American Naval Ship Crashes into World Heritage Site

international | environment | news report

Friday February 01, 2013 10:47

by Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL)

APL dares Philippine President Aquino to penalize US Navy for Tubbataha damage

The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) dared President Aquino to relentlessly pursue his declaration that, despite the apology issued for the reckless grounding of an American ship on Tubbataha Reef, the US Navy has undoubtedly violated Philippine laws and therefore must be meted out with appropriate punishment.

Responding to media questions on whether the apology was already enough, Aquino, in a
surprisingly I’m-not-a-US-puppet-posturing, was quoted as saying: “that doesn’t exempt them
from having to comply with our laws … Excuse me, may nasira sa amin, eh. Gano’n na lang
ba ’yon? (we suffered damage. Do we leave it at that?)”

Straight from a tearjerker script, the statement attributed to Vice Admiral Scott H. Swift,
commander of the US 7th Fleet, reads: “As a protector of the sea and a sailor myself, I greatly
regret any damage this incident has caused to the Tubbataha Reef.”

However, the said “incident” on Jan. 17 was described as a “rude intrusion” of the US minesweeper USS Guardian, which, before it ran aground, was duly warned by the Tubbataha
Park rangers that it did not have permission to enter the protected marine site as mandated by
Republic Act No. 10067 or the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park Act of 2009.

The Tubbataha rangers reported that they were ignored by the USS Guardian and they backed out from following it when the sailors assumed “battle positions.”

Maybe due to brusqueness of the USS Guardian’s skippers and in spite of the much vaunted
American Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and other navigation technologies, the 68-meter
ship’s hull still stuck on the reef.

Initial assessment has placed the damage at about 1,000 square meters of invaluable coral reef, which takes about 10,000 years to recover as corals need close to 10 years to grow just an inch. Environmentalists are worried that the destruction could worsen the longer the ship remains stranded. It is still stuck in Tubbataha after almost two weeks now.

The Tubbataha National Marine Park is located in the Sulu Sea, 98 nautical miles (181 km)
southeast of Puerto Princesa City in Palawan province. A protected marine sanctuary with
an area of almost 970 square kilometers, the huge reefs in Tubbataha are teeming with rich
marine wildlife and resources; it is home to more than 1,000 marine species, many are deemed endangered. It was also declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in December 1993.

http://www.apl.org.ph

save preference

Comments (4 of 4)

arrogant bastards

by hubris

Fri Feb 01, 2013 22:30

arrogant US warmongers don't give a shit whose territory they violate.

destroying 10,000 year old coral is all in a days work for the likes of them.

You're lucky they didn't kill any children too.

... the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today ...

by W. Finnerty

Sat Feb 02, 2013 07:53

'Speaking out against the Vietnam War in 1967, Martin Luther King said, "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government." Dr. King's words are even more relevant today than when he spoke over four decades ago.'

The above excerpt is from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-a-love/violence-beg....html

And, with much of the credit for all the global violence in question due to the "Money Power Psychopaths and Whores", and their many puppets, I'd say: including our own in the Republic of Ireland's Government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial).

Related Link:
"Violence begets violence, Human Rights Ireland, William Finnerty"
http://tinyurl.com/c2qppuj

MLK vs Obama

by fred

Sun Feb 03, 2013 00:55

"... the shortcomings of the US government ..."

Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:19

"Film director Brian de Palma has become an expert in voicing people’s frustration with the shortcomings of the US government. RT caught up with the celebrated Hollywood filmmaker and screenwriter to ask him political and apolitical questions."

The above excerpt has come from the following www location:
http://slumz.boxden.com/f5/feb-2-brian-de-palma-rt-iraq...9053/

Some additional excerpts, also from the above www page address, are provided in the section just below:

==============

"I think our foreign policy is incorrect, I don't think we should have been in Iraq at all, I think we were lied to by our government. When you put young boys in situations when they don't know why they are there, it's even worse than Vietnam. Not only are you in a terrible environment, where everybody wants to kill you, and you walk around and suddenly the earth explodes, your best friend's just lost his leg, you detest the people you're supposed to be fighting for and you do crazy things. That's what 'Redacted' is about, and that's what 'Casualties of War' was about. These wars make no sense and crazy things happen."

"Oliver Stone, who wrote the script to one of your best-known films 'Scarface,' said in an interview with RT that Americans are living in an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide, eventually some part of you is going to end up in a database somewhere. According to historian Peter Kuznick, the US government intercepts over 1.7 billion messages a day. Are you aware of this?"

"I think the use of torture in the Bigelow movie is very realistic. I don't know why everybody is so surprised or upset. But the fact that you would say that Americans actually torture people was like… impossible. But of course they torture people!"

==============

Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):

"No one shall be subjected to TORTURE or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

The full text of the UN UDHR is available at the following www page address:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a5

There is some extremely serious "CATCHING UP" to do, regarding basic "human rights law" awareness, in 2013 it would seem?

And, we now need to be VERY "quick about it" (it appears to me at least), if all of the dangerously missed opportunities, in the Republic of Ireland and all (or almost all) other countries of the world, regarding the strongly recommended need for "training and education" (mentioned in the final paragraph of the UDHR Preamble) -- the really mystifying and wholly avoidable missed UDHR "training and education" opportunities (and consequential ignorance of human rights law) adversely affecting three "lost" generations or so of us since 1948, that is -- are ever to be satisfactorily compensated for by "humanity as a whole"?

Correctly or otherwise, it seems to me that "humanity as a whole" needs to VERY rapidly adapt a "Zero-Tolerance" approach to government crime: using human rights law; or, run the rapidly-growing risk of facing a thermonuclear WW3 "situation": allowing for the manner in which the U.S. "love of war", "passion for war", or whatever it is (?), appears to growing more and more out of control: regarding what might yet prove to be an unstoppable "trip" to some kind of "Hell on Earth" scenario?

Ninety minutes or so of international thermonuclear bomb-slinging, about the overall time taken for a football or hurling match, is all it is believed that it would take to destroy civilisation in its present state of development; possibly destroy "humanity as a whole"; and, maybe even permanently destroy all of "Life on Earth", as a whole.

==============

Related Link:
"Unconstitutional Legislation, United States, The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper, George W. Bush, Human Rights Ireland, William Finnerty"
http://tinyurl.com/cws7uo6

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

The Saker

Public Inquiry

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

American Naval Ship Crashes into World Heritage Site

Comments (4 of 4)