NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Some of the Guam Mentions that can be found on the website Common Dreams .  They cover an interesting spectrum of political possibilities. The list of Guam Mentions is so oddly diverse, it was collections like this which made my dissertation such a strange trip to write. Guam is a military base, an independent country, a territory within just a few hundreds words of text. It is quintessentially American in one article, a foreign country in another, the edges of its empire in one and then the breakdown of its soul and its morality in the next. To see what I mean, check out the articles below: ********************* World Watches North Korea, But No Missiles Yet Deadline came and went, but US intel believes chances of test launch remain 'very high' by Jon Queally, staff writer Common Dreams April 10, 2013 Following weeks of growing tensions, Wednesday April 10 was the day officials in Pyongyang had threatened to test one or more of its Musudan

When I was in Fukushima I saw a map of the areas around the nuclear power plant which were affected by radiation. There were different colors bleeding out, being darkest and reddest close to the plant, but becoming lighter and orange and yellow as it moved further northwest, until it became just white like the rest of the prefectures in the Tohoku region of Japan. It was interesting seeing the discourse change as conversation with people moved from one area to the other around that map. In Fukushima, where the radiation levels were considered safe enough that no one was evacuated, but dangerous enough that all the dirt in the city is being dug up and stuffed into trash bags, no one was evacuated. I visited Iitate Village, featured in the New York Times article below, where people were warned and evacuated a month after the earthquake and meltdown, and may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during that delay. In Iitate people are allowed to return, but cannot stay over

I may have only been in Japan for a little less than a month, but it seems to me that Japan enjoys a heavy emphasis on instructions, signs and communicating properly. Perhaps because I can't read most of these signs as they are in Japanese and so because of that they are more visible and noticeable to me, whereas for others they simply fade into the background like visual cicadas. When walking by a construction site, signs are everywhere warning people to be safe, to not enter and even to apologize profusely for the inconvenience. Everywhere you go helpful and usually colorful mascots offer everything from advice, advertising and even just cheery, "hang in there!" messages. I'm used to walking into stores where I exchange less than ten words with a clerk, but here each employee is their own tenderu techa and every purchase offers their their own rosary or two about what I am buying, the money I am giving them and the importance of having a good day as I leave. Even

During this past research trip to the Tohoku Region of Japan with the Popoki Peace Project there was one visual constant as we traveled the most significantly affected disaster areas. In Chamorro, odda', in English, dirt. On March 11, 2011 a huge earthquake struck Japan and caused a meltdown in the Fukushima nuclear power plant, causing radiation to blanket areas even one hundred miles away. Although the areas of compulsory evacuation were much smaller than the areas that were significantly affected, you could still see signs, even four years later of how the radiation have infected the land and threatened populations.  Some areas the Japanese government says it will try to move people back to within the next few months, others a few years, other areas may take decades or centuries before they are "safe" for human habitation again. The earthquake also led to a huge tsunami which battered hundreds of miles of coast and destroyed the coastal areas of several cities and

Japan is at an interesting crossroads at present, with regards to nuclear power. Prior to 2011 Japan had 54 nuclear reactors providing approximately 1/3 of all the electricity to Japan. After the March 11th earthquake and the subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant all of those reactors were shut down. The shutdown of these plants became a means for the power companies in Japan to obtain hardship subsidies from the government but also increase rates. There have been regular rumors of power outages and conservation, with the power companies all threatening that without nuclear power they cannot meet the needs of the country. The nuclear power issue has constantly popped up again and again as Japan, a nation which is strongly antinuclear in a sort of populist way, has a corporate that is eager to make money off of its nuclear power infrastructure. There have been pushes to restart these generators not just to begun feeding energy into the country again, but also as

I'm in Japan for one month and the issue of peace, pas, minagem is all over the place. Part of the reason is because my guide while I'm here is Professor Ronni Alexander who teaches International Relations/Peace Studies at Kobe University and is the head of the Popoki Peace Project. The main thrust of her work is helping communities, a diverse range of communities across Asia and the Pacific, young and old, to imagine peace in new and interesting ways. To get to see what in their life creates peace and what limits peace. As a result of my connection to Ronni, my mindset here is actively been shaped by peace and non-peace. For example: I'm teaching a course on US militarization in the Asia-Pacific region and various peace movement, antiwar and demilitarization movements are all over the curriculum. I'm in Japan at a time when protest movements are evolving around the Prime Minister's attempts to pass new security laws that would fundamentally change Japan's

Published on Sunday, January 12, 2014 by Common Dreams Toll of U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation Continues to Climb by Harvey Wasserman The roll call of U.S. sailors who say their health was devastated when they were  irradiated while delivering humanitarian help  near the stricken  Fukushima  nuke is continuing to soar. So many have come forward that the progress of their federal class action lawsuit has been delayed.   U.S. sailors irradiated while delivering humanitarian help near the stricken Fukushima nuke say their health has been devastated. Bay area lawyer Charles Bonner says a re-filing will wait until early February to accommodate a constant influx of sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other American ships. Within a day of Fukushima One’s March 11, 2011, melt-down, American “first responders” were drenched in radioactive fallout. In the midst of a dri