For the Love of Ebeye: March 2012

09 March 2012

Peace vigil at Vandenberg to target ICBM testing

By Janene Scully/Associate Editor janscully@lompocrecord.com | Posted: Friday, March 9, 2012 12:15 am

Nuclear weapon opponents will converge Monday to “Occupy Vandenberg” with a peace vigil from noon to 2 p.m. at the main gate, the culmination of a weekend retreat in Santa Barbara County.

Organizers expect 50 or more faith-based anti-nuclear protesters to attend the Pacific Life Community action.

“What we’re focusing on for this particular event is the testing of ICBMs,” said Occupy Vandenberg organizer Dennis Apel from Guadalupe Catholic Worker. “It pollutes the coastline here. It costs a ton of money and it pollutes the lagoon at the Kwajalein Atoll.”

Apel recently returned from an international trip that included six days on the Marshall Islands, which includes Kwajalein, and said he has talked with one woman who can’t return to her native island due to U.S. military actions there.

He traveled to one island where poverty is abundant, a stark contrast to the paradise setting for the island housing the U.S. Army’s facilities there.

Apel and other protesters contend that the treaty allowing the United States to use the area for a target has expired, pending completion of another environmental review which he claims the military will conduct. Marshall Islands residents want an independent review done, he added.

“It’s all very controversial for them,” he said.

The Pacific Life Community is a spiritual, nonviolent movement that works toward a peaceful world in harmony. The group sponsors regional and joint direct actions focused on ridding the world of nuclear weapons and war. Several organizations affiliated with the PLC include Catholic Worker, Nevada Desert Experience and Ground Zero.

Included in the weekend retreat is a public lecture titled “Your World: With or Without Nuclear Weapons” that begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery.

Speakers will be Joanna Macy, Ph.D., an eco-philosopher and activist for peace, justice and ecology; Santa Maria Valley resident Dennis Apel, a longtime community activist who has been arrested multiple times in protests at the base; and Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran and peace leadership director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Apel is no stranger to protests at the base. He was arrested in 2003 for throwing a plastic bottle of his own blood on the Vandenberg sign.

He missed last month’s protest at Vandenberg because he was in South Korea, lobbying against a military base. He and 10 others there for a peace conference were arrested for what he contends are false charges.

Monday’s protest at Vandenberg is the culmination of an annual gathering by the Pacific Life Community and comes more than two weeks after 15 people were arrested in a similar action at Vandenberg.

Pacific nation may buy Fiji land as climate refuge by Nick Perry, AP

**FILE** Tarawa atoll, Kiribati, is seen in an aerial view on March 30, 2004. (Associated Press)

Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribatiare considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji.

Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could be insurance for Kiribati’s entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave.

“We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it,” Tong said. “It wouldn’t be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won’t be a matter of choice. It’s basically going to be a matter of survival.”

Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international date line, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few feet above sea level.

Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island’s underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly.

Some scientists have estimated the current level of sea rise in the Pacific at about 2 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year. Many scientists expect that rate to accelerate due to climate change.

Fiji, home to about 850,000 people, is about 1,400 miles south ofKiribati. But just what people there think about potentially providing a home for thousands of their neighbors remains unclear. Tong said he’s awaiting full parliamentary approval for the land purchase, which he expects in April, before discussing the plan formally with Fijian officials.

Sharon Smith-Johns, a spokeswoman for the Fijian government, said several agencies are studying Kiribati’s plans and the government will release a formal statement next week.

Kiribati, which was known as the Gilbert Islands when it was a British colony, has been an independent nation since 1979.

Tong has been considering other unusual options to combat climate change, including shoring up some Kiribati islands with sea walls and even building a floating island. He said this week that the latter option would likely prove too expensive, but that he hopes reinforcing some islands will ensure that Kiribati continues to exist in some form even in a worst-case scenario.

“We’re trying to secure the future of our people,” he said. “The international community needs to be addressing this problem more.”

Tong said he hopes that the Fiji land will represent just one of several options for relocating people. He pointed out that the land is three times larger than the atoll of Tarawa, currently home to more than half ofKiribati’s population.

Although like much of the Pacific, Kiribati is poor — its annual GDP per person is just $1,600 — Tong said the country has plenty of foreign reserves to draw from for the land purchase. The money, he said, comes from phosphate mining on the archipelago in the 1970s.