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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]