person:john miller

Drought kills 12 million trees in California’s national forests - LA Times
▻http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-trees-dying-california-drought-20150505-story.html

Rangers in the San Bernardino National Forest call them “red trees.”

Instead of the typical deep green color, large swaths of pine trees now don hues of death, their dehydrated needles turning brown and burnt-red because of the state’s worsening drought.

“Unlike back East, where you have fall colors, here it’s because the trees are dying,” said John Miller, a spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest.

Years of extremely dry conditions are taking a heavy toll on forest lands across California and heightening the fire risk as summer approaches.

“The situation is incendiary,” William Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told The Times recently. “The national forest is stressed out.”

A new study by the U.S. Forest Service tried to assess the scope of the problem. Researchers estimated that the drought has killed off at least 12.5 million trees in California’s national forests during the drought.

▻http://documents.latimes.com/forest-health-protection-survey

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2072531/pages/forest-health-protection-survey-p1-normal.gif

US Navy reiterates commitment to Bahrain, region | GulfNews.com
▻http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/bahrain/us-navy-reiterates-commitment-to-bahrain-region-1.1321204

Referring to the $580 million base expansion in Bahrain that includes modifications to accommodate the US Navy’s new littoral combat ships (LCS), due to be operational in the Arabian Gulf by 2018, Vice Admiral John Miller said that it indicated “an enduring presence.”
“Some of the modifications that we are doing right now will help us get the base ready for the arrival of the littoral combat ships, which will start right around 2018,” Miller told Defense News. “Those are ships that will serve in the US Navy and this area right until the middle of the current century. We would not plan for this infrastructure if we did not plan on staying here and the second thing is that we plan on staying not just as the US Navy but in a coalition environment,” he said.

IPS – U.S. Sells Attack Helicopters to Indonesia amid Rights Concerns | Inter Press Service
▻http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/u-s-sells-attack-helicopters-to-indonesia-amid-rights-concerns

“The problem is that these are offensive-only weapons, and given the history of the Indonesian military they’re more likely to be used for internal repression than for external defence,” John Miller, U.S. national coordinator for the East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“The military will use these helicopters as they want. These are weapons of war, weapons of counter-insurgency, so it would be foolish to expect that the Indonesians wouldn’t use them that way.”

Early last year, when the Apache sale was first publicly discussed, ETAN and about 90 other civil society organisations wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress, warning, “These aircraft will substantially augment the [Indonesian military’s] capacity to prosecute its ‘sweep operations’ in West Papua [province], and thereby almost certainly lead to increased suffering among the civilian populations long victimised by such operations.”

While Congress must be formally notified of any major military sales to foreign governments (that notification took place in September), Miller says lawmakers raised little objection over the issue.

“There is really only rhetorical help coming from Washington, if that,” he says. “History has shown that military leverage was used quite successfully in the case of East Timor, when these types of sales were specifically withheld or conditioned on easily demonstrated reforms. But today’s members of Congress either don’t know their history or they’ve forgotten this lesson.”

(...)

"... the perception in Washington is that Indonesia is now needed as a central ally in the ‘war against terrorism’ and as a bulwark against China, (...)”

“... “There’s no reason to sacrifice the people of West Papua and other parts of the country for this belief.”

Exercice de déminage dans le Golfe persique, mené par les EU et impliquant la participation de 41 pays, qui nourrit la paranoia des Iraniens

▻http://gitm.kcorp.net/index.php?id=647913

Gulf Times - 13 May, 2013

Vice Admiral John Miller, commander of the US Fifth Fleet, said yesterday that a massive naval minesweeping exercise involving 41 countries was not directed at Iran.“It is not about Iran,” Miller said at a news conference in Manama, the fleet’s headquarters, saying the manoeuvres were “purely defensive”.

Iran on Tuesday warned against any “provocations” in the Gulf as the US-led international naval force began preparing for the exercise. “Our message does not get to one country... it is about a secure maritime environment,” Miller said. “It is purely defensive, not provocative, and takes place in international waters.”