NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I've been scrounging the internet looking for good articles about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the public's response. It is such a difficult things to make sense of, because while for some it is very simple, crazed terrorists attacked some cartoonists and police because of cartoons, and the end of the discussion is everyone stand tall claiming "Guahu Si Charlie lokkue'!" from their cellphones, ipads and Facebooks. But in the larger scheme of things, this generally isn't productive. You can focus in on this one instance, but such can be deceptive, it can prevent you from seeing how that may actually change or help little. It is easy to look at the relationship between societies and say this society is bad and this is good. This society allows this while the other does not. In terms of free speech there are definitely key differences between some Western and some Islamic societies. But if you are truly trying to improve things, you also have to acknowledge the

Published on Thursday, October 18, 2012 by Common Dreams Defeat Romney, Without Illusions about Obama Advice to progressives in swing states, vote for reelection by Daniel Ellsberg It is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013. The election is now just weeks away, and I want to urge those whose values are generally in line with mine -- progressives, especially activists -- to make this goal one of your priorities during this period. Romney and Obama exchange fingers in Tuesday night's debate. (Reuters) An activist colleague recently said to me: “I hear you’re supporting Obama.” I was startled, and took offense. “Supporting Obama?  Me ?!” “I lose no opportunity publicly,” I told him angrily, to identify Obama as a tool of Wall Street, a man who’s decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who’

From now own I'm going to start pasting my Marianas Variety column "When the Moon Waxes" on my blog. Some of the columns will have appeared in some form or another on this blog, but it's still a good way of collecting them all here in a place where they are easily accessible for me. Sometimes newspapers, in particular the PDN tend to cut their links to articles after a certain period of time and so this way they can still be found online. I'll also be tweeting about them, for those who are interested in reading them and follow me on Twitter (all 30 of you). ****************************** "Ideological Chains" Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety June 29, 2011 IN THE drafting of any petition, there is always tension over the language and images you use in order to inspire, frighten or convince people to sign. Whatever your particular fight is, you tend to want as many people as possible to sign, which means you usually make the petition as n

There were a number of things which overshadowed my trip to South Korea, and when I say overshadowed, I mean things which would constantly appear, be brought up or dictate the conversation regardless of where I went. For instance, the World Cup was huge while I was in South Korea and so everywhere I went, people were talking about it or sporting their pride in their national sport's team. Another issue was reunification and how recent elections this month have helped diminish so many hopes for progress on the re-uniting of the two Koreas. One issue however, especially in conversations with South Korea activists, whether in Seoul, Paju, Pyeongtaek or Jeju, which was always very prominent and had so many people angry, frustrated or on edge was the sinking of the South Korean military ship, the Cheonan in March. The ship was participating in joint training exercises with US military forces, when it ran aground and split in two 58 of those aboard survived while 46 died. The South Kor