NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

There are currently 17 entities on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories that the United Nations keeps track of and is mandated to help see through to self-government and decolonization. Although there was a great deal of activity around decolonization in previous decades, both within the United Nations and without, but lately, especially at the level of the United Nation's, fairly little has happened. The last territory to be de-listed, meaning it went through a legitimate and recognized process of decolonization is Timor Leste or as it was known as a colony, East Timor.  East Timor had been a colony under the Portuguese until 1975. A small civil war followed the Portuguese releasing of their colony, in which the neighboring country of Indonesia helped to instigate the conflict. On December 7, 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, killing more than a hundred thousand people in just two years. They occupied East Timor for more than two decades despite international efforts t

Published on Wednesday, June 5, 2013 by Common Dreams Bradley Manning Is Guilty of “Aiding the Enemy”—If the Enemy Is Democracy by Norman Solomon Pfc. Bradley Manning (Portrait by Robert Shetterly) Of all the charges against Bradley Manning, the most pernicious—and revealing—is “aiding the enemy.” A blogger at  The New Yorker , Amy Davidson, raised a pair of big questions that now loom over the courtroom at Fort Meade and over the entire country: *  “Would it aid the enemy, for example, to expose war crimes committed by American forces or lies told by the American government?” *  “In that case, who is aiding the enemy—the whistleblower or the perpetrators themselves?” When the deceptive operation of the warfare state can’t stand the light of day, truth-tellers are a constant hazard. And culpability must stay turned on its head. That’s why accountability was upside-down when the U.S. Army prosecutor laid ou

"Bending the Arc of History" Michael Lujan Bevacqua July 6, 2011 The Marianas Variety In his speeches President Obama likes to quote Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that the arc of history, or the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He used this in his Nobel Prize speech last year, to talk about how things may work slowly sometimes and it can be frustrating, but ultimately they do get better. Like so much about Obama, he uses this quote because of how it is inspiring, comforting and yet also conservative. A key part of his road to the White House was the way he captured in his "Yes We Can" speech,” a brief history of how different people at different points in American history refused to accept the status quote and had risen up to force the country to change. Obama is the current spiritual/political figurehead of the US (which is one of the reasons why the birther movement has emerged), and that means that his rhetori

From Bruce Gagnon's Organizing Notes : The Peasants Need Pitchforks By Robert Scheer A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands

Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Lecture*, December 11, 1964 The Quest for Peace and Justice It is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor. Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing. I experience this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. Many of them are young and cultured. Others are middle aged and middle class. The majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet conviction

In June I traveled to South Korea on a solidarity trip with delegates from the Philippines, Okinawa and the United States, to learn about the current situations of different struggles against US and South Korean military expansion. It’s not even two months later and I’m already on another similar sort of solidarity trip. For the next ten days I’ll be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan learning about the history of nuclear damage to this country and the peoples from these cities, but I’ll also be speaking to and presenting with people from other countries about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need for the world to finally sum up the courage to abolition them. The conference that I’m attending is the 2010 World Conference Against Atom and Hydrogen Bombs. There are more than a hundred delegates from at last count 23 countries, 70 + NGOs and 9 national governments. The conference will be talking about nuclear weapons from all angles, how to fight against existing battles for compe