US Seeks to Establish Naval Base on Jeju Island in Spite of Protests

Tuesday, 18 October 2011 00:00 John Lasker from TowardFreedom.com

At protest against base on Jeju Island

On beautiful Jeju Island, south of the Korean peninsula, the South Korean Navy is building a base that will soon harbor some of the world’s most advanced weapons.

But the mystery is: who inspired the base to be built on this island of pristine waters and stunning volcanic peaks in the first place?

Peace activist Bruce Gagnon says all one needs to do is call the South Korean embassy in Washington and ask.

“We have had four of our people tell us when they called the (South Korean) embassy to protest the naval base, they were told, ‘Don’t call us, call your own government,’” said Gagnon. “The US is forcing South Korea to build this base so to harbor Aegis destroyers. The base is a key part of Obama’s ‘Forward Base’ strategy for missile defense. This is a very provocative act.”

Gagnon is the director Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, which is referred to as the “Global Network” amongst its 150 affiliates across the planet. The Global Network’s mission is to raise awareness about US’s emerging missile defense “arsenal” – an arsenal they believe is a “Trojan Horse” the US is secretly and quietly rolling into the global courtyard.

Missile-defense technology, such as the Aegis-class destroyer that South Korea said will be stationed on Jeju Island, is “dual use” technology, claims the Global Network. An Aegis-class destroyer is equipped with the Aegis system of high-powered radar and missiles that can shoot-down intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other warheads. But this same Aegis technology, created mainly by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, has offensive capabilities as well, such as the ability to shoot down satellite constellations the world has become so dependent on.

The Global Network’s dual-use theory is backed by plenty of incriminating evidence. The Pentagon has spent over $100 billion researching missile defense technology that has never proven itself in real combat. This $100 billion technology can also be deceived by balloon decoys that look like warheads, a fatal flaw the Pentagon has desperately tried to keep secret. While billions were being pumped into so-called missile defense during the past three decades, many high-ranking officers from the US military and US Congressmen publicly stated the nation that controls space, controls earth.

Intimidation in the Pacific and at the White House

Gagnon says the emerging Jeju island naval base, currently a construction site under heavy protest by Jeju island locals, is situated just a few miles from a Pacific sea route China uses to import oil, and that building the base is a provocative act towards China.

“China ships 80 percent of its oil through this transit line,” says Gagnon. “[And if a hostile confrontation were to occur] the US can successfully choke off their ability to transport oil. The US essentially holds the keys to China’s economic engine.”

What is equally disturbing, says Gagnon, is how two US defense contractors and their stock holders are salivating at the chance to make a buck off the threat of war between super powers.

Gagnon believes one reason the US is strong-arming South Korea to build this base on Jeju Island – a World Heritage Site designated by the UN, no less – is so General Dynamics and one of America’s largest shipyards, Bath Iron Works of Maine, can continue to score huge defense contracts from either the Pentagon or South Korea. Gagnon foresees a future where Jeju Island becomes a base where US-built Aegis-equipped destroyers are also harbored.

Both General Dynamics and Bath Iron Works are two major defense contractors that build the destroyers that can be equipped with the Aegis system, and during the last two decades, the US Aegis-equipped fleet has gone beyond 60 ships.

Gagnon believes pressuring Obama to build more Aegis-class ships is the Chicago-based Crown family who helped fund the President’s political ambitions in the years leading up to his 2008 victory. The Crown family, worth $4 billion according to Forbes, is best known for nurturing General Dynamics over the past 60 years into one of the largest weapons-makers in the world. Family members today sit on its board of directors as they grow fatter and fatter from millions-of-dollars worth of General Dynamics’ stock they’ve hoarded.

According to Salon, the Crown family chipped in $500,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential run.

Gagnon says the Crown family now wants some payback.

“He owes them,” says Gagnon about Obama and his relationship with the Crowns.

Sputtering Orbiter? Assange Reveals the Truth

There is no doubt, says Gagnon, that Sino-American posturing in the Pacific has ignited an arms race for the 21st century, as the US continues testing its missile-defense arsenal in the Pacific.

Recall in 2007, when China shot down one of its own satellites. The US followed suit in 2008 by using an Aegis-class destroyer to shoot down an apparent “malfunctioning” satellite as it orbited over Hawaii. WikiLeaks would later reveal the Bush White House essentially had lied about the sputtering orbiter.

The real story, as told by a once secret US cable that was exposed by the elusive Assange, is that the US shot down its own satellite as a direct response to China’s display of space weapon capability the year before in 2007.

Meanwhile, peace activists of Jeju Island are being arrested and harassed by South Korean police. Ironically, the “Island of World Peace,” as dubbed by its own political leaders, is turning into an “Island of No Free Speech”.

For the past year, scores of Jeju Island peace activists, who have elicited help from Gloria Steinem and Noam Chomsky, have camped-out to block construction of the 400,000-square meter base that will harbor over 20 ships and submarines.

On July 15th, undercover police raided the tiny fishing village of Gangjeong where much of the protest strategy is originating. Three key figures of the protest were arrested, including Global Network member Sung-Hee Choi of Gangjeong, who was imprisoned for three months. She was holding a banner that read, "We need international solidarity. Please protest against the South Korean authorities with letters, press interviews and others."

Sung-Hee Choi, an artist, continues to blog about the protests. She wrote the following on Christmas day of last year.

“Snowflakes fell onto the beautiful coast rocks and sea, displaying a mysterious view as the sea horizon became clouded. It was a terrible feeling to think that the most beautiful rocks and sea in the Jeju Island might be covered with concrete if the naval base construction is enforced.”

John Lasker is a freelance journalist from Ohio.

As the Drone Flies...

Published on Monday, September 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

The fast developing predator drone technology, officially called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, is becoming so dominant and so beyond any restraining framework of law or ethics, that its use by the U.S. government around the world may invite a horrific blowback.

First some background. The Pentagon has about 7,000 aerial drones. Ten years ago there were less than 50. According to the website longwarjournal.com, they have destroyed about 1900 insurgents in Pakistan's tribal regions. How these fighters are so clearly distinguished from civilians in those mountain areas is not clear.

Nor is it clear how or from whom the government gets such "precise" information about the guerilla leaders' whereabouts night and day. The drones are beyond any counterattack--flying often at 50,000 feet. But the Air Force has recognized that a third of the Predators have crashed by themselves.

Compared to mass transit, housing, energy technology, infection control, food and drug safety, the innovation in the world of drones is incredible. Coming soon are hummingbird sized drones, submersible drones and software driven autonomous UAVs. The Washington Post described these inventions as "aircraft [that] would hunt, identify and fire at [the] enemy--all on its own." It is called "lethal autonomy" in the trade.

Military ethicists and legal experts inside and outside the government are debating how far UAVs can go and still stay within what one imaginative booster, Ronald C. Arkin, called international humanitarian law and the rules of engagement. Concerns over restraint can already be considered academic. Drones are going anywhere their governors want them to go already--Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and countries in North Africa to name a few known jurisdictions.

Last year a worried group of robotic specialists, philosophers and human rights activists formed the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) (http://www.icrac.co.uk/). They fear that such instruments may make wars more likely by the strong against the weak because there will be fewer human casualties by those waging robotic war. But proliferation is now a fact. Forty countries are reported to be working on drone technology or acquiring it. Some experts at the founding conference of ICRAC forshadowed hostile states or terrorist organizations hacking into robotic systems to redirect them.

ICRAC wants an international treaty against machines of lethal autonomy along the lines of the ones banning land mines and cluster bombs. The trouble is that the United States, unlike over one hundred signatory nations, does not belong to either the land mines treaty or the more recent anti-cluster bomb treaty. Historically, the U.S. has been a major manufacturer and deployer of both. Don't count on the Obama White House to take the lead anytime soon.

Columnist David Ignatius wrote that "A world where drones are constantly buzzing overhead--waiting to zap those deemed threats under a cloaked and controversial process--risks being, even more, a world of lawlessness and chaos."

Consider how terrifying it must be to the populations, especially the children, living under the threat of drones that can attack through clouds and dark skies. UAVs are hardly visible but sometimes audible through their frightful whining sound. Polls show Pakistanis overwhelmingly believe most of the drone-driven fatalities are civilians.

US Air Force Colonel Matt Martin has written a book titled Predator. He was a remote operator sitting in the control room in Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada watching "suspects" transversing a mountain ridge in Afghanistan eight thousand miles away. In a review of Martin's book, Christian Cary writes "The eerie acuity of vision afforded by the Predator's multiple high-powered video cameras enables him to watch as the objects of his interest light up cigarettes, go to the bathroom, or engage in amorous adventures with animals on the other side of the world, never suspecting that they are under observation as they do."

For most of a decade the asymmetrical warfare between the most modern, military force in world history and Iraqi and Afghani fighters has left the latter with little conventional aerial or land-based weaponry other than rifles, rocket propelled grenades, roadside IEDs and suicide belted youths.

People who see invaders occupying their land with military domination that is beyond reach will resort to ever more desperate counterattacks, however primitive in nature. When the time comes that robotic weapons of physics cannot be counteracted at all with these simple handmade weapons because the occupier's arsenals are remote, deadly and without the need for soldiers, what will be the blowback?

Already, people like retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former director of National Intelligence under President Obama is saying, according to POLITICO, that the Administration should curtail U.S.-led drone strikes on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia because the missiles fired from unmanned aircraft are fueling anti-American sentiment and undercutting reform efforts in those countries.

While scores of physicists and engineers are working on refining further advances in UAVs, thousands of others are staying silent. In prior years, their counterparts spoke out against the nuclear arms race or exposed the unworkability of long-range missile defense. They need to re-engage. Because the next blowback may soon move into chemical and biological resistance against invaders. Suicide belts may contain pathogens--bacterial and viral--and chemical agents deposited in food and water supplies.

Professions are supposed to operate within an ethical code and exercise independent judgment. Doctors have a duty to prevent harm. Biologists and chemists should urge their colleagues in physics to take a greater role as to where their know-how is leading this tormented world of ours before the blowback spills over into even more lethally indefensible chemical and biological attacks.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

When Corporations Choose Despots Over Democracy

Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 by TruthDig.com

by Amy Goodman

“People holding a sign ‘To: America. From: the Egyptian People. Stop supporting Mubarak. It’s over!” so tweeted my brave colleague, “Democracy Now!” senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, from the streets of Cairo.

More than 2 million people rallied throughout Egypt on Tuesday, most of them crowded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Tahrir, which means liberation in Arabic, has become the epicenter of what appears to be a largely spontaneous, leaderless and peaceful revolution in this, the most populous nation in the Middle East. Defying a military curfew, this incredible uprising has been driven by young Egyptians, who compose a majority of the 80 million citizens. Twitter and Facebook, and SMS text messaging on cell phones, have helped this new generation to link up and organize, despite living under a U.S.-supported dictatorship for the past three decades. In response, the Mubarak regime, with the help of U.S. and European corporations, has shut down the Internet and curtailed cellular service, plunging Egypt into digital darkness. Despite the shutdown, as media activist and professor of communications C.W. Anderson told me, “people make revolutions, not technology.”

The demands are chanted through the streets for democracy, for self-determination. Sharif headed to Egypt Friday night, into uncertain terrain. The hated Interior Ministry security forces, the black-shirted police loyal to President Hosni Mubarak, were beating and killing people, arresting journalists, and smashing and confiscating cameras.

On Saturday morning, Sharif went to Tahrir Square. Despite the SMS and Internet blackout, Sharif, a talented journalist and technical whiz, figured out a workaround, and was soon tweeting out of Tahrir: “Amazing scene: three tanks roll by with a crowd of people riding atop each one. Chanting ‘Hosni Mubarak out!’ ”

Egypt has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid for decades, after Israel (not counting the funds expended on the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan). Mubarak’s regime has received roughly $2 billion per year since coming to power, overwhelmingly for the military.

Where has the money gone? Mostly to U.S. corporations. I asked William Hartung of the New America Foundation to explain:

“It’s a form of corporate welfare for companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, because it goes to Egypt, then it comes back for F-16 aircraft, for M-1 tanks, for aircraft engines, for all kinds of missiles, for guns, for tear-gas canisters [from] a company called Combined Systems International, which actually has its name on the side of the canisters that have been found on the streets there.”

Hartung just published a book, “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.” He went on: “Lockheed Martin has been the leader in deals worth $3.8 billion over that period of the last 10 years; General Dynamics, $2.5 billion for tanks; Boeing, $1.7 billion for missiles, for helicopters; Raytheon for all manner of missiles for the armed forces. So, basically, this is a key element in propping up the regime, but a lot of the money is basically recycled. Taxpayers could just as easily be giving it directly to Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics.”

Likewise, Egypt’s Internet and cell phone “kill switch” was enabled only through collaboration with corporations. U.K.-based Vodafone, a global cellular-phone giant (which owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless in the U.S.) attempted to justify its actions in a press release: “It has been clear to us that there were no legal or practical options open to Vodafone ... but to comply with the demands of the authorities.”

Narus, a U.S. subsidiary of Boeing Corp., sold Egypt equipment to allow “deep packet inspection,” according to Tim Karr of the media policy group Free Press. Karr said the Narus technology “allows the Egyptian telecommunications companies ... to look at texting via cell phones, and to identify the sort of dissident voices that are out there. ... It also gives them the technology to geographically locate them and track them down.”

Mubarak has pledged not to run for re-election come September. But the people of Egypt demand he leave now. How has he lasted 30 years? Maybe that’s best explained by a warning from a U.S. Army general 50 years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

That deadly complex is not only a danger to democracy at home, but when shoring up despots abroad.

© 2011 Amy Goodman