NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Its been several months now, since the Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies conference, but at long last the audio for the conference has been uploaded and is ready to be downloaded. For those of you unfamiliar with the conference, here is the mission statement below: As scholars engaged in critical social justice work, we are constantly engaged in conversations about how to push the limits of the Ethnic Studies project so that it may be used more productively in addressing the wide and varied number of student and faculty interests within the department. Although the growing interest in postcolonial and indigenous studies is exciting and holds great potential, we feel that there is an urgent need to learn beyond the caricatured and narrow perceptions that have cast these emerging disciplines as specialized fields of knowledge. It is our contention that in addressing issues of violence, oppress...

Published on Friday, June 27, 2008 by Salon.com Keith Olbermann: Then and Now by Glenn Greenwald On January 31 of this year, Keith Olbermann donned his most serious face and most indignant voice tone to rail against George Bush for supporting telecom immunity and revisions to FISA. In a 10-minute “Special Comment,” the MSNBC star condemned Bush for wanting to “retroactively immunize corporate criminals,” and said that telecom immnity is “an ex post facto law, which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive and blatant collaboration with [Bush’s] illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass email.” Olbermann added that telecom amnesty was a “shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism — the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government.” Noting the numerous telecom lobbyists ...

During the 2004 Presidential election I received the following email from a Chamorro in the states. As you can tell from its tone and content, she was most definitely a Republican, and most likely someone who ga'umegga' Fox News. Her basic argument is that Chamorros and other non-white groups are foolish to follow the Democrats instead of Republicans. Michael, you have the correct idea of involving the Chamorro people in politics to become a “voice of the island”. I, myself am working on getting the Chamorro people to register to vote and get involved. However, Michael, it is my believe that as a former resident of Los Angeles, you are influenced by the Liberals out there. The fact of the matter is that Chamorro people resemble the Republican Party more as they are devout Roman Catholics (i.e. pro-lifers, anti gay lifestyle, etc. etc.). If you would do your research you will find that the Democrats have been lying about the Republican Party for ages! The Democrats are the wealt...

Kada na puenge, desde Monday asta Thursday, ya-hu umegga' The Daily Show. Annai manstrike i Inetnon Titige' gi i ma'pos na sakkan, ai adai, sumen triste yu', sa' todu i shows, manmata'pang (Todudu fuera di The Late Show with David Letterman sa' manmama'kontrata para i titige'-na siha ). Ya desde ayu na yinaoyao, dumidide' dumidide' manlamaolek i shows. Lao The Daily Show i mas ya-hu, sa' mampos na'chalek lao guaha impottante na ma i'ina put i estao pulitikat Amerikanu. Guaha nai hu e'egga' gui', ya chumalek yu' a'gang, pinilakes! Yanggen manochocho mientres hu e'egga' siempre mabohbo i na-hu. Antes di manstrike i titige', ma fa'nuebu i website The Daily Show, ya ma rikohi guihi todu i episodes ginen todu i sakkan ni' mambinalakuyi as Jon Stewart. Lao i dinimalas, na desde ma na'huyong este na website, ma laknos todu i videon Daily Show ginnen Youtube. Pues humalom yu' gi este nuebu n...

The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate has set the stage for a spectacular cave in to the demands of the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans. One looming question remains however, and that is how much or how forcefully will Barack Obama challenge the Democratic folding to Bush on the FISA and telecom immunity issue. This issue, while not big amongst pundits as one of those issues polling data says Americans care about, represents two crucial tests for Obama and his campaign. First, there is the idea that Obama's campaign has promoted, that their candidate will break with the long-standing Democratic party tradition of backing down from any fight over national security issues with Republicans. Instead Obama is proposing to stand up to Republicans and not let them control the terms of the debate. Given his position on the FISA issue so far, its seems however that he's already given up the terms to Bush on this one. Secondly, will Obama continue another De...

At the Guma'famoksaiyan conference last month, I organized a session on Learning Chamorro Language Through Songs, which went very well. Songs is one of the most fun ways through which you can learn a language, and so while most Chamorros who don't speak the language, might have some knowledge about Chamorro music and songs and may even enjoy listening to it, its unfortunate that there isn't more effort being put into using music as a medium through which we can revitalize the language. For this session all those present divided into three groups, and each group had a song leader who would teach one Chamorro song to those in their group over about forty minutes. When time was up, all the groups would gather together and present the the rest of the conference their song. It was decided during the session that there should be judges too in order to select which group was the best. The session went very well and people incorporated different performaces and dancing into their ...

Tim Russert died on Friday at the age of 58. The 24 hour news networks, in particular MSNBC have run non-stop programs in memory of and in honor of his long career in politics and journalism. For MSNBC this is of course expected since Russert has been a part of their journalistic stable for a very long time and is the mentor of their new electoral math guru Chuck Todd. I've been watching Tim Russert for a very long time. In my pre-conscious days, prior to the rise of the internet and my development of a broader alternative network of sources for my news, Meet the Press was one of the sort of passive venues through which I would absorb some current event news. If my memory is correct, I remember watching Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, while waiting for basketball games on NBC to take place. I would usually get just info info about American politics from the interviews, to convince people my age and older that I was far more knowledgeable than I really was. (Siempre guaha ma sasa...