I’ve received some emails urging me to ask Gov. Cayetano about his plans for reducing traffic. The presumption, obviously, is that the train advocated by his mayoral opponents will do that.
It won’t.
And Cayetano isn’t responsible for the traffic. Emails need to be directed elsewhere to find out who was asleep on urban planning.
In fact, I’ve made the argument that the transit-related housing tracts that the development community is salivating over, because they will increase the number of cars on the roads, will increase, not decrease, traffic. As we know, land is power in Hawaii, and so developers’ greed substitutes here for any semblance of urban planning.
Now, I’m not an expert on transit. I still hold that we need to plan our communities ourselves, and that transit modalities will come out of that plan. I’m tired of the hype and the lies that power this train project and the deceit city leaders have played upon all of us.
Another of my favorite lies: that the train goes to the airport. Wait till it is built and people find out that they’ve been cheated—it doesn’t go to the airport, regardless of what they call that station. The FAA won’t allow an elevated train to go that close to the runways.
If you want to go to the airport, take a #19 or #20 bus. If the city really cared, they’d provide luggage accommodations on the bus, or use the special buses that were at one time proposed for a Honolulu transit solution.
While I’m on the airport thing, there are other transit-related solutions that have been implemented elsewhere in the distant past, but that Honolulu, still stuck in the 1960s, hasn’t gotten to. I’ll mention just one here: a City Terminal.
Imagine a terminal in Waikiki where tourists (or anyone) may bring their luggage to check in, then hop some form of transportation (buses work fine from Waikiki). The next time they see it (hopefully) will be at their destination. I suppose a variation is that a passenger just picks up the luggage again at the airport and checks it in there. The idea in Tokyo was that both the passenger and the luggage check in at the City Terminal. You’ve got a boarding pass and no luggage. Nirvana! Yay Hawaii!
That’s the way it worked in Tokyo. It was a pleasure riding to the airport without the burden of luggage. Yes, I know that the distance between downtown and Narita Airport was considerably longer than from Waikiki to Honolulu Airport, so perhaps it’s not as practical. But it’s an idea, and one that could encourage tourism.
Of course, the taxi companies wouldn’t like that a bit. But too bad, I’m just throwing this idea into the hat. You see, we ordinary citizens can have ideas also.
Given a chance, we’d certainly want to fix this town up for walking and bike riding. We might want to have more outdoor dining, real bike lanes, enforce the traffic laws, and get rid of the stupid pedestrian crossing buttons. The city doesn’t seem to care very much about anything but cars, and as we see from Honolulu’s recent ranking as the most traffic-congested city, our leaders have screwed that part up as well.
Anyone can do better. Cayetano might, someone else might. The current custodians have blown it big time, and we will have to pay to take apart the contracts they have already put in place for the train, if that is stopped. They’ll have done nothing, absolutely nothing, about controlling traffic over the years that they had to work on it.
So email Cayetano if you like. Alternatively, email Carlisle and ask how come Honolulu has such bad traffic, and what they are doing about it. How did we get to this point? Should we just let Koa Ridge, Ho`opili and new train-related tracts be built, reducing farmland and adding ever more cars to the highways? Or ask him why we set records so often for senior citizens hit and killed in crosswalks, and what (if anything) he has done about that.
Sewers, roads, pot holes, traffic—we could use a ranking of the efficiency of our city government against others. The traffic ranking didn’t happen overnight. We have had decades to work on our problems. There’s not even a plan on the table. Readers already know about the neglect of our wastewater system. I’ve written before about the waste of taxpayer money through installation of obsolete lighting technology by the city, something other cities have dealt with many years ago. I’ve even suggested that Hawaii might make use of permeable asphalt and concrete to reduce the stormwater we now collect and carry to the ocean. Oh, have you noticed that the Natatorium is still standing? How many years has that problem gone unsolved? Can’t they do anything?
So yeah, email Cayetano. Actually, I’d love to find out if any potential candidate has any fresh ideas.
Cayetano may not be any more fond of allowing citizens to control their destiny than previous mayors, but on the other hand, he can’t be worse.
The Hawai`i Democratic Party Convention met at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel (May 25-27, 2012). Four town hall debates were held. One dealt with the proposed undersea cable.
In March, undercover reporters for England's Sunday Times met in India with "IT consultants" who claimed they were call center workers and offered to sell them credit card and medical information for 500,000 Britons—including account holders at major banks such as HSBC.
The issue at hand is the outsourcing of call centers by the major US banks. Bank of America is just the latest to become a “job creator” in Manila:
America's second-largest bank is relocating its business-support operations to the Philippines, according to a high-ranking Filipino government official recently quoted in the Filipino press. The move, which includes a portion of the bank's customer service unit, comes less than three years after Bank of America received a $45 billion federal bailout.
The Philippines government proposes a new law to "protect the integrity and confidentiality of any personal information collected from their clients… .” Some good that will do. The article notes that the average annual income for a family in the Philippines is $4,700. Law or no law, offered a quick buck, your data is for sale.
The remedy?
Move your money to your local, friendly, full-service credit union.
The New York Times is running a series of long articles assessing President Obama’s record in office (from their perspective, of course). It’s not likely to appear in our local paper. Today’s article Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will (New York Times, 5/29/2012) describes how Obama personally supervises the kill list for US counter-terrorism operations, including use of drone strikes. Referring to a list of names and photographs reviewed by Obama:
Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.
The article can be read even though the New York Times has a paywall. Check it out at the link above.
The drone strikes are carried out by the CIA, which is a civilian, not a military organization. But the responsibility for targeting seems to lie squarely with Obama, according to the report:
His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.
The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.
I was just listening to Democracy Now, which included a report that Afghan authorities say at least eight family members, including six children, have been killed in a NATO air strike in the eastern province of Pakistan.
“In downtown Portland, and in fact, in Portland neighborhoods, the pedestrian is the first-class passenger. That’s the rule. You don’t have to press a button to cross an intersection. There are wide sidewalks. The intersection timing is such that there’s enough time to get across the street. We don’t build huge, wide streets that are impossible to cross. There are a hundred little things that implement the common-sense policy that in a city, the pedestrian comes first and everything is organized around that.”—Charles Hales, Senior Vice President, HDR Engineering, in e2 Transport, Portland A Sense of Place
by Larry Geller
Honolulu is stuck in the ‘60s. Urban sprawl. Loss of farmland. Out-of-control development. Endless traffic jams. More houses and cars planned for a future that looks to be even more congested. An expensive train line that will never be expanded if it ever is built.
It didn’t (and doesn’t) have to be this way. Some other cities changed from this destructive course: Portland, for example, which could be a model for us.
Here’s the snip corresponding to the pull-quote above. It’s from the video e2 Transport, Portland A Sense of Place that originally aired a couple of years ago on PBS (press the thingy at the lower right for full-screen):
Contrast Portland’s “common-sense” policy with Honolulu, where wide streets like King Street feature uncontrolled crosswalks that take their toll in death and injury year-in and year-out. It seems that pedestrians must die and make the news before a traffic light or pedestrian-crossing warning lights are installed on this island. (Just getting hit by a car isn’t enough—to do any good, your sacrifice has to make the front page.)
This is 1960’s thinking. It was a time when the automobile represented both the economic future of the country and spurred the growth of cities into their surrounding suburbs. People suddenly could live in a different place from where they worked. A network of interlocking highways and cloverleafs overlaid the map of city after city. Honolulu put in the H-1 and H-2 freeways, but never took the next step—ultimately seeing the folly of endless sprawl and switching to keep the city livable by limiting development and incorporating transit into urban planning.
The e2 Transport video was about more than pedestrians. It described how a visionary governor, working with advocates and advocacy groups, put together a plan for urban revitalization and preservation of farmland and suburban areas. The result is that Portlanders today have the benefit of an extensive, expandable transit system that enables people to do without commuting by car to work. The choice of transit modalities also created a new retail prosperity along the transit lines.
In place of urban blight, kids are playing, people are working and shopping, they’re going to church or to downtown events and hopping public transit to get home after enjoying dinner out and perhaps a couple of drinks.
Honolulu’s “urban planning” and its transit plan in particular do not derive from citizen participation, and we’ve been short of visionary leadership as well. Whatever developer wants to pave over farmland gets the green light to do so. The current dispute over whether rail should proceed is only possible because it is a fight among politicians and ideologues. Before this phase of the battle, the City Council wavered over the route (Salt Lake, Nimitz, Dillingham, etc.) based on the whim of city councilmen, not as a result of careful and inclusive urban planning. Pure politics. Little common sense.
If someone living out west in Waianae needs to get to a job in downtown Honolulu or in Waikiki, they’re stuck, the train will never go there. Nor will retail and small business spring up along a transit right-of-way, because no transit is planned for them. It’s the ‘60s thinking—get into a car. This has not worked for some time, and as noted by Honolulu’s designation as the worst traffic-congested city in the country, there’s no relief in sight. More development over previous farmland simply means more cars. You’d think we’d learn.
Here’s where citizen participation is needed. Although the commercial media have framed the transit issue as Rail/No Rail, that’s not the core problem. The problem is that we have no part in planning our own communities, including, but not limited to, how and where we live and work and how we get about.
The video explained that the advocacy effort in Portland started out to preserve farmland, and as time went on, they realized that farms are best served by well-organized cities. Honolulu could take a cue. In parallel with the current Rail/No Rail dispute is a struggle over the preservation of Oahu’s prime farmland. As Portland realized in its own way, the two are indeed interconnected.
Of course, Honolulu is not Portland. Bringing the interests of farm and city together is not difficult, however. Honolulu has its own peculiar problems. Decades of inferior leadership and citizen exclusion have left us not only with the country’s worst traffic congestion, but with the country’s highest energy costs—three times the national average. Yet another dispute raging at the moment is whether we will pay still more so that developers and large landowners can convert Neighbor Island land to wind farms to feed Oahu’s voracious appetite for energy. Current plans would enrich the landowners but increase, not decrease, costs to ratepayers. High energy costs are a blight upon our quality of life. We’re working to enrich HECO executives instead of providing for our children’s education.
The total effect of unbridled development, loss of farmland, ever-longer commutes, higher taxes to pay for inadequate transportation, and soaring energy costs promise one thing—to make Honolulu unlivable for its current residents. “Affordable housing” here is an ongoing joke, and there is no plan for a regime of rent control or rent stabilization that would at least hold the line at current outrageous prices.
We could use a visionary governor round about now, but more important, we need to find a way to involve ourselves at first, and later take over the urban planning process. We could use a measure of democracy in both our state legislature and city and county councils so that citizens truly control the decisions made by those whom we elect to office. We could use voter-financed elections to displace the disproportionate power of developers and break the “Land and Power” cycle that threatens to destroy our tourist economy and the livability of the islands we live on.
Portland could indeed be a model, but it will have to be taken up by advocates. Neither our state or city government will gift us with better transit and pedestrian safety on their own.
I’ll end by re-running the short clip from the same video that I posted originally in 2009, showing how retail springs up along a grade-level transit route. Imagine Farrington Highway strung with stores, shops, movie theaters, groceries, churches, schools…. that would not only be great for the economy, but would reduce the need to drive to town to shop or to work. Yes, grade-level transit can be a “job creator.”
Again, click on the thingy at the lower right for full-screen.
The entire e2 Transport series was well done and still relevant. Unfortunately, PBS no long has the rights to re-run it for all to see.
Well, Honolulu, if we’re a bit short of visionary governors, at least we the people can follow Portland’s example and get together to save both our farming and urban environment and make this island a more livable place. “Sustainability” is more than a mere ideal, it’s something we need as it becomes harder to eke out an existence here in middle of the Pacific.
After posting I located a fact sheet on Portland’s current streetcar expansion. Note that the streetcar routes are only part of the city’s total transportation solution. Note also that the expansion cost only millions, not billions, of dollars.
Here is a snip of some comments by Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams in an Atlanta newspaper, related to the advantages of at-grade transit as it played out in Portland:
Portland broke ground on the initial line in 1999. We’ve documented that $3.5 billion of private and public development has occurred within blocks of the tracks. Two new neighborhoods, the Pearl District and South Waterfront, would not have grown and become jobs and housing centers without the streetcar and major investments in streets and transit. … Creating vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods around streetcars makes good business sense. Streetcars are attractive and tracks can’t be easily moved, so their presence makes business owners more likely to locate nearby. When I talk to Portland businesses — real estate brokerages, software incubators, wind energy corporations — relocating near the streetcar, I hear that the opportunity to get around their new neighborhood on rail, foot and bike is what these companies’ employees asked them to provide. It’s no longer necessary to drive to make a business meeting a mile away or lunch with a friend.
Circumventing the law is a provocative tactic, but it may just be the Hail Mary we've been looking for.
On May Day, tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets. Invoking labor’s militant past, Occupiers in many cities called it a “general strike.” But few have asked why even the traditional strike has become almost an anachronism for America’s labor movement. In 1974, there were 424 major work stoppages, each involving at least 1,000 workers. By 2009, only five such stoppages occurred.
It’s easy to see this trend as damning evidence of labor’s irrelevance and the need to find a fresh wellspring of social and economic change. It’s even easier to place the blame squarely at the feet of conservative union leaders. Both these views lack nuance. Labor unions face a legal framework stacked against them. Laws can’t be casually broken: Unions have an important responsibility to their members and the financial assets they safeguard. Yet it’s worth remembering that past labor leaders believed in industrial action on a scale that would seem revolutionary even to radicals in the movement today. Figures like Samuel Gompers, Dave Beck, George Meany and Walter Reuther thought the strike was the most effective weapon of the working class. The decline of this venerable tactic has been devastating to our unions.
What’s changed?
Wider economic trends have worked against labor for decades. Internationally, the 1970s saw the intersection of weak growth and persistent inflation. This structural crisis was resolved against the interests of working people, with the aftermath especially stark in America. Real wages have declined and our social safety net has eroded, while hyper-mobile corporations are glossier and equipped with slick public-relations departments, but just as exploitative as ever.
The response from reformers within the labor movement hasn’t helped matters. As Joe Burns writes in Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America, “Adapting their own ideas to match this new conservative reality, these activists created the one-day strike, the corporate campaign and social unionism – tactics that functioned comfortably within the existing structures imposed by management and the legal system.”
If unions need to strike like they used to, but can’t because they’re justifiably afraid of the legal repercussions, what can be done?
Circumventing the law is a provocative tactic, but it may just be the Hail Mary we’ve been looking for.
Burns argues for the erection of independent worker organizations without assets or property that would be able to get around laws that make it difficult for unions to legally strike. Though this idea was endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers in a 2005 memo on possible future labor strategies, it’s considerably more militant than most unions are ready for now.
But in a sense, the Occupy movement may be a positive influence. Labor lends its numbers, discipline and organization, while Occupy invokes a rich history of American civil disobedience.
During the past 30 years the U.S. union movement has become more progressive on issues of immigration, foreign policy and the environment, but union membership continues to fall. Yet the return of mass demonstrations offers a new climate for labor. Now is the perfect time to remember how to fight.
The place to go for information on the Rail lawsuits is inversecondemnation.com, for example, for an account (and audio recording) of today’s oral arguments on whether the city and state can segment the project or whether they have to evaluate burial sites along the entire route before beginning.
Disappeared News has pointed out that the settlement between OHA and the Governor gives OHA (not the same as the Native Hawaiian people, take note, OHA is a state agency) land that is not only in the tsunami evacuation zone but likely to be under water as the seas rise due to global warming. What kind of a deal is that?
It’s nice to see one’s point of view vindicated. In this case, there is an image on the city’s web page offering an app that helps users find out, though the geolocation capabilities of modern smart phones and tablets, if you are in an area where you need to scramble in case of a tsunami warning.
The example they show on the tablet screen—is the section of Kakaako where the new OHA land is located! That’s right, OHA has acquired ground zero for a tsunami evacuation according to the city website.
There could not be a more perfect illustration that this deal was all wet.
Click image to go to the actual website.
Compare with the OHA lands as shown in the Star-Advertiser:
In an action that may have applicability also in Hawaii, Occupy Wall Street filed a lawsuit in federal court today against the City of New York seeking redress for the confiscation and destruction of books in “the People’s Library”. The books were confiscated and most destroyed or damaged by New York City police and other city employees during a raid on the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park.
The suit names the City of New York, its mayor, Michael Bloomberg, in his official capacity, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, in his official capacity, the Sanitation Commissioner, and other unidentified officials, employees and/or agents of the City of New York in their official and individual capacities. It is the latest of several lawsuits filed against the city related to its actions against OWS.
From the lawsuit (snip):
This is a declaratory judgment and civil rights action to vindicate Plaintiffs' rights under the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and the Constitution and laws of the State of New York. Plaintiffs were deprived of their federal and state constitutional and New York State common law rights when police officers of the New York Police Department ("NYPD") and employees of the New York City Department of Sanitation ("DSNY") (together "City Departments"), acting pursuant to a policy and on the authority of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and under the direction of Commissioners Raymond Kelly and John Doherty, conducted a surprise night time raid of Zuccotti Park, a.k.a. "Liberty Park" (the "Park").
As part of the raid, the City Departments seized and retained possession of personal property belonging to OWS, including at least approximately 3,600 books from OWS's People's Library ("People's Library" or the "Library"), as well as various Library furnishings, computers, and other electronic equipment ("Library furnishings and equipment"). Only 1,003 of the at least approximately 3,600 books that were seized were recovered; moreover, of the recovered books, 201 were so damaged while in the possession of the City of New York that they were made unusable. Thus, at least approximately 2,798 books were never returned or were damaged and made unusable Almost all of the Library furnishings and equipment that were seized by Defendants were not returned or returned in an unusable condition. To this day, OWS has not been told by the City of New York what happened to the missing books and Library furnishings and equipment. Upon information and belief, the missing books were destroyed as part of the raid. Upon information and belief, the raid was authorized by Mayor Bloomberg and executed by John Doe and Richard Roe and others presently unknown to Plaintiffs ("John Doe and Richard Roe et al.") in their capacity as officials, employees and /or agents of the City Departments, except for the conduct related to Plaintiffs' request for punitive damages as more particularly set forth below. … Defendants' seizure of OWS's Library books and Library furnishings and equipment constitutes an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. These actions were taken pursuant to a policy, and the decision to take such actions was made by high ranking officials of the City of New York.
Defendants' destruction and failure to return or return in a usable condition OWS's seized Library books and Library furnishings and equipment constitutes an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. These actions were taken pursuant to a policy, and the decision to take such actions was made by high ranking officials of the City of New York.
Honolulu’s Occupy movement is tiny, in comparison to the massive Occupy New York assembly, but has experienced a series of raids and confiscation of property. The raids are enumerated and documented The Doug Note. Of course, the commercial media have paid no attention to these repeated raids.
In a peremptory raid before scheduled May Day demonstrations, police confiscated expressive material that would have been displayed on May Day:
The banner was taken by the City and County of Honolulu during a raid on the (de)Occupy Honolulu encampment this morning. It was not tagged, and therefore illegally seized, in violation of the City’s ordinance 11-029 (formerly Bill 54), and also in violation of the 1st and 4th amendments of the Hawaii State Constitution, and Kānāwai Māmalahoe itself. Another banner was also seized, which read “Ua Mau Ke Ea o ka ʻAina I Ka Pono”. Ironically, this phrase, which is now used as the State motto, was first uttered at Thomas Square by Kamehameha III.
Kānāwai Māmalahoe is a unique section of the Hawaii State Constitution. More from the same article:
Yesterday, internationally-renowned mural artist Raul Gonzalez painted a beautiful banner in order to help the Hawaiian people to celebrate Kānāwai Māmalahoe, the Law of the Splintered Paddle, which was declared by Kamehameha I in order to protect the people of Hawaiʻi from governmental abuse, and enshrined in the Hawaii State Constitution.
Honolulu Occupiers may have grounds for a challenge similar to the one filed today by OWS. The difficulty, of course, is the need to obtain legal advice and representation.
OWS Complaint
The copy of the complaint below should be treated as an unofficial copy—it may contain OCR or other errors. Do not rely on this copy. An official copy should be available shortly from the electronic filing system of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
“According to the complaint, CCA’s ‘pattern of greed-driven corner-cutting and short-staffing’ contributed to Clifford’s death, due to the company’s deliberate indifference and failure to protect Clifford from harm.”
by Larry Geller
I know, I know. I’m supposed to write a story based on the press conference held this morning by the ACLU and the Rosen Bien Galvan law firm. Well, I couldn’t be there because I had to co-host a meeting at the State Capitol.
So below is the press release. It’s actually the best account not only of the basis of this particular lawsuit, but of the background of problems that inmates have experienced in Correctional Corporation of America custody.
For activists (or anyone else who reads this and is concerned), you can join with groups working to bring Hawaii inmates home. Oh, and don’t forget, any penalties or settlements that result from these or other suits against the state are paid for with money taken from each of our wallets. Not to mention the moral implications of letting the state’s “deliberate indifference” continue. Will there be penalties for those responsible? No, of course not. Perhaps the best thing we can do as citizens is push our state government to bring everyone home without further delay.
So here is the press release.
Family of a Second Hawaii Prisoner Murdered in Mainland Prison Files Suit Against State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America
Honolulu, HI - May 23, 2012 - For the second time in three months, the family of a Hawaii prisoner murdered at a private prison in Arizona filed a lawsuit against the State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (NYSE: CXW).
Clifford Medina, a 23-year-old citizen of Hawaii, was incarcerated at the CCA-operated Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona as part of a controversial practice in which the Hawaii Department of Public Safety (DPS) sends state inmates to private, for-profit prisons on the mainland. Clifford was killed by another inmate on June 8, 2010.
The wrongful death suit was filed today in Circuit Court on behalf of Clifford's mother, sister and two of his aunts, both of whom also acted as Clifford's hanai mothers. According to the complaint, CCA's "pattern of greed-driven corner-cutting and short-staffing" contributed to Clifford's death, due to the company's deliberate indifference and failure to protect Clifford from harm. The complaint contends that CCA failed to control gang violence at Saguaro, failed to properly classify prisoners and failed to adequately staff the prison. Further, the State of Hawaii contributed to Clifford's death "by abdicating responsibility to inmates in its charge" by turning them over to CCA, and then failing to adequately monitor conditions at Saguaro. A copy of the complaint is available at www.rbg-law.com.
On February 15, 2012, the family of Bronson Nunuha, another Hawaii prisoner who was brutally murdered at the Saguaro facility four months before Clifford was killed, filed a lawsuit against the State of Hawaii, CCA and state and CCA officials, alleging similar deficiencies at the privately-run prison. Bronson's family is represented by the same legal team that filed today's complaint over Clifford's wrongful death. The State of Hawaii has asked the Court to transfer that case to Arizona.
"Another Hawaii family is suffering today because of the staffing deficiencies and indifference to the safety of prisoners demonstrated by Corrections Corporation of America and the State of Hawaii. We can expect that, to its shame, the State again will try to send this case to the mainland in order to help CCA limit its exposure," said attorney Sanford Jay Rosen of Rosen, Bien & Galvan, who along with the Human Rights Defense Center and the ACLU of Hawaii represents the Medina family.
"The murders of Clifford Medina and Bronson Nunuha underscore the need for Hawaii to end its practice of 'subcontracting' our prisoners' care to a for-profit company. CCA gets huge amounts of taxpayer money, which, instead of being used for safe keeping and rehabilitation, is banked to advance its profits. CCA puts profit ahead of people. The result: two murders and widespread
allegations of sexual and other violent assaults within their facilities," added Daniel Gluck, Senior Attorney with the ACLU of Hawaii.
Clifford, serving a 5-year sentence following a probation violation, had an extensive history of participation in special education programs designed to help him with his developmental disabilities. He had been diagnosed with moderate mental retardation during his childhood. Thus, he was particularly vulnerable to manipulation and violence by other inmates, and state officials had knowledge of his developmental disabilities and mental health condition.
Nevertheless, DPS transferred Clifford to CCA's Saguaro facility, far from his family, and CCA failed to take reasonable steps to address Clifford's vulnerability. Instead, CCA officials housed Clifford with violent inmates, including gang members, and did not take adequate precautions to ensure his safety.
Clifford was placed in a segregation cell with prisoner Mahinauli Silva, 22, who was serving up to 10 years for robbery, burglary and theft. Silva was reportedly a member of the dominant prison gang at Saguaro and was known to have anger control problems. Shortly before the murder, Silva told CCA officials to move Clifford to another cell or he would attack Clifford. According to a witness, a CCA employee replied, "As long as you two don't kill each other, I don't care."
On June 8, 2010, Silva murdered Clifford by strangling him to death in their shared cell. Although CCA staff conducted rounds in the housing unit, periodically looked in the cell and even spoke with Silva while Clifford lay dead or dying, they did not become aware that Clifford was dead until Silva later notified them.
Notably, while Hawaii prisoners Clifford and Bronson were killed at the CCA-run Saguaro prison in Arizona in 2010, no state prisoners were murdered in DPS-operated facilities in Hawaii during that same year.
"While CCA has received millions of dollars from the State of Hawaii for housing inmates in the company's for-profit prisons, Hawaii prisoners - including Clifford Medina - have needlessly died as a result of CCA's failure to protect them," said Alex Friedmann with the Human Rights Defense Center.
CCA prisons that house Hawaii prisoners have experienced numerous problems. In addition to the murders of Clifford and Bronson, over a dozen Hawaii prisoners have filed lawsuits against CCA claiming that the company has tolerated beatings and sexual assaults in its mainland facilities, and has refused to let them participate in native Hawaiian religious practices. Additionally, in 2009, Hawaii removed all of its female inmates from CCA's Otter Creek Correctional Center in Kentucky following a scandal that resulted in at least six CCA employees being charged with rape or sexual misconduct.
The attorneys representing Clifford's family ask anyone with information about his death - or information about Bronson Nunuha's murder or violations of safety or security policies at CCA's Saguaro Correctional Center - to contact them. All inquiries are confidential.
Chicago police mounted a preemptive, warrantless break-in and arrested and detained occupants of an apartment building in an undisclosed location last night.
The best report I’ve seen (actually, heard) so far is an interview on tonight’s WBAI news. Unfortunately, that’s audio, and so I can’t quote from it. The player below links to the program on the WBAI archive page, where it will remain for only seven days.
[Player removed – it was auto-starting on some browsers—use link above]
Police are reported to have broken down the doors and entered with guns drawn, terrorizing occupants. According to the report, at least some of those arrested were kept in cells without bathroom access. No warrants were shown, though the police did wave some papers but would not show them or provide copies.
There are articles that give some of the flavor of the raids. For example:
Five activists raided and arrested in an apartment in Bridgeport on the south side of Chicago continue to be held without charge. They were arrested during the night around 1 am on May 17, along with four other activists who have since been released. Those four were also held without charge. … It has become routine to conduct preemptive raids ahead of National Special Security Events like the NATO summit, but that does not mean the operations of Chicago police are any more acceptable. Hermes states, “The Constitution still applies.” The police “do not have the right to break down your doors and search your apartment and your belongings without a warrant and without consent. That is still against the law.”
“These documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people.”—Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
by Larry Geller
Honolulu police conducted a preemptive “strike” against local Occupy protesters one day before a planned May Day demonstration (see below). Did they act on their own, or did they coordinate, through Hawaii’s “fusion center” with national efforts to quash Occupy?
Documents handed over in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and filmmaker Michael Moore confirm that intense surveillance and coordination of police actions have extended right to the White House situation room and the Department of Homeland Security.
"These documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people," stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF. "These heavily redacted documents don't tell the full story. They are likely only a subset of responsive materials and the PCJF continues to fight for a complete release. They scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with 'anti-terrorism' funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement," Verheyden-Hilliard stated.
This set of released materials reveals intense involvement by the DHS' National Operations Center (NOC) in these activities. The DHS describes the NOC as, "the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management. The NOC is the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room and DHS Leadership for domestic situational awareness and facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector."
This is a sample snip of one of the documents posted on the PCJF website:
Of course, the 1 percent are interested in what the 99 percent are doing. The 1 percent are on one side of a class war, and the Occupy movement represents an insurgence to them.
In this war the weapon of mass destruction is money. Money to buy elections, of course, and money to buy politicians. Money puts pipelines over aquifers. Money escapes responsibilities for oil spills. The 1 percent are interested in making sure that the 99 percent don’t have access to this powerful weapon, so they strap the most ambitious of them with crushing student loans. They hope to “reform” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid so that seniors, who vote, won’t have access to money either.
Far from being “job creators,” the 1 percent favor keeping the surfs in their place, which is in abject poverty—that is, with minimal access to an arsenal of money.
The problem with some of the 99 percent is that they object to this, and they’re getting uppity. They stand in front of the New York Stock Exchange and yell at it and demand reform. This aspect of the insurgency is exceedingly troublesome since it is impervious to the money weapon, and so the police and military must be mobilized to suppress dissent. Nevermind the Constitution, it’s only a piece of paper to them, and there are few, if any, consequences for violating its protections. The police are out there breaking heads, supported by an extensive intelligence and command network that includes the military.
Preemptive police raid against (de)Occupy Honolulu
Police coordinated preemptive strikes before the planned nationwide May Day demonstrations in an attempt to defuse dissent. Indeed, May Day was a ticking bomb, so what else could they do? Honolulu was not overlooked.
(De)Occupy Honolulu, 30 April 2012, Day 177 of continuous encampment: Ten heavily armed Honolulu Police Department officers accompanied by about a dozen City workers under the direction of Westley Chun, Director of Facilities Maintenance and Engineering, taped off the portion of Thomas Square sidewalk used by (De)Occupy Honolulu and forced protestors outside the perimeter. Since the tents had been rotated out after Raid 14 on April 27, none were subject to seizure under the "Bill 54" ordinance 11-029.
But one tent containing newly produced artwork by Hawaii artist Michael Daley and California artist Raul Gonzalez was singled out for seizure along with two large paintings which had just been completed the previous afternoon. Westley Chun directed the seizure of the tent, the artwork, and newly acquired paints and art supplies.
Fusion centers are owned and operated by state and local entities with support from federal partners in the form of deployed personnel, training, technical assistance, exercise support, security clearances, connectivity to federal systems, technology, and grant funding.
Of course, we can’t learn the extent of HPD-federal cooperation. The police did use a tactic in that April 30 raid that mimics similar tactics used elsewhere, but of course they could simply have done their research on YouTube: they cordoned off the area of the raid with tape, excluding observers and minimizing video recording.
A short official brief on the Hawaii fusion center is here. An ACLU article mentions the participation of both the military and private sectors in fusion center information sharing. The article confirms that these fusion centers are closely following civilian activities:
In March 2008 the Virginia Fusion Center issued a terrorism threat assessment that described the state's universities and colleges as "nodes for radicalization" and characterized the "diversity" surrounding a Virginia military base and the state's "historically black" colleges as possible threats.
A DHS analyst at a Wisconsin fusion center prepared a report about protesters on both sides of the abortion debate, despite the fact that no violence was expected.
These bulletins, which are widely distributed, would be laughable except that they come with the imprimatur of a federally backed intelligence operation, and they encourage law enforcement officers to monitor the activities of political activists and racial and religious minorities.
Fusion centers are also the focal point for growing suspicious activity reporting programs that encourage public reporting of innocuous everyday activities. The Colorado Information and Analysis Center even produced a fear-mongering public service announcement asking the public to report innocuous behaviors such as photography, note-taking, drawing and collecting money for charity as "warning signs" of terrorism.
We do know that HPD is involved in a program to increase the sharing of all manner of data on a city, state and federal level. The federal involvement is explicit in a 2008 strategic plan, drawn up with the participation of the chiefs of police of each county, the state Attorney General, the US Attorney, and former prosecutor and present Mayor of Honolulu, Peter Carlisle:
Intelligence Fusion Centers are being developed in jurisdictions throughout the nation and are a key element in the National Strategy for Information Sharing. Preliminary planning has begun in Hawaii and HIJIS will be a crucial source of data access and sharing for the Hawaii Intelligence Fusion Center
The extent of surveillance and data sharing in Hawaii must be left as a subject of further research, but it does appear that Honolulu police are following the national pattern of suppression of Occupy movements on an escalating basis. There have been additional raids since May Day.
When compared to other cities, Honolulu appears to have fewer Occupiers. Perhaps that’s due in part to the smaller population, and also to a certain restraint in holding demonstrations of any kind. It’s not that we don’t have them, it’s just that few people turn out. Part of that may be due to a cultural propensity for retaliation. Try and find a job when your picture has been in the newspaper as a protestor.
It seems, though, that the police are as bent on wiping out what Occupiers we do have. Don’t they understand that they are in the 99 percent also? No, they don’t. The message has not been strong enough.
In Honolulu, it seems we just take what’s dished out to us. And we feel lucky to have the scraps, and to live in such a great place. This weekend there could be clashes and perhaps bloodshed at the NATO summit in Chicago. But here, APEC 2011 concluded without incident, and the police have just added to their collection of Occupy artwork.
Occupy, or (de)Occupy, will not go away. In fact, along with Occupy Wall Street and the many other movements across the country, it is actually the only hope we have to reclaim our democracy from the oligarchs. The Occupiers are working on our behalf.
“In a rare move, a federal judge has struck down part of a controversial law signed by President Obama that gave the government the power to indefinitely detain anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens. Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens.”
The Star-Advertiser did carry an AP story on page A7, so this news is not entirely “disappeared.” The commercial press will not speculate why Obama signed the NDAA, but there is plenty of material in the alternative media.
The linked segment includes a video and transcript. Since the website allows embedding, here is the video to encourage you to learn more not onlyabout the ruling, but about President Obama’s role in the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act and candidate Mitt Romney’s position on indefinite detention as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, President Obama signed it, but he was opposed by key members of his administration—for example, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta—
CHRIS HEDGES: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
CHRIS HEDGES: That’s what’s so interesting. None of the Pentagon, the FBI, as you—Mueller and everyone else, as you pointed out—none of them supported the bill, even to the extent where Mueller and others were testifying before Congress that it would make their work more difficult. And yet it passes anyway. And it is a kind of—I think it’s a kind of mystery to the rest of us as to what are the forces that—when you have the security establishment publicly opposing it, what are the forces that are putting it in place? And I can only suppose that what they’re doing is setting up a kind of legal mechanism to criminalize any kind of dissent. And Bruce can speak to this a little more. But in the course of the trial, with Alexa O’Brien, US Day of Rage, that WikiLeaks dump of five million emails of the public security firm Stratfor, we saw in those email correspondence an attempt to link US Day of Rage with al-Qaeda. Once they link you with a terrorist group, then these draconian forms of control can be used against legitimate forms of protest, and particularly the Occupy movement.
“[a]s a Ward of the State incarcerated in a correctional facility, you are incapable of providing the necessary emotional, financial and physical support that every marriage needs in order to succeed.”
by Larry Geller
The ACLU filed a lawsuit today in federal court on behalf of four women who were banned by the state from marrying their fiancés, all of whom are men incarcerated at the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona.
Each of the men received a form letter from the State Department of Public Safety explaining the moral (not legal) reason for the denial:
“[a]s a Ward of the State incarcerated in a correctional facility, you are incapable of providing the necessary emotional, financial and physical support that every marriage needs in order to succeed.”
As the ACLU explained, DPS agreed to stop the denials in June of 2011 and issued a written policy on marriage applications, but despite the policy, it continues to deny marriage applications by sending prisoners the form letter. The policy was implemented as a result of ACLU intervention the prior year when the same prison officials denied an applicant the right to marry with the same form letter. The lawsuit today resulted because, despite the new policy, DPS has continued to deny marriage applications on multiple occasions.
The practice of denying prisoners the right to marry was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). Particularly where prisoners wish to marry individuals outside of prison, the Court explained, the State has virtually no interest whatsoever: “where the inmate wishes to marry a civilian, the decision to marry (apart from the logistics of the wedding ceremony) is a completely private one.”
Whether the issue is providing mental health services, conditions in the prisons, or now the right to marry, it has taken federal intervention to force Hawaii’s prison officials to obey the law.
This case will result in avoidable legal fees for taxpayers. There will be no repercussions for errant DPS officials.
It could be settled in moments by a phone call from the Governor to his DPS director (hint).
Maui’s Karen Chun (M.S. mechanical enginnering) wrote: “Smart meters should lead to more refined dispatching of fossil fuel plants which, in turn would allow more nonfirm renewable (solar & wind).”
Kauai’s Scott Mijares noted that “KIUC has failed to prove to its member/owners specifically how the installation of smart meters will reduce our dependance on foreign oil or even lower our bill. What smart meters will do is allow KIUC to micro-manage the distribution of electricity to it's members.”
Is it reasonable for Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) to ask their ratepayers to finance Smart Grid / Smart Meter programs? What could go wrong? Are the fears justified? Could history repeat itself?
The Oil Embargoes of the 1970s sparked the 1978 Hawai`i Constitutional Convention to include an energy self-sufficiency clause in the state constitution. HECO created the HEI Holding company (1981-83) and informed the 1984 Legislature than HECO would be 100% renewable by 2000.
HECO asserted that as an unregulated parent company, HEI could set up HECO sister companies focusing on renewable energy. Instead, HEI went into shipping, banking, insurance, and real estate.
At the turn of the century HECO asserted that an unregulated child rather than an unregulated parent was the solution. Renewable Hawai`i Inc. (RHI) was created and in a decade has done little if anything.
In 2008 HECO signed the HCEI agreement with the State. HECO wanted decoupling, whereby sales would not impact revenue. Sales had peaked in 2006 and as they dropped, rates would automatically rise to guarantee constant revenue. The utility asserted this would make them agnostic about interconnecting more renewable energy to the system.
DBEDT argued before the PUC that these financial rewards should be given to the utility based on HECO’s achieving specific benchmarks. HECO and the Consumer Advocate convinced the PUC not to do so, to give HECO their financial rewards before achieving any renewable energy benchmarks.
At HEI’s Annual meeting held earlier this week, HEI stated that for each of the past 6 years, HEI has achieved profit margins exceeding the national utility average return. HEI has also achieved reduction in risk (usually higher returns are associated with higher risk, but apparently the PUC has rewarded higher returns for lower risks).
HEI Chair Connie Lau is the highest paid CEO in Hawai`i, she makes over $100,000 per week.
The HCEI Agreement calls for market regulation of greenhouse gases, the elimination of net metering, and tax subsidies for tropical rainforest biofuels.
The HCEI Agreement also calls for billions of dollars of ratepayer money for Smart Grids. The idea is that we should give the utility billions of dollars so they can build hardware and software that could, theoretically, in the future, lead to higher renewable energy penetration levels. We should trust the utility, but not tie the expenditures to any actual performance metric.
“The reactor buildings still contain large amounts of spent fuel – making them a huge safety risk and the only protection from a future tsunami, Wyden observed, is a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock.”—Senator Ron Wyden (OR), after visit to Fukushima . . . ”Scientists saythat there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hitting Fukushima this year, and a 98% chance within the next 3 years.”
by Larry Geller
The alternative media is buzzing with concern over the precarious situation of Fukushima 4, literally balanced on a knife-edge after the initial earthquake and tsunami, but the commercial press maintains near-silence.
Click below to listen to this segment of a popular KPFA radio program to learn more.
Unfortunately, it’s hard for radio programs to publish transcripts of their content, so the material can’t be found in Google or referenced. So I can’t quote from yesterday’s Flashpoints program, I can only ask you to take a moment and listen to at least the beginning of it. If Disappeared News had time to do radio, I would want it to be like Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein. But he’s already doing it. So please have a listen.
The first part of the program is an update on how dangerous Fukushima Reactor 4 is, with Dr. Michio Kaku.
As Dennis says, “hold on to your seats and stay tuned.”
The program mentions the impossibility of evacuating Tokyo’s 30 million people, representing 20% of the country’s population. The consequences of further nuclear disaster at Fukishima extend far beyond Japan, of course.
With all the activity at the Legislature, I missed this two-month anniversary by a couple of days.
On March 1, 2012 I posted an article identifying three recent financial disclosure forms that contain rather obvious omissions that I felt the Ethics Commission should have caught.
On April 4, 2012 I posted a follow-up article pointing out that the erroneous forms are still on the Ethics Commission website, and there are no amended forms posted. As far as I can tell, there has been no action against the three legislators (though obviously, the Ethics Commission would not let me know if they did take action).
It’s now two months later, and there are no amended forms posted on the Ethics Commission website for these legislators.
Here’s a recap of the issue. In alphabetic order:
Rep. Rida T.R. Cabanilla Arakawa’s 2012 financial disclosure apparently fails to disclose income, as required
On Senator Donavan Dela Cruz’s May 19, 2011 filing he simply checked the box indicating no changes to report since last filing. But his last filing was 12/9/10 which showed him as a Councilmember. Oops!
Rep. Scott Nishimoto also just checked the same box. He doesn’t report his House of Representatives job.
Each legislator signs the bottom of the form, which looks like this:
Note that it states that it is a violation of state law if information is not disclosed and that there are statutory penalties for noncompliance.
But so what? There’s clearly no cop on the beat.
I’ll check the Ethics Commission website again next month.
New York City just posted an archive of over 870,000 images spanning 160 years on its website (hat tip to researchbuzz.com). So I thought I would take a journey on the time machine to check out some of the transportation I remember we had as a kid. Why? It worked then. New York City knows transit. It would never put a line to nowhere up in the air as Honolulu is planning. I felt like escaping from the folly by going back to those comfortable days of yesteryear as a commuter in Brooklyn, NY.
At one time, portions of Brooklyn and Queens were as rural as Oahu is. Yet somehow planners managed to get the city interconnected with a web of urban transit.
When we got married, my mother’s advice to me, strongly worded, was “Never live in a two-fare zone!” As kids, we lived one block from the Church Avenue trolley, which we had to ride to get to any subway. I guess there were no transfers then, so indeed we lived in a two-fare zone. But more important, it took a ride to get to the ride. It really was inconvenient.
Of course, I’m still thinking of Mufi’s train. Since it would be one single spaghetti-strand of a line with no future of expansion, that will condemn most residents to either driving or taking a bus to get to the train. That’s what my mom warned against.
Later, we moved to Coney Island. There was a train a block away and another line nearby (you could walk or just change trains). How convenient! True, it was a long way from Manhattan where I worked, but not so bad. There was a newsstand at the station so it was an opportunity to read the New York Times on the way in to the city.
I recall (could be wrong) that we could pay the trolley or the bus fare with subway tokens. This is a 15 cent token. It was about the size of a dime. When the fare later went up, the size of the token would be changed. I saved a few of the 15 cent ones, silver plated some and soldered them to a tie clip which I wore for years, until for some reason people stopped wearing tie clips. Subway tokens were a great idea. You just tossed them into the fare box. People would depart the car from the rear (unlike The Bus in Honolulu), so that passengers could get on quickly at the front, toss a token into the fare box, and move to the middle. We have not caught up with that simple concept here in Honolulu in 2012. Oh, while I’m at it, there were ways to signal the driver to stop so you could get off, even if you were standing. That’s another thing we don’t have yet on The Bus.
Back to the 870,000 pictures… most are of old buildings, so I looked up the theater on Utica Avenue where we went on Saturdays to see three cartoons for 25 cents including free popcorn. No picture. It was converted to be a supermarket, and there are pictures on the web of that.
But there was one great picture of the Church Avenue trolley:
Where are the overhead wires??? Actually, I should ask where are the horses, I think it was pulled by horses then.
And I found this cool article about an incident between a runaway trolley car and a milk truck.
The trolley I remember looked more or less like this:
It was replaced by a bus, which I had to ride to the subway to get into school in Manhattan I remember the last run. I saw the trolley depart and go down the avenue with people hanging out of it. I also remember all the pennies we had put on the tracks over the years and other clever stunts I better not mention, even though the statute of limitations has long tolled. I never tried it, but some boys used to ride on the back bumper, without, of course, paying anything. The ride was smooth enough (no potholes when riding on rails, of course) that it didn’t seem dangerous, and cars behind left plenty of space if there were idiot kids riding outboard.
The trolley was cool. The diesel buses stank, were noisy, and didn’t ring a bell before they moved.
For many years the trolley tracks remained in the street. Then the city decided it would be too expensive to pull them up, so it covered the streets with a layer of asphalt. This was successful only for a while. The tracks often buckled and forced their way up out of the asphalt. So the errant rail would be ripped out and the street repaired. But then another rail would pop up, then another.
For a time, though, I could line up my 1963 Plymouth on the tracks on Stillwell Avenue, which remained in place after other streets were repaired. It was a coincidence, I’m sure, but the width of the tracks, from the outsides of the rails, was exactly the same as the space inside between the left and right tires on the car. So the car would lock onto the rails as though it were a train. I could take my hands off the steering wheel, and it would run safely down the street, with something of the feel of being on a train. The problem came when I had to make a turn. It took significant force to unlock the car from the rails.
Somehow, I don’t think we’ll have such fun with Mufi’s train. You never know. I wonder if they’ll relent and put public toilets in the stations. If not, yes, there will be stories for tourists and residents to tell.
Could Tokyo be evacuated if there were another earthquake affecting the Fukushima nuclear plants? What can be said about the probability of another earthquake, and what would the consequences be for Japan, for Hawaii, and for the rest of the world?
For Hawaii, would tourists come if the ocean water were too radioactive to swim in? What kind of an economy would we have without tourists, and where would we go to surf? Do Hazmat suits come in aloha shirt patterns?
A coalition of Japanese citizens, Japanese and American activists and US Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter Friday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihito Noda urging intervention to remove the spent fuel rods from Fukushima 4 sooner than the ten years or so currently contemplated.
The letter warns that the reactor building is tilted and it could not withstand another earthquake. The storage pool is located above the building at a height of six to ten stories above the ground and open to the air. More than 1500 nuclear assemblies are inside the pool. Should the pool be damaged and the fuel rods catch fire, roughly 85 times the amount of Cesium 137 released by Chernobyl could be released as the fire spreads to the other nearby units.
US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) visited the stricken Fukushima site several weeks ago and was particularly alarmed by the slow response of Fukushima Daiichi utility owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which has a several year-long plan to secure Unit 4 and its fuel pool, and urged swifter action.
"Loss of containment in any of these pools, especially the pool at Unit 4, which has the highest inventory of hottest fuel, could result in an even greater release of radiation than the initial incident," Wyden said.
The letter to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, initiated by Japanese environmental groups Green Action Japan and Shut Tomari, demands that Japan ask for international support to avert disaster. The groups are urging organizations around the world to sign on.
Hawaii should consider signing on in some official capacity. The downside risk of an event such as described would be devastating here.
What happens in Fukushima doesn’t stay in Fukushima
Hawaii is directly in the path of the radioactive plume of seawater from the original Fukushima disaster. It would similarly receive radioactive water from a future disaster.
Fukushima Radioactive Ocean Impact Map - March 2012 Update
Water contaminated by radioactivity that entered the sea from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will reach the Hawaiian Islands in March 2014, according to a computer simulation by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. [...]
The researchers said 18,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive iodine and cesium have leaked from the plant into the sea.
The contaminated water will be carried by ocean currents, and the maximum radioactivity level in cesium-137 will be about 0.04 becquerel per liter when it nears the Hawaiian Islands, they said.
That would be about 50% of the EPA’s maximum limit for drinking water.
The letter sent Friday appears to be the second one sent by the groups. The text of the first letter is here. One of the signers appears to be “Aloha from Hawaii.”
The letters urge immediate action because another earthquake near Fukushima could occur at any time. If a worst-case disaster at the Fukushima facility were to take place, it is hard to see how Tokyo could be evacuated. The population of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, including nearby Yokohama and Kawasaki, is estimated to be between 35 and 36 million people. It is the largest metropolitan area in the world. There is no place for them to go, and an evacuation would be a logistics nightmare, if it could be accomplished at all.
How likely is another earthquake? Of course, no one can say exactly. Here is the currently posted USGS Seismic Hazard Map for Japan:
The likelihood of another earthquake should be the subject of more research, but the argument presented by the various groups is that the downside risk is so great that international assistance should be provided to stabilize the situation at Fukushima as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the media are generally ignoring the situation.
There is no way to overstate the media's complicity in concealing critical information about the tragedy that is presently unfolding at Fukushima. If there is another earthquake, the media will certainly be every bit as responsible as the government officials who saw the danger, but chose to do nothing.
This is too important for the media to ignore. The consequence of leaving TEPCO (nearly bankrupt already) and the Japanese government to deal with Fukushima on their own could be disaster for Hawaii and much of the world economy. We should join with other groups to move that ten-year timetable forward and deal with the situation sooner, not later.
