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

As I wrote a few months ago, the last colony to be formally removed from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories that is monitored by the United Nations was Timor Leste, formerly known as East Timor. Timor Leste isn't very far away from Guam, only a little more than 2,000 miles away gi minagahet. Our political fates were intertwined for a while, although the history of East Timor was far more violent. The Portuguese left the colony in 1975 and it moved to become independent. With United States backing and weapons the Indonesian government moved in to forcibly seize the island. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the invasion and occupation that lasted more than 20 years. In 1999 the people there, with the eyes of the world finally paying attention, voted to become independent and were renamed Timor Leste as a result. The image is from the year 2000, when INTERFET, a UN-authorized force made up of primarily Australian troops had

Someone once told me that Nicaragua is a land of wounds. If Latin America is a land of open veins, Nicaragua is a land of wounding after wounding. Since becoming independent from Spain in the early 19th century, it has gone through regular periods of social upheaval and repression, generally with the United States playing some form of oppressor. In the 1850's a US mercenary and would be monarch William Walker took over the country and re-instituted slavery. Although the US government didn't necessarily fund and organize his private imperial venture, they recognized his facade of a government, as it would be one where they were certain it would follow their interests. Walker was expelled by a coalition of local Central American leaders who all detested the power that the United States and its economic and military emissaries tended to wield over their local affairs. As the United States saw Latin America as their sphere of influence, they closely monitored any potential inte

The issue of Okinawa can provide us an important example in terms of the power of media. The coverage of Okinawa, Guam, Diego Garica, Hawai'i and so many other places where the US has bases within the United States plays a significant role in whether or not the network of bases the US has is accepted or challenged. The media is not objective and not neutral, but always proposes certain accepted frames of reference which make the news easier to digest and create. In most countries in the world there is not an accepted assumption that the nation should have bases in every corner of the globe, but in the US there is. The media's coverage of that base as an accepted fact and acceptable part of American reality legitimizes it and also helps prevent people from understanding the legitimate protest movements build around those bases. In the case of Okinawa, we also see how the media will take on certain angles in order to protect the alleged greater interests of the country. Cho

In Our Collective Name Tuesday, 15 July 2014 12:55 By David Theo Goldberg , Truthout | Op-Ed Mourners bury the body of a person killed during an overnight Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, July 13, 2014. The airstrike killed an estimated 21 Palestinians. (Photo: Wissam Nassar / The New York Times)   Israel is at it again. It has been bombing Gaza and its inhabitants mercilessly, even indiscriminately. Some say disproportionately though that judgment is predicated on accepting that there is some self-defending legitimacy to killing almost at random women, children and men, even the unborn, simply to be rid of them in the name of "hunting out the terrorists." This, surely, is a deeply questionable rationalization at best. To date upwards of 150 Gazans have been killed, while rockets fired from Gaza on southern Israel have killed one . Disproportio