“Hawaii Filmmakers App”

Deep Green Resistance is a movement majorly influenced by indigenous peoples’ ways– it’s a movement to stop the fast forward motion of the human destruction of nature.  Animals aren’t causing climate change, fish aren’t making the tides rise, it’s people.  And more specifically, it’s the institutionalized, governmentalized machinery invented by people doing the damage.  DGR gets a bad rap by many because at the core of their mana’o, patriarchy is something to be dismantled, along with the capitalist train it rode in on.  But DGR really frightens people because they hold a Malcolm X, “By Any Means Necessary” position.  Of course, that’s me presenting the skinny– DGR speaks for itself and I suggest people read up on their mission.

This post is about something that came across the DGR News Service today, a post about a kid named Amanda Todd.  It’s what I admire about DGR movement in general: they look beyond the surface and examine the systems that are informing and shaping events.  I’m sharing this post because it’s a thoughtful analysis of the politics and culture that played a role in the how and why a 15-year old girl was cyber-bullied to death.

Beautiful Justice: The Life and Death of […]

The PLDC issue is something that will likely play out for sometime to come, but it’s worth tracking the story to keep up on connected issues and who opposes and who supports what the state is doing with regard to the so-called “ceded land.”  These are the Crown and Government Lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom.  How does a nation go about ceding their public lands to a foreign country?

FSRN broadcast of the story

The Dam Boom in the Amazon  (published July 1, 2012)

A confrontation between the insatiable appetite for energy and the enduring need for habitability is under way in Brazil as it moves aggressively to harness the power of its rivers with plans for dozens of hydroelectric dams.

Such projects are engineering and aesthetic marvels that provide hydroelectric power and can also control floods and direct water for irrigation. But they also divert rivers, destroy animal habitat, displace entire communities and drown vast amounts of land beneath reservoirs.

He produced and directed a super important documentary about the dam, which is posted at the Yale Environment 360, an environmental website.

One project has galvanized the anti-dam movement in Brazil — the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon in Pará State. At a cost of roughly $16 billion, it is one of 30 large dams that have been announced for Brazil’s Amazon region.

At last month’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development here, it was hard to miss the irony of delegates gathering to promote a “cleaner, greener and more prosperous world for all” as opponents of Belo Monte protested in the streets of Rio and Indians occupied the dam site.

Belo […]

Here comes the Fourth of July, number 236 since the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence and riders on horseback rushed it to the far corners of the thirteen new United States — where it was read aloud to cheering crowds. These days our celebration of the Fourth brings a welcome round of barbecue, camaraderie with friends and family, fireworks, flags, and unbeatable prices at the mall.

But perhaps, too, we will remember the Declaration of Independence itself, the product of what John Adams called Thomas Jefferson’s “happy talent for composition.” Take some time this week to read it alone, to yourself, or aloud with others, and tell me the words aren’t still capable of setting the mind ablaze. The founders surely knew that when they let these ideas loose in the world, they could never again be caged.

Yet from the beginning, these sentiments were also a thorn in our side, a reminder of the new nation’s divided soul. Opponents, who still sided with Britain, greeted it with sarcasm. How can you declare “All men are created equal,” without freeing your slaves?

Jefferson himself was an aristocrat whose inheritance of 5,000 acres, and the slaves to work it, mocked his eloquent […]

Annie Pau and I first met at the Farrington Highway Starbucks on the Waianae Coast of Oahu.I was working on a story for Al Jazeera and needed a Hawaiian who was willing to be interviewed about what life is like for thousands who can’t afford rent. Parts of Waianae resemble refugee camps, so it felt wrong, meeting with a homeless person inside the mother ship of gentrification.

But nothing else was open at 6am on Sunday near Lualualei Beach Park, where Annie and her husband, John, were living in a tent with their two dogs.  That beach is nicknamed “Sewers,” for the stench from a sewage treatment facility wafting across the road.

Hawaiian names are often derived from an event or legend. Sometimes they’re metaphors, other times they describe something literal.  But they always have meaning, although many have ended up on the sacrificial altar of tragic irony.  Given its name millennia before the sewage, Lualualei means, “Beloved one spared.”

When I arrived at Starbucks that morning, Sinatra’s voice crooned over the din […]

Please go to this site, Adopt a Class, and donate a few dollars for art supplies, class field trips, study materials and more to Waianae High School.  It’s easy!   Mahalo!

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that celebrates the Anglo-Christian-colonial erasure of a native people’s spiritual ways.

Ironically, although this is a Christian holiday, it’s traditionally the international holiday for consuming as much alcohol as possible.  Could be that the Irish, stereotyped as the champions of imbibing, had to numb themselves with alcohol to survive the religious, cultural, economic and material doctrine of their oppressors.  Or maybe the stereotype was invented by the colonizer, aka British, to cover up their crimes.

Hmm… colonization and alcoholism.  The two seem to belong together.  Could alcoholism among the Irish actually be a centuries old response to grief over living in a constant state of resistance? Could it be an ongoing wake… the mourning of cultural and spiritual loss?

Another powerful tool used in the colonial project is, of course, military might, which was (and some would say continues to be) visited upon the Irish.   And still yet, the ultimate power, after a people have been killed off or forced to assimilate or migrate, is the control of their story.  The absence of a people’s self-representation is victory for the oppressor.

It’s worth considering the Irish diaspora today.  I say this not just because I am […]

I am amazed at the courage of these young ones who protested at the Monsanto headquarters in DC. I’m also a proud neighbor of Sophie Miyoshi, who moved to DC to attend college and became politically activated and involved when she got there. Here’s a photo of four of the twelve– handcuffed, fearless and happy as they sit in the back of a police wagon that’s about to cart them off. Sophie’s the one sitting farthest back.

Read Anthony Gucciardi’s article (http://truthfrequencynews.com/protesters-occupying-monsanto-corp-arrested/) on Truth Frequency News about the action.