From my sister in Alaska: America's next war will be in Alaska & the enemy is not who you'd expect
My sister lives in AK. She just sent this article about the attempts of a local activist she knows to stop extremely toxic and destructive military maneuvers by the Navy. I have visited my sister and have been to the area in the photo. This is one of the most pristine areas in the world, breathtakingly beautiful, abounding with wildlife, and passionately loved by those who live there. This article lays out some of little known costs of war games.
(This essay is a joint TomDispatch/Truthout report.)
The Nation
Where Is America’s Next War? Alaska.
And the enemy is not who you’d expect.
By Dahr Jamail
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It’s war in the gulf and the US Navy is on hand to protect us. No, not that gulf! I’m talking about the Gulf of Alaska and it’s actually mock war—if, that is, you don’t happen to be a fin whale or a wild salmon.
This May, the Navy will again sail its warships into the Gulf of Alaska. There, it will perform military maneuvers and possibly drop bombs, launch torpedoes and missiles, and engage in activities that stand a significant chance of poisoning those once-pristine waters, while it prepares for future battles elsewhere on the planet. Think of it as a war against wildlife, an assault on the environment and local coastal communities.
And call it irony or call it American life in 2017, but the US military’s Alaska Command has branded Emily Stolarcyk “a troublemaker” for insistently pointing this out. In a state where such a phrase is the equivalent of an obscenity, some have bluntly called her “anti-military.” The office of Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has termed her a “rabble-rouser,” while a Kodiak Assembly member labeled some of what she’s been saying about the Navy “just silly.”
As a resident of the tiny fishing town of Cordova, Alaska, the most radical rabble-rousing thing about Stolarcyk may be the passion with which she loves this region of the planet in all its majesty. It’s why she’s taken a fierce and unwavering stand for years now against the ongoing training exercises the Navy carries out in the Gulf of Alaska during one of the largest migrations of birds and marine life on earth. These exercises, which inject tons of toxic materials into the gulf and use significant explosive ordnance, are once again scheduled to take place just as Alaska’s commercial fishing season opens.
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Nevertheless, the Navy is requesting permits to use live ordnance including bombs, missiles, and torpedoes, along with active and passive sonar in “realistic” war-training exercises that could release as much as 352,000 pounds of “expended materials” into those waters including, according to the Navy’s own Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), missiles, bombs, and torpedoes.
These waters support some of the most valuable fisheries left in the United States, and the commercial fishing industry is the single-largest private-sector employer in the state of Alaska, providing over 63,000 jobs. Nevertheless, the Navy’s own EIS claims that fish in the area are at risk of chemical exposures of various sorts because the war games will introduce chromium, lead, tungsten, nickel, cadmium, cyanide, and ammonium perchlorate, along with numerous other heavy metals and toxic substances, into Alaskan waters. According to the EIS, “little is known about the very important issues of non-mortality damage in the short- and long-term, and nothing is known about the effects on behavior of fish.” It adds that “potential effects” include “death or damage” and that “fish not killed or driven from a location by an explosion might change their behavior, feeding pattern, or distribution.”
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Why then, I wondered, do its commanders refuse to allow independent wildlife observers aboard their vessels during the training exercises?
To do so, she insisted, “would result in unacceptable impacts to readiness,” an odd response given that the only “impact” would assumedly be the use of binoculars.
As Northern Edge 2017 approaches, one thing is clear enough. Despite growing opposition in Alaska, the Navy continues to do just what it wants in the state’s once-pristine, biologically rich Gulf of Alaska waters. Who knows how long it will be before parts of its vast marine web begin to test positive for the Navy’s toxins?
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More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/where-is-americas-next-war-alaska/
= new reply since forum marked as read
In my state we have been fighting this bull for years... literally years. The navy used a small uninhabited island just off our coast for bombing practice for years.. I personally know of at least two instances that I was witness to where the pilots missed the target island and the bombs landed on our island... luckily neither one exploded, or it would have been ugly...
The navy was tone deaf to our protests until a small group of activists decided to occupy the target island, preventing the navy from conducting their runs and sending patrols and cops to search for and remove the activists from the island.. then the bombing would resume... and then the activists would return.. this continued until two of the leaders of the group disappeared at sea while attemping to make their way back to the island via surfboard.
Eventually the navy agreed to stop the bombing and established a fund for clean up... the clean up effort lasted a few years before the fund ran out of money ($8 million I believe) and the navy refused to extend funding... now the island is being reclaimed for cultural uses, but with unrestricted access to only about 40% of the island.. the remaining 60% is still covered with UXO or unexploded ordinance...
The military has been holding combat training on other islands as well, and just this past weekend there was a protest outside an area where live fire training was being conducted and it became public that the military was using DU or depleted uranium shells. This is a total outrage and I don't understand where our state and federal politicians are regarding this... and this is a deep blue state... You should research depleted uranium shells.. if they are using them in Alaska, that area is condemed to a sad and radioactive future...
Good luck to your sister and the folks up there... I don't understand why any military planner would look at places like Alaska or Hawaii and think that these would be great places to blow the sh*t out of....
