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 […]
As Build-up Cools Down, Self-Determination Heats Up
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 […]
The Mermaid, the Trickster and the Admiral
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 […]
“The history they didn’t teach us in school”
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 […]
Beyond the Fence
Guam’s public radio station has begun broadcasting a weekly talk show dedicated to discussing the proposed military buildup of the Marianas. Hosted by Vivian Dames, a professor of social work at the University of Guam, the show features interviews with academics, activists, military personnel, politicians, and members of the Guam community with expertise relevant to […]
“Old-Style Colonialism” at the United Nations
Viewers of The Insular Empire will recall Hope Cristobal’s repeated visits to the United Nations, trying to get support for Guam’s Chamorro people and their right to self-determinaion. Hope continued her decades-long crusade last month, traveling to the United Nations’ Pacific Regional Seminar on Decolonisation in New Caledonia. “For 21st century Guam, it is déjà […]
Democracy Now! Covers the Marianas
Democracy Now! recently aired this piece, featuring footage from The Insular Empire: From Japan to Guam to Hawai’i, Activists Resist Expansion of US Military Presence in the Pacific. The segment features a discussion with three incredibly articulate activists, each representing people struggling to reduce the US military’s footprint in their island nations. Kyle Kajihiro of […]
Guam Military Buildup: Environmentally Unsatisfactory
The DoD’s proposal to increase its already-massive footprint on the island of Guam recently received the EPA’s lowest rating: Environmentally Unsatisfactory. While “unsatisfactory” to me calls up benign images of less-than-optimal spelling homework, this milquetoast language in fact represents a scathing indictment of the proposed buildup – and a serious roadblock to the military’s expansionist […]
Obama: The Velvet Imperialist
The ever-helpful Jean Downey just forwarded me this article in the Huffington Post by John Feffer. In it, Feffer describes a recent Congressional hearing on currently-strained US-Japan relations – in which a Pentagon official was unable to come up with the number of US troops stationed in Japan (47,000), or to explain why the US […]