recognize and include in their cultural preservation programs, the experiences and or creative expressions of the non-Indigenous Belau peoples there. This symbolizes in some way Belau’s debt to otherness, an interesting concept others have talked about that speaks to the huge debts we owe to other peoples or nations or cultures in the making of our own identities, cultures, and nations. Unfortunately, the answer was No.  Hopefully, what was learned at the conference will reach Belau and begin to alter the landscape there, so to speak.

I especially liked Professor Terence Wesley-Smith’s feature presentation on decolonization, the State, and political autonomy in Bougainville. I really liked very much Professor Tarcisius “Tara” Kabutaulaka’s featured paper that, for me, emerged as a major critique of the politics of representation in Melanesia. As Tara indicated, among the major Pacific island culture groups, Melanesia became the only geographical category forever identified with a racial classification [the mela in Melanesia is derived from the word melanin, depicting the dark pigmentation of the skin.]  Of course, we all know that all island-culture group categorizations are not unproblematic. However, the classification of Melanesia tapped into a longstanding history of European racism that ultimately defined us and has continued to influence much else in representations of our Pacific region. This history of racism has not abated and did significantly mark the practice of history throughout Oceania. Thus, the naming of Melanesia constitutes a high-mark of European racism that also marked the rest of the Pacific and how it’s viewed.

All these criticisms and counter-critiques of European-American racism presuppose, I suspect, Rancière’s histor(ies) of wrong that serve as starting point for creative cultural and political innovations in Oceania. I hope these in turn inspire our own intellectual contributions to democratization in the Pacific.  As Ralph Regenvanu suggested, mainstreaming an inclusive democratic ethos, an Indigenous political theory that addresses the Westphalian State-form while valorizing our Indigenous and contemporary forms of State-building, should be our only goal.  I was grateful for the opportunity to participate in the conference as it made me think of many things we can do in the Pasefik!

**I really appreciated very much that Tara Kabutaulaka, Ponipate Rokolekutu, and others mixed kava some evenings and shared with us during the week when the conference was ongoing. My suggestion is for the Pan Pacific Association to once again be more active in providing opportunities for our Pacific Island students and professors to share their research and other musings at official PPA events. Can PPA leaders consider sponsoring events like these in the future?

Mesulang, Meitaki ma’ata, Maururu, Domo arigato, Merci, Tagio Tumas!

Pan Pasefika!

richard salvador
honolulu, hawaii

* I have no idea whether they publish these things, so I am posting my letter here:

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Belau’s Human Rights Developments: Ironies remain and Challenges ahead to always speak truth to Power

September 30, 2011

Greetings “Tia Belau” Editor and Publisher:

What a pleasant surprise to read the positively upbeat editorial of September 26, 2011 regarding Belau’s international maturation in the human rights area!

I don’t necessary like or support the Toribiong regime and have not been shy about declaring my dislike for his administration. However, this is one time I applaud him and his administration for his bold step in signing onto not just one but eight human rights treaties that make up the core of the United Nations’ human rights promotion and protection system.

This is wonderful news. We should be proud of Belau and the bold steps it is taking regionally and internationally in all work that seek to improve the quality of life for folks in Belau and around the Pacific.

Daitorio JT, however, was a bit dishonest though in his United Nations speech! Reading your editorial, I think his September 22 UN speech is overrated!

Yes, Toribiong was a key participant in the writing of the Constitution but neither he nor any member of the Convention that produced that so-called “nuclear-free” Constitution ever took a step toward challenging the United States of America’s obstinate military policies which formed the core of US’s resistance to Belau’s nuclear-free aspirations. These aspirations, largely sought within the framework of sensible environmental stewardship and informed by the initial environmental protestations against the Oil Superport idea, in time, morphed into a fervor for independence which led us out of the miserable years of the Trusteeship era and into our present political period. Thus, those aspirations were part and parcel of Belau’s independence movement and form parts of our collective national identity.

America’s military policies then were inflexible and bad, but they were against established international law. The US’s refusal to allow Belau to preserve its nuclear-free Constitution went against the very spirit and letter of International Law enshrined in Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which articulated NPT legal obligations to “undertake” and “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race,” “nuclear disarmament,” and “general and complete disarmament.” These Treaty legal obligations were established as binding International Law in March 1970 when the NPT came into force. This was a full 25 years after the USA began its own efforts in de-legitimizing attempts by other Nations to create or acquire nuclear weapons, with its Baruch Plan, written by US Representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission Bernard Baruch, and which has become a vital part of the history of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Twenty-five years of American nuclear disarmament diplomacy but then refusing to allow Belau to do the same at the moment of its creation as a nation-state! Irony of ironies!

Thus, we know that the USA was NOT acting in “good faith” in all negotiations we conducted immediately before and after the passage of our original nuclear-free Constitution, which 92percent of Belau citizens approved. JT should know this sorry tale. His late Uncle Roman Tmetuchel was chairman of the Palau Political Status Commission and had to submit the results of Belau’s popular support of our original nuclear-free Constitution to the US Government, which stubbornly and subsequently refused to consider our concerns.

Tmetuchel spoke against these abuses of power and democratic practices, citing concerns about corruption of power and privilege committed by both the Americans and certain Belau politicians at the time. I have listened to the recorded interviews of Tmetuchel that he did with journalist Edward Rampell when Rampell was attempting to write Tmetuchel’s autobiography. Ironically, if Tmetuchel were still alive, he would include Toribiong in his targeted coterie of corrupt Belau leaders. Believe me! Tmetuchel said them all. Much of what Toribiong says these days is found wanting and go against some of what Tmetuchel railed against. And he spoke freely, his recorded voice forever captured on Rampell’s cassette tapes.

What did Daitorio JT and the 1979 Constitutional Convention do about what the USA did? And what did he and his colleagues in the 2^nd Constitutional Convention do about it? Absolutely nothing. Not even a declaration or protestation against the abuse of International Law by the United States of America against Belau as it aspired to be independent and nuclear-free. Belau is not nuclear-free insofar as the Compact of Free Association remains in force for perpetuity.

Thus, it remains ironic for JT to speak out internationally against the abuse of democratic practice and nuclear blackmail. An irony of ironies when our current Constitution is “nuclear-free” only on paper, with the US military prerogatives currently enshrined in the Compact of Free Association.

JT’s single sentence in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2011 regarding Belau’s Constitutional provision on the nuclear-free question is a boldface lie, a dishonest statement that stains the credibility of what Belau stands for as a society and nation of laws.

I congratulate Belau for making huge steps in the human rights arena internationally. But I challenge Toribiong to stop lying and tell the truth always wherever he presumes to speak on behalf of all of us. American comedian and now-US Senator Al Franken wrote a book titled Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, pointing out the lies regularly told by American rightwing commentators on Fox News and similar conservative news shows. The next time Toribiong tells a bold face lie, I am going to write an Al Franken-type book about his lies and deceits.

Mesulang for publishing the entirety of this letter.

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