Northern Islands Mayor Jerome Aldan claims that residents of the Northern Islands are 100-percent opposed to the U.S. military\u2019s planned live-fire training exercises on Pagan that is outlined in the CNMI Joint Military Training Plan-Environmental Impact Statement\/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Radio New Zealand, the Northern Islands\u2019 chief executive said the U.S. Department of Defense has not taken indigenous and cultural factors into account in its plans.<\/p>\n
Aldan, who wants to reestablish a community on Pagan, said that 100 percent of the Northern Island residents are against the military\u2019s bombing of the island.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is all the alternatives are kind of like the same\u2026they are all about live-fire [training]. So what other alternatives do we have, right? That\u2019s what\u2019s coming out of the draft CJMT-EIS. So we\u2019re left with \u2018no room\u2019 to really discuss alternatives because the alternatives still remain\u2014that the island is being proposed for live firing,\u201d Aldan said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Mike Hadfield, a professor at the Department of Biology and Kewalo Marine Lab at University of Hawaii, also went on air to make public his opposition to the military using islands for live-fire training.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Russia\u2019s Radio Sputnick, Hadfield said despite the U.S Navy saying there\u2019s nothing environmentally important on Pagan, \u201cit\u2019s in fact a unique island.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hadfield also told Moscow-based Radio Sputnick that the U.S Navy likes to take other people\u2019s islands and either never leaves them or leaves them uninhabitable.<\/p>\n
Online petition<\/strong><\/p>\n The Alternative Zero Coalition\u2019s online petition to save Pagan and Tinian has now reached a total of 100,538 signatures. Its organizers plan to send the petition to President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n Cinta Kaipat, a Northern Island resident who seeks to return to her island, said that they are targeting more than 150,000 signatures by the end of this month.<\/p>\n A total of 49,462 will be needed to reach 150,000 signatures.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you all for your support. If you haven’t done so already, please help us by signing our online petition,\u201d Kaipat said.<\/p>\n Arley Long is the primary advocate behind the electronic petition on Change.org. For more information, visit: www.tinyurl.com\/StopIslandBombing or use the hashtags: #SaveTinian #SavePagan or #OurIslandsAreSacred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Northern Islands Mayor Jerome Aldan claims that residents of the Northern Islands are 100-percent opposed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5149,200,5150,541],"class_list":["post-203495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-mike-hadfield","tag-military","tag-moscow-based-radio-sputnick","tag-northern-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}