NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

To the question of whether or not Hawai'i is an occupied nation, the answer is simple, hunggan, sen hunggan, gof annok yan ti puniyon. But this is an important reminder of how the truth does not out, how what can be proven, what can be shown to clearly provide an understanding of the contours of reality does nothing on its own. You can show people things, communicate them to them, show them the structure of violence that leads to displacement, suppression, but for their own lazy and selfish reasons, because of the way their own privilege, their own pleasure may be tied to the denial of that truth, they will resist it. They will pretend it means nothing, they will drape the islands in as many American flags as possible, as many bases as possible, as many Wal-Marts as possible in order to cover that truth up, to blot it out, the make is go away, to try to banish it. ****************** Aloha to the US: Is Hawai'i an occupied nation? By Taylor Kate Brown   BBC New

The blog Overseas Territories Review is a great resource, this is something I've reiterated numerous times on this blog. One reason why there is little to no momentum globally with regards to decolonization is the fact that most of the remaining colonies in the world are far flung, midget land masses in the middle of vast oceans. They are small and far away and that combined with the overall apathy that the world feels with regards to continuing forms of really existing colonialism, creates an easy recipe for taya'ya'ya.  Knowledge and information can lead to networks of solidarity, ties of political and social imagination that can make the plight of the remaining colonies of the world feel more important, more relevant, more significant than the complaints of islanders who will never be self-sustainable. If you do not already follow this blog, please begin to do so. Here is a sampling of the recent articles you will find posted there: ************************ 1

In the film The Matrix, the Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving holds a short, but memorable philosophical session with his captive, resistance fighter Morpheus. He tells him about the first versions of the Matrix that were created in order to keep the imprisoned human population occupied while their energies were siphoned from them like batteries. In the early versions of the Matrix everything was perfect. It was like paradise, free of conflict and problems. It was a perfect world. That perfection is what made it impossible for humans to accept, and so when confronted with this perfect world humans rejected it wholesale and so those early versions of the Matrix were total failures. So instead of having the Matrix make people happy and give them a perfect world, the machines decided to give them a world similar to what they already knew. Imperfect, full of struggle, pain, loneliness, doubt and rejection. People accepted this and the Matrix continued to functi

I've been a writer on the site Guamology for more than a month now and the most shocking thing about the website is that the most popular, most viewed and most loaded page there is my article " Guam and Gaza ." Looking at the page statistics, it is by a huge margin the most visited page on the entire website. I'm not at all sure why, since its not the most discussed by any means. The post itself is something you'll find plenty of on this blog. Discussions about what kind of future and present should Guam have. Should we be an island that accepts the way the United States defines and determines our lives, in particular through their strategic military interests? Should we accept and celebrate it when they call us the tip of their spear? Or should we be pushing for an existence which is more focused on ourselves and doesn't rely on the most crass and militaristic ideas of weaponizing or militarizing. As I often say to people, if you accept and celebrate Guam