NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since the start of the year I have been working on an article about militarization in the Marianas Islands. It is for a special edition of Micronesian Educator edited by Tiara Na'puti and Lisa Natividad. I'm excited at the prospect of writing it, but my schedule over the past year has been tough, in addition to family drama and other setbacks. I've been coming back and forth to it in my notebooks every month, but until now I haven't been able to really try to finish it. I spent Christmas Day typing up my scattered notes and drafts. The article is an attempt to talk about militarization, military increases, military strategy in a Marianas wide context, and the ways it divides, unities, takes and stimulates. One of the most interesting sections is on the CIA training that took place in Saipan from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The facility was known as the Naval Technical Training Unit or NTTU and it trained anti-communist operatives to destabilize and sabotage r

My position on Martin Luther King Jr. is somewhat similar to my position on Jesus Christ. I have a strong affinity for both of them in their radical dimensions, the way they challenged system of oppression in their time and proposed a powerful message of social change into something that was potentially more equitable. Both of them have of course been edited and watered down significantly in their message, to the point where both of them can be invoked in the name of so many things that they would have violently detested in their lives. Gof ya-hu si Jesus Kristo komo un zealot. Lao anggen un lahen Yu'us, hmmm, ti bali nu Guahu i mensahi-ña. Parehu yan si MLK. Gof annok gi sinangån-ña yan gi bidå-ña na zealot lokkue'. Lao atan ha' på'go, i manracist na taotao, ma u'usa i estoria-ña para u ma puni i tinailayi yan taihustisia gi på'go na tiempo.  Below is a great article that outlines the radical dimensions of Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy.  ******

Pete Seeger, the American folk singer known for songs such as "If I Had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and popularizing the protest song "We Shall Overcome" died recently. Below is an article from the Huffington Post about his legacy. Directly below is a song that he wrote and dedicated to the victims of the A-bomb attack at Hiroshima. We come and stand at every door But none can hear my silent tread I knock and yet remain unseen For I am dead, for I am dead. I’m only seven, although I died In Hiroshima long ago. I’m seven now, as I was then. When children die, they do not grow. My hair was scorched by swirling flame; My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind. Death came and turned my bones to dust, And that was scattered by the wind. I need no fruit, I need no rice. I need no sweets, not even bread; I ask for nothing for myself, For I am dead, for I am dead. All that I ask is that for peace You fight today, you fight today.

Sesso mangguife yu' put North Korea. Ti parehu este na klasin guinife yan i guinife-hu siha put i otro tano' taiguhi iya Okinawa yan iya Pagan. Para ayu na tano' siha yan ayu na guinife siha, hu guiguife siha put i ginefpago yan taimanu na debi di ta prutehi ayu na lugat kontra fina'militat. Gi i guinife-hu siha hu keketachuyi pat ayuda i taotao guihi gi un mimo ni chumilong yan iyo-ku pat iyo-ta guini giya Guahan. Lao sahnge i guinife-hu put North Korea. Gi i guinife-hu siha kalang puma'ya'ya gi hilo' i tano'. Hu ripapara todu gi oriya-hu, lao ti hu gogof komprende hafa hu li'e'e'. Tano' estrana este. Na'aburidu este na tano', ya gi guinife-hu siha ti hu hulat muna'klaru hafa este na lugat. Sumasaga' yu' giya Guahan. Fihu hiningok-hu put North Korea, lao sesso nina'manman yu' ni taimanu to gof chumilong i tiningo'-hu put Guiya yan i hiningok-hu put Guiya. Kada simana, kalang kada diha hu hungok

Published on Monday, December 9, 2013 by The Guardian If Nelson Mandela Really Had Won, He Wouldn't Be Seen as a Universal Hero Mandela must have died a bitter man. To honor his legacy, we should focus on the unfulfilled promises his leadership gave rise to by Slavoj Žižek     ‘It is all too simple to criticize Mandela for abandoning the socialist perspective after the end of apartheid: did he really have a choice? Was the move towards socialism a real option?’ (Photograph: Media24/Gallo Images/Getty Images) In the last two decades of his life, Nelson Mandela was celebrated as a model of how to liberate a country from the colonial yoke without succumbing to the temptation of dictatorial power and anti-capitalist posturing. In short, Mandela was not Robert Mugabe, and South Africa remained a multiparty democracy with a free press and a vibrant economy well-integrated into the global market

When I teach modern World History, the island of Taiwan makes a couple of cameo appearances. It appears during the resolution of the Chinese Civil War. Chiang Kai-Shek (CKS) flees to Formosa vowing to keep the fight alive from his new island fortress. In the way that I teach the class CKS is not a very sympathetic character. Coming from a Western perspective he is supposed to be the one that we choose as our champion, the one “our” side made deals with as being either the better or two evils or the lesser of two evils. CKS is no saint and is hardly worth much historical sympathy in my opinion and the conduct from the initial purge of communists, to his retreat to Taiwan to the white terror all attest to this. I don’t shy away from discussing the atrocities of the communists and Mao, but I don’t deny the historical significance and revolutionary nature of some of the communist reforms. As coming from a colony of the “west” I don’t like to take on their heroes

North Korea Rocket Launch: Long-Range Missile Fired, South Korean Defense Ministry Confirms By Jack Kim and Mayumi Negishi SEOUL/TOKYO, Dec 12 (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to its opponents. The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labelled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far as the continental United States. "The satellite has entered the planned orbit," a North Korean television news-reader clad in traditional Korean garb triumphantly announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics "Chosun (Korea) does what it says". The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. K

I've seen Slavoj Zizek use the example of "the red ink" many times over the years in many books. Interesting to see him now use it to describe what the Occupy movement is attempting to describe.  ************************** Published on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 by The Guardian/UK Occupy Wall Street: What Is To Be Done... Next? How a protest movement without a program can confront a capitalist system that defies reform by Slavoj Žižek What to do in the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street movement, when the protests that started far away – in the Middle East, Greece, Spain, UK – reached the center, and are now reinforced and rolling out all around the world? In a San Francisco echo of the OWS movement on 16 October 2011, a guy addressed the crowd with an invitation to participate in it as if it were a happening in the hippy style of the 1960s: "They are asking us what is our program