The Obama administration's "Pacific Pivot" is wreaking environmental havoc on the pristine ecosystem

[unhappycamper]

http://fpif.org/green-challenge-asia-pacific-pivot/



In Henoko Bay, Okinawa, protest encampments stretch right up to the perimeter of the U.S. marine base there. Throughout the Asia-Pacific, activists are fighting back against the environmental footprint of U.S. forces in the region.

The Obama administration's "Pacific Pivot" is wreaking environmental havoc on the pristine ecosystems of the Asia-Pacific region.
By Koohan Paik, January 27, 2014.

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Full Spectrum Assault

Local residents in Okinawa, the Mariana Islands, and Jeju Island in South Korea have been most vocally opposed to the plan to blanket the Asia-Pacific with destructive military bases. The most appalling example is the proposed Mariana Islands Training and Testing region, which would open up approximately 1 million square miles of open ocean to full-spectrum, year-round live-fire military practice, over an area larger than the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico combined.." It would also include the whole of the supposedly "protected" Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, established by President Bush in 2009.

"Full-spectrum" live-fire military exercises means year-round amphibious attacks, bombing, underwater mines and torpedoes, and other detonations from the air, sea, and ground, as well as sonar training that will result in permanent hearing loss for scores of whales and dolphins.

The U.S. military has been conducting such full-spectrum live-fire training for the past three-and-a-half years over a half-million square miles of the open Pacific, and also upon the island of Farallon de Medinilla. Farallon de Medinilla, once teeming with amazing sea life and rare migratory birds, has been bombed into unrecognizability.

On Guam, the southern most Mariana Island, the military is planning on dredging over 70 acres of one of the world's healthiest and most vibrant coral reefs to make way for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Scientists say that, if the project is allowed to move forward, the reef will be destroyed before many of its endemic species can even be discovered, let alone saved.