03/12/15 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

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Our next guest on the show today is our good friend, Dar Jamal, former unembedded reporter in Iraq War II, did absolutely heroic journalism from that disaster.
Here he is writing for Truthout.org, domestic military expansion spreads through the U.S., ignites dissent.
It was a spotlight or, well, at least it was one of the viewpoints yesterday on AntiWar.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Dar, how are you doing, man?
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you.
I'm happy to have you here.
Very important article that you wrote here.
Very interesting stuff.
And I think you probably have this beat all to yourself as well.
So maybe we'll read more of you along these lines in the future, too.
But this is, I think, primarily about the Navy and the expansion of the Navy's proving grounds and practicing grounds here in the United States.
Why don't you break it down for us here?
Well, that's exactly right.
And this basically is a result of some policies that came online during the Bush administration in 2007, where a domestic military training expansion was set in motion and then have been dramatically accelerated just a couple of years ago when the Obama administration announced the so-called Asia-Pacific pivot, where clearly getting ready for the multipolar world, which really we're now in with the rising of China and Russia and U.S. military documents speak now very, very specifically towards preparing for war, war gaming with China.
And so hence the Asia-Pacific pivot.
We've got to build up the Navy.
We've got to start training like mad.
And I link to a lot of these documents in the article.
But in sum, what this has resulted to, I mean, even long before this happened, every single coastal state in the United States had very, very heavy active naval training exercises happening.
But these are all being expanded, as is the training right now as part of this Asia-Pacific pivot.
And so what that's resulting in is a dramatic increase in electromagnetic warfare training, expansion in the training grounds.
And it's also resulting in a major infringement on national forest lands, national parks, and even cities where people are living, where military buffer zones around bases, for example, are starting to infringe upon cities and in some instances the threat of eminent domain and this kind of thing.
So literally domestic citizens in the U.S. are now being encroached upon in various ways by this U.S. military domestic expansion.
All right.
So now the biggest controversy of all about this was the ECOS down there in Puerto Rico, right?
And now they ended up closing that one down back a few years ago, didn't they?
They did.
They did.
And so but what's really interesting is that this is now happening in the U.S.
And I think I'm glad you brought that up because that's a good example.
You know, as you and I know and we've talked about in various ways over the years, you know, people here think, oh, well, this could never happen here.
This is the United States.
You know, that was in Puerto Rico, OK, but it's not going to happen here.
But it already is happening here.
It's just a little bit less visible.
I mean, they're already doing underwater sonar weapons testing, underwater ordnance explosions, live fire training, even right nearby certain communities across the U.S.
And in truth, I hyperlinked to a document in 2009 where I'm sorry, 2007, 2009, when several U.S. senators penned a letter to the Navy about their concern about an upcoming naval expansion at that time, where the Navy admitted in their own environmental impact statement that as many as eleven point seven million takes, which basically means death of a biological organism in nature would happen over the course of a five year permit during one of their expansions and just one of their 12 training ranges in the United States.
And so that's the amount of damage that is happening.
But since it's underwater, since it's off the coast, people can't see it directly.
So it's not as blatant as Vieques, where they're just dropping bombs right near, you know, where people live.
But it is already happening.
And this is something that I hope that this article would start to make people aware of.
Right.
Now, it's funny here about the National Forest.
You had this great quote about the National Forests from this activist here about how they're basically just military property, that the National Forests are basically up for grabs for the most violent and destructive part of the government to go running around and training and doing whatever they want.
Yeah, it's exactly right.
And yeah, you're referencing Carol Miller.
She's an activist in New Mexico who founded a nonprofit called the Peaceful Skies Coalition.
And she founded it because several years ago, basically, the Air Force showed up right next to her community and said, hey, we're going to put a realistic bombing initiative range right next to your community.
And so all hell broke loose and all her and a lot of her friends started protesting and they managed to keep it from happening.
And it was she who went on to say, you know, she started doing research and seeing, hey, this isn't happening just here in New Mexico.
It's happening all across the country.
And it's not just the Air Force.
It's the Navy and it's other branches of the military, too.
And she told me that that, look, she said, we already we have either had are having or will have military training in every single national force in the country.
And then she's the one that went on to say, we don't really have public lands in the United States.
We have military lands.
Military lands.
Yeah.
So, you know, no surprise, really.
But now tell me about Whidbey Island over there off the coast of Washington state right there near the Canadian border.
There's a there's a Navy, Navy air base located there, right?
Right.
There's a naval air station there.
It's right in Puget Sound.
So it's probably about twenty five, thirty miles northwest of Seattle as the crow flies to give folks an idea where it's located.
And as you said, it's also very, very close to the Canadian border.
And it's already a fairly sizable naval air station.
And they have a whole lot of the F-18 Growler jets based there.
This is the loudest aircraft ever produced on the planet.
And it's actually a carrier based jet.
But they're they're training as part of this Asia-Pacific pivot.
And the plan is to bring in a whole lot more growler jets so that they can start electromagnetic warfare training out on the Western Olympic Peninsula in Olympic National Forest.
And so that's really what kind of torched off this article for me.
I mean, it is fairly close to where I live.
That's how it came to my attention.
And people here just started going crazy, basically say, hey, look, we don't want this to happen.
And so a lot of people have gotten involved starting to fight it.
There are possible lawsuits in the works against the Navy for a lot of violations they've they've done in their environmental impact statement and some of the other bureaucratic hoops they have to jump through to make this happen.
But you know, I started digging and basically there's even outcry from the Canadian side.
A Canadian minister of parliament named Elizabeth May, who's also the head of the Green Party up there, actually sent a letter to Canada's U.S. ambassador, Bruce Heyman, expressing her direct concerns over sonic booms that have been happening across the skies over her constituents heads loud enough that it's literally knocking people's rattling people's windows and knocking their their cookware off shelves and things like this.
And she's not the only one.
Another minister of parliament also submitted a letter.
And I received several quotes from from people living over there in Victoria and other parts around British Columbia, Columbia, saying, look, we're regularly being subjected to sonic booms.
It's very, very unsettling.
And this this has got to be violation of some kind of treaty.
So it's it there's a lot of outcry happening up here now.
You know, that's why I mentioned the dissent bit and go into that in the article over what's happening and then also over a really, really bellicose response from the Navy.
Right now, I want to talk more about the activism and the pushback against the activism when we get back from this break.
Music's about to start playing here in just a second.
But so let me remind the good folks, you're listening to Darja Mail.
He's the author of this new one at Truthout dot org.
Domestic military expansion spreads through the U.S. ignites dissent.
And I think you guys will be shocked, but not surprised to hear about the military pushback against the American citizens.
You know, we the people who would take exception to the Navy's plans for their private property.
We'll be right back in just a sec.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Darja Mail, he's the author of Beyond the Green Zone.
And here he is, well, he's covering militarism and environmentalism at the same damn time here with this piece in truth out, domestic military expansion spreads throughout the U.S., ignites dissent.
So let's talk, first of all, I want to get into all the activism and the military pushback and all that, but give us a good rundown on the harm here, Darja, for wildlife when it comes to people's private property rights, et cetera, et cetera, as best you can.
Wow, where to start?
Well, starting with human harm, certainly I've written a couple of articles in the past about the impacts of just the electromagnetic warfare training itself, because I interviewed an expert, actually a professor emeritus on on the subject of biological response to low level electromagnetic radiation, a guy out of Washington State University.
And he he talked about how even extremely low levels of electromagnetic radiation, I mean, we're not even talking about beginning to get in the ballpark of the intense levels that the Navy will be using during their trainings and certainly during warfare.
But even the extremely low levels, there's there's not literally dozens of peer reviewed studies that show they increase the risk of cancer.
They cause childhood leukemia.
They're very dangerous for pregnant women, very dangerous for young people and older people, et cetera, et cetera.
And I went on to go on and cite and actually link to several reports verifying this one by the Navy itself, which I found very interesting.
Another one by the U.S.
Air Force itself and then another one by NASA.
So it's very, very clear.
You look at these reports, you look at the number of peer reviewed studies and ongoing contemporary peer reviewed studies.
And it is irrefutable that even low grade electromagnetic warfare training is going to be very, very dangerous to humans.
Well, what exactly do you mean by that?
You're using Aegis radar or.
Well, they have ground based emitters, at least just with the program they're looking at out here where they would put 14 RV size ground based emitters, basically these big antenna that they can drive around on the ground, put them in various locations around the National Forest, which they admit themselves that, well, the Navy claims that they're not harmful because they say, look, a human would have to stand nearby these ground based emitters for 15 minutes, at which point their eyeballs would melt.
But no human being is going to stand near these emitters for 15 minutes because we're not going to let them.
So that's that's basically their response.
And then the planes would, of course, fly over and be obviously using their radars to locate these.
And then the Navy claims they wouldn't be doing radar jamming and that kind of thing.
But, you know, talking to some folks in the military, I know said, no, absolutely, they're going to be doing it because the Navy itself says we train as we fight.
They want to have as most the most realistic training scenarios they can.
That's why I mentioned earlier the use of ordinance and live fire and et cetera, et cetera.
So so that that's the level that we would be talking about.
But even even in the Navy's own environmental impact statements, they kind of give these sleight of hands where it is clear by the example I just gave that even even standing nearby one of their emitters for a few minutes is clearly going to cause biological harm.
So that's that's just one example on the human side.
And then just quickly on the wildlife side, for example, again, just using their electromagnetic warfare training out here, a billion, according to the Audubon Society, one billion birds use that area as a migratory pathway.
And it's there's numerous studies also out there, also contemporary, that show that even low level electromagnetic radiation is going to have a deleterious impact on a bird's bio navigational ability.
So, you know, there's a billion birds right there that are going to be affected just by that.
I cite numerous other studies that show and even recent news reports showing their underground sonar testing and underground weapons training as well is is killing whales and dolphins.
There's been a lot of whale and dolphin kills off off of the coast of California, some off of Oregon.
This is all in direct response to Navy sonar trainings.
So those are just a couple of short examples.
Right.
And yeah, that's really important when you're talking about messing up the entire food chain here.
And I guess, you know, these are these are small parts of it, but mass damage can be done all at one time.
If you have whatever, however many dozens of dead beached whales, who knows what else happened to the rest of the wildlife under the sea that got zapped with the same sonar that zapped them.
But seems pretty damn destructive on its face anyway.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, and these are just a few examples.
And, you know, to give, you know, just to kind of circle back around to what I mentioned earlier, I mean, it just in one of their environmental impact statements while they're applying for a permit for more training back in 2007, they had they even the Navy itself estimated eleven point seven million takes, which means dead wildlife critters in during one five year permit for one permit in one range.
And there's at least 12 ranges that we know of.
All right.
Now, sorry we're short on time.
You know, it goes with these segments.
But tell us real quickly about the people doing something about this and what the Navy is doing back to them for trying.
Well, there are several groups now, even a lot of the leading things like National Resource Defense Council, the Sierra Club, a lot of other national wildlife protection groups like Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Welfare Institute, Center for Biological Diversity and a lot of activist groups that are involved in trying to push back and stop them.
And when they've done this, so certainly with the activist groups, the Navy has actually brought out trolls and a lot of their own pilots up here have have been posting very, very negative and oftentimes threatening comments to their to their websites that they set up things like, hey, we're going to how about we just strap one of you guys to one of our growlers next time we go to war against ISIS and you can see how that feels.
And then, you know, one quote I have pulled up in front of me, I think it's it's worth reading in full just to give people an idea of the bellicose response.
It was via an email from a Navy pilot to one of the activist websites just in this past January.
And he said, I assure you that we will you will be long gone before the growlers here are.
Service life of the growlers is 40 to 45 years.
And man, we just built some beautiful new facilities at N.A.S. Whidbey.
That's the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.
Washington is the absolute best state for military airspace, wide open skies and unpopulated areas.
You are not important.
In fact, you scumbags are completely expendable.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's because, like it says in the Constitution, we, the government, allow you people to exist at our pleasure so that we can tax you and build jets with your money so we can kill Arabs with it.
That's what says right there in the preamble.
And all of us are expendable because the government comes first before the citizens of this United States.
Right, right.
Exactly.
Things things are just a little bit topsy turvy.
You got to read between the lines a little bit, but it's pretty much right in there.
Clearly, that's what's happening.
Yeah, it's clearly their attitude.
You know, oh, where wherever would we be without the Navy here to protect us from the terrorists?
Give me a break.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm another 20 billion dollar submarine.
I know.
I know.
It's really out of control, but I hope that people pay attention to this because it is happening.
It's happening across the country.
And don't wait until it's right up against your community, because if it's not there now, it's coming your way.
Absolutely.
Great work, as always, Dar.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
Appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
That's the great Dar Jameel.
He's at truthout.org.
Domestic military expansion spreads through the U.S., ignites dissent.
It's a really good piece.
Please go and read.
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