I got a voice message last week, from the rights manager at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He wanted to know if I would let them use some of The Insular Empire in their show – and could I please send them a high-resolution file ASAP? It seemed crazy: the John Oliver wanted to use […]
July 21st marks the anniversary of the US military’s capture of Guam during WWII. After 70 years, the US Territory of Guam still has not had a vote of self-determination – yet the island’s biggest holiday is the ultra-patriotic “Guam Liberation Day,” an irony explored by prominent Guam political leaders Hope Cristobal and Carlos Taitano in […]
The Insular Empire recently received the huge honor of being included in the Zinn Education Project‘s list of Teaching Materials. The ZEP project promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across […]
I can barely keep up with the news coming out of Guam lately: Dispatch Japan‘s article “Dead Plan Walking” and KUAM’s report that “Talks Indicate Delays for Buildup” point to the inevitable demise of the ill-conceived military buildup on Guam. In the (repurposed) words of General MacArthur, “old military land-grabs don’t die, they just fade […]
Lately, Guam has been appearing in the annals of Wikileaks – Julian Assange’s non-profit whistleblowing information website. Evidently, the US has been using Guam not only as the ‘tip of the spear,’ but also as a diplomatic tool. Today, the Mainichi Daily News reported on the latest revelation: evidently the US Assistant Secretary of Defense […]
Things on Guam are hopping. Guam’s Governor Eddie Baza Calvo has begun the process of appointing members to the island’s recently reinvigorated Commission on Decolonization (first established by Hope Cristobal during her tenure in the Guam Senate). Calvo’s first appointment? None other than Dr. Lisa Natividad, advisor to The Insular Empire and champion of Guam’s […]
The Guam PDN recently published an article about USN Rear Admiral Bushong’s recent talk at the Guam Rotary Club. The Admiral noted the recent increase in anti-militarist sentiment on the island, and exhorted the nice folks of Guam to ‘tone down the rhetoric a bit’. After all, he said, military personnel on Guam take their […]
When I was on Guam this summer, Travis Coffman interviewed me for his radio talk show on Guam K57. He asked a lot of good questions – like how I became involved in the project to begin with, and how I came to choose the four characters in the film. If you missed the broadcast, […]
I had the pleasure of talking with Travis Coffman earlier this week on the Guam k57 talk show, about the upcoming screening of The Insular Empire. Travis used to live and work on Saipan, and he personally thanked me for making this film so that he didn’t have to. He’s a funny man. “You spent […]
The Huffington Post “Guam: Self-Determination or More U.S. Troops?” by Robert Naiman Usually, when someone refers to a place as a “U.S. colony,” they are making an analogy, suggesting that U.S. influence somewhere is so strong, and the indigenous residents of the place have so little effective say over key decisions, that it’s as if […]