NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When the US Department of Defense released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement for their proposed military buildup to Guam, you could see both the potential danger involved and the community's reaction in simple numbers. The size of the DEIS in terms of page numbers was close to unbelievable. At 11,000 or so pages, you could not help but wonder about the potential impacts the plans would represent to Guam. If it took 11,000 pages to describe it and discuss it, how could it be good? Shouldn't the massive volume of pages required to articulate it be a sign of danger? The community responded with more than 10,000 comments, many of which were critical of the buildup. A significant response, close to one for each page of that infernal document. When I recall that a JGPO representative said to me that they were anticipating just "500 on the high side" I feel that through a variety of activists means, people began to question the buildup and how much it might bene

I was speaking to someone recently about the issues of Pagan. There has been buzz for more than a year now about turning Pagan into a large-scale training area and firing and bombing range. There was an international petition drive to protect it that garnered more than 100,000 signatures. Some families with roots in Pagan have been to stay there again. But while for a time in 2013 it seemed as if Pagan was going to be taken any minute now, that has all changed. Things calmed down and grew quiet. The conversation I had recently was a warning that things may heat up again soon about Pagan. From Pagat to Pagan to Litekyan. If you can remember back far enough you can add even Sella in there if you'd like. Gi Fino' Chamoru sesso masangan na ti maimaigo' Si Yu'us. Sina ta sangan lokkue' na ti maimaigo' i militat. Ti maimaigo' DOD. Gi fino' un activist giya Hawai'i, i militat Amerikanu kalang un sen dangkolu na gamson. Maestitira huyong i kannai-na siha

As the focus is drawn away from Pagat, we must remain vigilante. Pagat was the buzzword for several years in terms of conceiving and resisting the buildup for many people. It is surreal the way it came to stand beside other terms such as "jobs" or "economy" in the way people imagined the buildup. It was one of the first critical or negative things that made it into the conversation to help counter much of the unrealistic positive perceptions of the buildup that were out there.  Pagan, a word so similar sounding to Pagat, will most likely be the next buzzword. As it is far north in the Gani Islands, it remains to be seen if it can be given the same visibility and transformative power that Pagat received.  ****************************** "On Pagat and Our Continuing Concerns" By Senator Ben Pangelinan Marianas Variety September 19, 2013  RECENT information from the Joint Guam Program Office (JGPO) indicated that the infor

Courtesy of Famoksaiyan Friends: From We Are Guåhan: DoD Refuses Public Involvement in Additional Firing Range Complex Studies June 15, 2011 Eight (8) months after making its Record of Decision (“ROD”), DoD has asked the District Court of Hawaii for a “voluntary remand” to do additional studies on the firing ranges that DoD has planned on building at Pågat Village and the surrounding area. DoD has refused to allow for any public input or participation in these new studies. DoD’s request to add more information to its previous studies comes weeks after an e-mail from JGPO about DoD’s plans for Pågat Village was publicly released. In the e-mail, which was sent seven days after DoD issued its ROD, Major General Bice of JGPO wrote to several high ranking DoD officials that DoD “can get all of the land eventually, including an SDZ [Surface Danger Zone] over Pagat; we have to be patient and build trust with the community first.” The e-mail from JGPO also said that DoD could get P

I heard months ago that Guam had some mentions in Wikileaks, but was never actually able to look into it beyond seeing Guam on the index. Thankfully, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun has saved me the trouble of searching for Wikileaks for some of the juicier Guam mentions. These revelations are pretty significant, they reveal some major problems with the buildup, the plans and even the the reason why there was an early mention of a billion dollar road being built on Guam, that was quickly and quietly swept under the carpet and never mentioned again. We'll see what kind of impact that have locally, and see what sort of response JGPO and others can come up with to try and counter the Wikileaks revelations. ************************ EDITORIAL: Leaked Documents Reveal Shocking Japan-U.S. Diplomacy 2011/05/06 WikiLeaks has published vast troves of internal and confidential government documents that normally would have been kept inaccessible to the public for a certain, usually

One of the better articles that has come out recently about the military buildup, and I'm not only saying this because of the fact that I was interviewed for it. In most national articles or press about the buildup, China haunts the edges of the discussion, but is rarely drawn out in any meaningful way, and as a result the danger to Guam is rarely mentioned ever. This is not to say that people like me on Guam when we talk to people from The Washington Post or The Chicago Tribune, we don't mention it, we always do since it's something we can't dismiss or edit out of the picture. But from the perspective of the US, the national discussion is heavily ambivalent on the China issue, and so that complexity and uncertainty around the issue makes it something that always has to be other assumed or marginalized. There can be no "peaceful" intention to the US militarizing Guam or militarizing other places around the Asia-Pacific region meant to box in China, but since A

This past week I hit a big milestone in terms of my Youtube account. I finally got to 100,000 total views for all my videos. I currently have about 360 videos, and get a couple of hundred hits a day. For someone who has no editing program and has used for four years a series of pretty crappy cameras, it is a big deal to have reached this many hits. I thought to celebrate this occasion, I'd paste below my top 18 most watched videos. Now keep in mind that these videos are the most watched and not necessarily the highest-rated or my favorites. Some of them, are simply high up on the list because they were given names which people who know nothing about Guam or care nothing about myself or Chamorros would look up and end up accidentally watching a few seconds of. Some of them are several years old, from when my video cameras had very limited memory and so they are pretty short and quick. Right now I use bigger memory cards which can hold longer files, but I'm still limite