NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

My first forays into the world of public discourse and engagement came on the pages of the Pacific Daily News through letters to the editor. For years I conducted research in the Micronesian Area Research Center library and through interviews with politicians, activists and manåmko', but the thoughts and ideas that were spawning in my head didn't have many outlets save for discussions in classes or with trusted elders or friends. In 2004 I gave my first public presentation on the issue of decolonization or critical Chamorro Studies, when I shared a section of my research at a forum titled "World War II is it Over?" organized by the Guam Humanities Council at the Agana Shopping Center. I spoke alongside Dr. Patricia Taimanglo, the late historian Tony Palomo and Guam military historian Jennings Bunn. After that, I spent several years in graduate school presenting at conference around the US, often times to empty rooms, as Guam papers tended to be very low on the prior

--> I'm already quite tired from a long day, but before I go to bed I wanted to post some articles about American Sniper. I tried to watch the film last weekend on a Sunday night when usually theaters are empty on Guam, but to my surprise it was sold out. In just a week it is now a huge blockbuster and seems to be a commercial and critical success. Amidst all the buzz, people have been criticizing the film because of the incredible amount of fabrication that went into creating the movie figure of America's most lethal sniper. The Chris Kyle in the film is very different than the Chris Kyle of history and who published a memoir and loved to exaggerate his history of violence, even to the point of boasting and lying about fights he was never in and murders he never committed, all in the US, not the Middle East. I have written so many times over the years about the way in which national policies become conflated with the soldiers who enact, in some cases illegall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                 Date:               March 11, 2014                         Contact:          Kimberlee Kihleng, Executive Director                                                 Monaeka Flores, Coordinator for Marketing and Programs                         Phone:             472-4460/1 Council to host next Smithsonian Institution Exhibit Journey Stories, public call for photographs and artifacts The Guam Humanities Council will partner with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Museum on Main Street (MoMS) program to bring a national exhibit to Guam in 2014 entitled, Journey Stories. Many of us have powerful journey stories in our personal heritage. It may be a story of a family uprooting itself in order to stay together, or of sons and daughters moving to another land, or of a distant ancestor, perhaps unknown. As part of the Guam tour, the Council will highlight Guam’s unique journey s

Published on Monday, February 4, 2013 by TomDispatch.com The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful Washington’s Dilemma on a “Lost” Planet by Noam Chomsky [This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire , Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.] ********************* Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had? The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab Spring is limited, but it’s not insignificant. The Western-controlled dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it’s been eroding for s

Don't get me started about Israel. Mungga mana'kuentos yu' put Israel. My blood is already boiling just thinking about it. Siempre bai kinahulo'guan anggen kumuentos yu' put este. A ray of hope was spotted recently for Palestinians, but like most things it could be short lived or meaningless since even the notion of "hope" in Palestine, like everything else is something Israel strives to control and quash. Their partial recognition by the United Nations is a big symbolic step, but how will it help stop the daily abuse and daily stranglehold that Israel has over The Occupied Territories? The resolution from the United Nations is pasted below. ***************** Status of Palestine in the United Nations The General Assembly, Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and stressing in this regard the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, Recalling its resolution 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970

Published on Thursday, March 22, 2012 by Common Dreams War Crimes and the Mythology of 'Bad Apples' by Robert C. Koehler So it turns out that mass-murder suspect Robert Bales once used a bad word in a Facebook conversation. This is one of the more bizarre details of his life that has come breathlessly to light in the media, along with his big smile, arrest record and disastrous financial dealings. The word was “hadji” (misspelled “hagi”), which is the racial slur of choice among U.S. troops to denigrate Iraqis; and stories where I have read about his use of it fixate on it judgmentally, as though to suggest it might explain something: the tiny flaw that reveals a propensity for massacring children. Something had to be wrong with him, right? As always, the mainstream media’s unquestioning assumption is that the atrocity is the work of an individual nut . . . a flawed patriot, a bad apple. O