Stand On The Side Of The Planet And Free Speech

When we become aware of a great moral issue, it's good for the soul to decide which side we will stand on: with the riot police, or with the defenders of the coral reefs? This anonymous woman visiting South Korea from Hawaii was honored by villagers of Gangeong village on Jeju Island. They gifted her with the traditional Korean robe she wears so beautifully here, and she responded by playing a concert to lift the spirits of the activists. They have been standing firm for years now against the entombment of their beloved coastline and fisheries, against the destruction of the natural resources that gave them life for so many generations.

The photo above was posted by one of the bravest of many brave activists, Sung Hee-Choi, who has been arrested as well as physically attacked for putting himself between the UN World Heritage Site and the trucks that the Samsung corporation is using to destroy it. 

Source: http://www.iied.org/iucn-world-conservation-congress-begins

South Korea has been required by the U.S. to build a deep water port from which to menace the South China Sea. It needs to be big enough to handle ships like Aegis destroyers.

Aegis nuclear-equipped destroyers are ships which are built far away, at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Maine's newest Senator Angus King visited the General Dynamics facility this week to pay homage to his campaign contributors, and to vow to fight cuts to the Pentagon's budget (currently at 57% of total discretionary spending) to save the 5,500 jobs there. "Jobs" being a mythically powerful word that is repeated like an incantation by politicians looking to deliver on the favors that corporations purchase at election time.

Angus was once a hippie who hung around in the north woods smoking pot and building geodesic domes. Somewhere along the line he succumbed to either greed (he became quite wealthy on industrial wind investments) or the lust for fame. Possibly both. 

Now Angus favors fracking because his aide told me "it can be done safely" and anyway we must do it because heating oil is too expensive and we need natural gas as a "transition fuel."

Source: 8020 Vision -- Use their inteactive diagram to see what fracking does to ground water.

The inspiring example of the Jeju Island resistance will be useful when Mainers are resisting the planned corporate looting of our own wealth of natural resources. Tar sands pipelines, an East-West Corridor with mining rights and hundreds of feet wide right of way, private-public partnerships to cash in on eminent domain, a mammoth (13 stories high) LP gas tank on the Penobscot Bay, mountain top removal open pit mining, and expansion beyond the seven already existing wells to pump out the spectacular Maine aquifer are all planned.

Hearings where you can stand on the side of Mother Earth include Searsport High School on Monday, Feb 25 at 6pm with Thanks but no tank, and Fryeburg.

SAVE THE DATE - Mark your calendars! There will be a PUBLIC HEARING in Fryeburg, Maine on Thursday, March 7, 6pm at the Fryeburg Legion Hall on Bradley Street across from the Fryeburg Academy gym next to the baseball field about Nestle having an unprecedented long term contract with the Fryeburg Water Company, a public utility.

Source: Defending Water For Life in Maine

Indigenous people of Hawaii have lived for generations with corporate degradation and pollution of their island paradise. Jeju Islanders have called on international solidarity in their struggle. Idle No More has connected the First Nations of Canada with earth defenders all over the planet.

Which side will you be on? I'm happy to say I will be on the side that has the best culture workers -- the artists and musicians and dancers and writers who lift our hearts while we struggle on in the face of the obscene wealth and greed of corporations who think they own the Earth.

Today I'll be standing in Portland, Maine for information hero Bradley Manning. February 23 is his 1,000th day in jail for sharing news of war crimes and U.S. State Department complicity in corporate hijacking of resources all over the planet. Here's the poster that Kansas artist/activist Marc Saviano made specially for the occasion:

#Gangjeong: "To Honor Our Descendants, We Cannot Stop"

I am re-posting these most recent reports from Carolyn, who is on Jeju Island in South Korea helping with the resistance to the naval base under construction there.

Where the Winds Blow

The weather is changing. In March, Gangjeong fishing boats used to go out for 20 days.

But last year they went out for four;

in November, not at all.

The winds were blowing too hard.

The southern part of Jeju, the area chosen by the navy for its base, is the area of the island most severely impacted by typhoons. Though many fishing villages on Jeju Island were built close to the sea, the villagers of Gangjeong built their village further inland, knowing the power of its stormy seas.

In August, a typhoon blew away the plastic tarpaulin and damaged the frame arching over my host’s house. But “I was so happy!” she says, gesturing the way the season’s typhoons also upturned and damaged seven caissons at the base construction site. (They weigh 8,800 tons.) Many tetrapods were also broken.

Two days after the storm, members of the community came to fix her roof. With ten people atop her house, she feared the roof would collapse with their weight or that their cigarettes would burn a hole in the new plastic, but all ended well.

Now she hopes for another big storm.

__________________________

Dolls

DG displays her dolls on a low table across from the gates.

One by one, she places them against small cement blocks, propping up their heads.

Each one represents an activist who has joined the struggle against the naval base.

I push back one doll’s yarn hair to get a clearer photo of his face.

When I earlier saw photos of these dolls, 

S. pointed out one with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Can you believe that’s me? she asked, smiling.

____________________________

The Guards

I

Guards haul away the huge sheets of plastic,

the logs and barrel stove, all blocking the upper gate.

One guard begins to hose down the pavement, clearing away the wood chips

and bark left behind.

I stand in place, a bit to the side, with my sign.

I wonder if he’ll spray me with the hose, perhaps my feet.

Instead he just scowls at me, saying words I don’t understand,

then turns off the hose.

Soon afterwards, the police officer whistles another line of cement trucks into the base.

II

Another day.

Cement trucks rumble uphill towards the upper gate

as we descend to the gate from higher up the hill. 

JD reaches the gate before the trucks and stands in front of the entrance.

She yells at the guards.

The guards growl in disgust.

What seemed an easy entry for the trucks is now delayed.

III

A quiet morning.

No trucks pass through the gates.

Small birds sing from the trees whose limbs stretch over the activist tents.

One door to the lower gate is open.

I watch a private security guard play with a dog on a long tether

just inside the gate.

Later, he takes the dog for a short stretch along the Gangjeong Cheon,

which flows beside the construction site.

Across the road sits a two-entrance dog house for a mother and puppy.

A blue peace sign, a yellow flower, and the cartoon-like image of a dog’s head are painted on the house.

No naval base is in yellow across the roof. 

The peace dogs are away for the morning.

IV

Confrontation ratchets up.

Only minutes after the activists have rebuilt the blockade, 

and arranged the chair backs to read Save Gangjeong Village,

the private security guards begin again to throw the firewood as far as they can away from the gate.

One activist lays his body over some of the logs, preventing their removal. 

When a guard lifts a wooden stool, 

the activist gets up from the log pile and grabs the other side of the stool. 

The guard releases it. 

Another activist exchanges yells with one of the guards

while a third begins tossing the wood back in front of the gate.

When I join her, one of the guards smiles at me 

and gestures for me to put the logs back down below.

My eyes smile back, then I walk the wood in front of the gate.

The interplay continues, guards throwing the wood back over our heads.

The tension builds, then subsides.

The guards stop throwing wood;

we stop returning it.

We sit in quiet around the stove.

__________________________

Rough notes of the mayor’s words:

It’s been a long time since this room has been filled. There’s a slogan: five years and eight months, but we will fight for more than 58 years. We have made an effort despite the result of the election and the National Assembly (budget) vote. History will remember us. . . .

We have fought to oppose the naval base. And in the court, I told the judge I think society should be where common sense is shared by the people. We live in a society in which common sense is not accepted. . . .

During these days, we have to stop construction. The only way to do this is for us to continue fighting. . . .

To honor our descendants, we cannot stop our fighting.

Carolyn

Maine

Defenders of the Planet in Gangjeong, South Korea

I am re-posting eyewitness reports from Carolyn about the struggle to save Jeju Island from having its coral reefs turned into a port and military base for South Korea and the US and NATO. 

The Gangjeong villagers and their supporters are exceptionally dedicated, strategic, and filled with love. The writings here do a wonderful job of reflecting this. Thank you to Carolyn!

A Thousand Bows

We will try to do a thousand bows in Seoul and on the bridge [in Gangjeong], a man tells me. 

We will try.

A light snow covers the ground.

He writes the word peace in Chinese characters in the snow. 

The bows begin at 9 a.m.

Three of us are on the bridge;

another, in front of the gate.

The wind snaps the yellow No Naval Base flags behind me.

After two bows, someone scoots an extra cushion 

beneath my knees.

Hands to the heart,

knees to the mat, 

hands and head to the ground, palms facing upward,

then a return to standing.

Despite the repetitive motion,

our hands and shoeless feet grow colder and colder.

Chimes bring to a close the first one hundred bows.

Mr. Rhee gives M. and I hugs.

He stays on the bridge, kneeling in prayer,

while M. and I walk across the road to the barrel stove

to warm ourselves.

The budget for continued base construction passed the next day.

___________________

The Rock Wall

A petite woman begins to unfurl a sheet of plastic atop a wall of volcanic rock.

I stop walking and grab the edge of the plastic to try to help.

She speaks to me, but I don’t understand.

Two activists behind me laugh. She wants to give me oranges, they say. 

Leaving us to make a tent of the wet plastic so that it can dry out,

she enters the grove on the other side of the wall to collect oranges in a round basket.

I accept a couple, so does Lou.

But she wants to give us more.

They’re organic, she says, and gestures for me to open my bag. 

After a dozen I pretend that my bag has become very very heavy.

She smiles and lets us walk on.

_________________

New Year’s Eve in Gangjeong

Women drummers lead a march from the village center to the port. Behind them are men and women with flags and streamers, some wearing papier-mâché conch shells and sea gulls on their heads. 

From 5 p.m. when the march begins to beyond midnight, the celebration continues. People visit the activist tables, eat rice cake soup and sweet pancakes, and visit with friends. Empty bottles of rice wine cover the tables. With the wind blowing in from the sea, some find warmth by standing beside fires; many, by dancing.

Dozens line up for the arrow-throwing contest. After the first participant lofts all five rubber-tipped arrows into a large ceramic vase, the line of contestants shrinks. Winners receive gift certificates to the farmers’ cooperative. 

Between singing acts, short videos show the struggle against the naval base, a labor organizer gives a brief solidarity speech, and people chant Hai GunGiJi GeulSaBanDai. (No Naval Base!)

When midnight arrives, flying paper lanterns are lit and sent with a prayer into the sky.

A bonfire blazes,

people hug

and dance some more.

The more joyful, the more powerful, said Mr. Rhee.

––––––––––––––

picketing2

Yuri told me she was so afraid of the police. Still, she stood with a sign in front of a cement truck, demanding that it back up and make a sharper turn into the construction site to avoid hitting her.  

oranges

Gangjeong had the tradition of pumashi, a work party. During harvest time, perhaps ten people would go to a family’s orchard to help, and the next day, to another family’s land. Conflict over the base has strained such collaboration. This year, it was difficult to find people to help.

As four of us de-seeded peppers today, the cook said pumashi makes the food taste better.

sos

Before a member of the Save Our Seas team got into one of five tandem kayaks, she said, “I can’t swim.”

Carolyn

Maine

"There are still people who have not sold themselves to greed"

Source: SaveJejuNow.org

How often I feel that the struggle to save Jeju Island from a navy base is emblematic of our struggle all over the planet to preserve Earth as a place where humans can live, and to resist its destruction by powerful, wealthy interests served by their police and their armies.

An artist-activist whom I deeply respect and always enjoy working with, Natasha Mayers, shared this letter from a Jeju activist reporting on the outcome of the environmental conference that just ended there.  And I'm sharing it here because it so beautifully expresses the slogan we sometimes hear chanted on marches or at Occupy events? "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'Cause the power of the people don't stop! (Say what?)" Put another way, the power of art and creativity are with the 99%. As is the love.

from Paco Booyah:

Well, as you all know by now we did not get the Gangjeong motion 181 passed. Which to be honest was a little expected as knew it would be hard to the government votes. But still as you saw from the numbers, the NGOs overwhelmingly voted for us and almost no one voted from the governments and we even got 20 in support from governments! And we have overcome enormous obstacles, oppression and harrassment and made many many new friends who worked insanely hard for us and for whom we are incredibly grateful. The IUCN itself may be a corrupt, corporate/government sellout monster, but inside it are many truly amazing and wonderful people. Especially awesome are our lawyers from Center for Humans and Nature, our many supporters for latin and south america, and many other people many of whom i couldn't even meet or don't know the names of, but did amazing work.

No doubt the korean government/navy will spin this in their favor, as they would anything really, but really this is a victory for us. We got so much more support than ever before, so many new people and organizations and lawyers and politicians, and media, from so many different countries around the world know about us and support us 100%. And many of them have said this is not the end, and they are going to continue this work both within the IUCN and through other ways, around the world.

We are all truly grateful to so many awesome people who really came together and worked incredibly hard day and night.

We feel so cared about and know that we are not alone here.

There are people who care about justice in the world.

There are people who care about the environment and the earth.

There are people who work with their hearts and fight for truth.

There are still people who have not sold themselves to greed and power, and become liars and slaves.

So yes, to be honest we are sad that our motion did not become a resolution. Of course we cried and felt rejected once again. But tears and rejection are nothing new to Gangjeong, and after tears comes dancing! And wow, did we dance and dance and dance and sing and yell! Then we cried some more, then we hugged, then we sang and danced, then we clapped for each other, gave speeches and more hugs, then we bowed to each other, deep bows to the villagers who have fought so hard for so long and to the people who have come from far away to work so hard for us.

We will not give up! We will not stop! Our cause is just! Everyone in the world must know the Gangjeong struggle! We may lose 1,000 meaningless battles, but we will continue on. You can keeping locking us in prison, You can keep deporting us and denying our entry to korea, you can can keep beating us as you do daily, you can keep treating us like criminals and animals, you can keep mocking us as you destroy all that is precious about life. We will continue to dance! We will continue to sing! And we will love each other, our community, and even you, our enemies, with all of our hearts! And maybe one day you will join us, as many already have, and as we join in solidarity with so many other similar struggles around the world.

Samsung, Daelim, Hired Thugs, Police, Coast Guard, Courts, Judges, ROK Navy, Ministry of Defense, U.S. Navy, Politicians, ROK Government, U.S. Government: You've fought for greed and for power, through violence, lies, and theft. You've already lost because you've lost yourself. We do not fight to win, we fight because we've already won. Peace has already won. We are just here to shout it from the streets!

No Naval Base! Justice for Gangjeong! Life and peace for all creatures of the Earth!
 ##

Sign a petition to Samsung and the government of South Korea here.

World's Largest Enviro Org Ethical Quandry: Serve Samsung or Earth?

Photo source: The Battle for Jeju Island: How the Arms Race is Threatening a Korean Paradise by Robert Redford

Contact:  Koohan Paik                                                        FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

savejejunow@gmail.com

 

WORLD’S LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATION IN

ETHICAL QUANDARY:

Should it answer to conference sponsors Samsung and Korean government, or 

to its historical mission to protect  environment and social justice?

 

JEJU ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA – September 14 - The world’s largest and oldest conservation organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, is holding its giant quadrennial convention on Jeju Island, South Korea. But what conference planners weren’t expecting was massive protests from the local community, joined by international activists, against a gigantic navy base being built seven kilometers away. As a result of this controversy, an emergency motion to stop base construction has been drafted, which will be voted on tomorrow, Saturday, September 15.

 

The South Korean government, which is subordinate on military matters to the U.S., under the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty, is building the enormous base on the coast at Gangjeong, a traditional farming and fishing community. If the project is allowed to continue, it will be large enough to hold 20 warships, including Aegis destroyers, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and 8,000 troops. South Korea is already one of the most militarized places in the world. But this new base is part of the Pentagon’s recently announced plan to move 60 percent of its military resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region – the “Pacific pivot.” The idea is to circle China with Aegis missiles. Islanders fear the base would destabilize the region, lead to a new Cold War, and turn their home into a first-strike target.

 

A recently leaked communiqué, obtained by a Korea National Assembly member, reveals the close connection between the Pentagon and base construction. The communiqué, sent by the commander of the US Naval Forces, Korea, to the South Korean defense minister, directly requests that the base plan be designed to accommodate an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

 

The base would also destroy local livelihoods, biodiverse habitats in land and sea, contaminate one of the cleanest and most abundant freshwater sources in the world, kill the planet’s largest temperate soft-coral habitat (15 acres), contaminate the rich volcanic soil in nearby farms as well as nearby UNESCO World Heritage Sites and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Korea’s last 100 dolphins which frequent Gangjeong would also suffer. The villagers have been protesting for over five years, facing arrest, imprisonment without habeus corpus, and daily police brutality.

 

On May 30, 2012, three UN Special Rapporteurs sent a joint allegation letter to the South Korean government regarding numerous “acts of harassment, intimidation and ill-treatment of peaceful protestors in Gangjeong village,” requesting a response within 60 days. That was three and a half months ago, but the Korean government has yet to respond.

 

An American scientist, Dr. Imok Cha, was deported upon arrival at the airport on the first day of the conference, where she was expected to give presentations on an independent environmental assessment that exposed the flaws in the Korean government’s Environmental Impact Assessment for the base construction.

 

Leadership at the IUCN conference have refused to give the Gangjeong villagers their own exhibition booth to expose the litany Korean-government violations, offering no explanation. On the last day of his tenure as president of IUCN, Ashok Khosla denounced the campaign to save Gangjeong Village from base construction, calling the movement “colonial” because non-Koreans were involved. However, attendees know the reason that IUCN officials have done their best to silence the Gangjeong villagers: the main sponsors of their conference in Jeju are the Korean government ($20 million) and Samsung Corporation, which is also the lead contractor of base construction.  Soon after Khosla issued his “colonialism” charges, a group of South Koreans representing 189 South Korean organizations, denounced Khosla, and charged him with ignoring their clearly expressed opposition to the base that had been going on for over five years.

 

As a result, a massive division within the formidable organization has been cleaved between its Secretariat and the 8,000 members in attendance who object to leadership’s decision to side with it sponsors. One organization, the Center for Humans and Nature, from Indiana in the U.S., has drafted an emergency resolution to stop the construction. It will be on the Assembly floor for a vote before international governments and NGOs, this Saturday (Korea time), the last day of the conference.

 

Many members feel the entire future and credibility of the 64-year-old conservation institution is at stake, if politics prevent the resolution from passing.

##

1009 General Kennedy Ave. #2 | San Francisco, CA 94129 US

Source: The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

During the Stellar Avenger exercise, the Aegis-class destroyer USS Hopper (DDG 70) launches a Standard Missile-3 Block IA, successfully intercepting a sub-scale short range ballistic missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai. This was the 19th successful intercept in 23 at-sea firings for the Aegis BMD program. 

Courtesy: U.S. Navy