 Thanks for your patience. Just setting up that YouTube stream. So you should be able to go to our YouTube as well. Great. So I'm going to share my screen really quick. And then we'll get to the presentations that our guests have for today. So tonight I am very excited for another China is not our enemy webinar here at Code Pink Women for Peace. We're going to be hearing from Indigenous Chamorro scholars, lawyers, and activists themselves about the lived impact of the U.S.'s militarization, in particular recent escalated militarization, the impact on Indigenous peoples in their land, air, seas, climate, safety and sovereignty in Guahan, which is Guam, as well as the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. In the escalating U.S. hybrid war on China, the U.S. is ramping up militarization of its colonies in the Asia Pacific, such as Okinawa, Hawaii. And in Guahan alone, the U.S. military is currently raising ancient carbon sequestering forests, murdering tens of thousands at a time of endangered whales, poisoning local drinking water, aquifers, building over ancestral burial grounds, endangering people with military exercises, and much more. And this is all with the stated goal within our Pentagon budget in the U.S. of joint force lethality in quote countering the falsely inflated threat of China. And we know that it's much, there is much false inflation here because of how aggressive the U.S. military is, the forward deployment. So we hear a lot about Indigenous ethnic minorities in plenty of other sovereign nations, but it is crucial that we center Indigenous Pacific Islanders whose safety, sovereignty, dignity, land and water is being actively endangered by our U.S. military, by our U.S. tax dollars. Guahan is a U.S. military colony and this ongoing oppression and exacerbation of the climate crisis is funded by our U.S. tax dollars. And it is strategically erased from public discourse in the mainstream media in the U.S. So this is what we can impact as U.S. citizens in the belly of the empire. This is where we should focus our time and our attention. So we're going to hear about ways that we can do that today. And I just want to, so this is a little bit about our campaign, you can follow us on Twitter and you can check out our campaign sites and you can also contact me as we counter U.S.-led aggression towards China. And I really want to thank our awesome co-sponsors for supporting this event tonight. Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and we'll put some links in the chat so you can check out these organizations and their work. Pivot to peace, peace action main, veterans for peace climate crisis and militarism project. Definitely check out they have great resources about the intersections of climate and militarism. Pacific Asian nuclear free peace alliance, just transition, Hawaii coalition, world beyond war, women for genuine security, military poisons, part of wealth and no cold war, the Britain section of the international campaign. Thanks again to all of these partners. And I want to highlight, we'll be putting in the chat pretty soon and again at the end of the webinar, we're trying to get signatures to deliver our letter on the EGLE Act HR3524, which is going to a vote in the House fairly soon, which includes $7.5 billion for the Department of Defense for militarism in the Asia Pacific, at least $225 million for direct military training in the Asia Pacific, as well as money for propaganda for Radio Free Asia. And generally it's going to exacerbate our climate crisis. So please check out codepink.org slash EGLE Act to sign this and we're going to be delivering it to Congress within the next week or so. We're just trying to narrow down the best targets and we'll be delivering to all of the House foreign staffers as well, foreign affairs staffers. Great. So I'm going to stop sharing and get to our webinar tonight. Oh, I forgot I'm actually going to show one more thing first. I'm going to show a video. And then I'll introduce our first speaker, Dr. Cooper. Sorry about that. So I'm going to share two little sections of this. So I'm going to pause it. And this is just to give some context. So actually, this is from the Navy. It's an informational video by the Navy on the testing area in the Mariana Islands. So you can see their perspective. The Mariana Islands are replaceable. The air, land, and sea areas are important to all people of the Marianas, including members of the United States military who call the islands home. For decades, the Mariana Islands have provided a safe training and testing environment for the military. The islands are an ideal setting because of their location in the Indo Asia Pacific region, allowing the military to maintain a global and strategic presence. In 1944, the United States liberated the Mariana Islands from Japanese occupation. Since then, the military's presence in the Western Pacific has been vital to supporting World War Two, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The islands and its people have also supported humanitarian missions and provided relief and shelter for refugees and migrants. Military training and testing activities take place primarily in established military air, land, and sea areas, collectively called the Mariana Islands Range Complex. Here, personnel from the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard train as realistically as possible, so they are prepared when called upon. Every day, the military ensures the United States, its territories, and the environment are protected and safe. Military personnel need to train as realistically as possible to maintain readiness. New technologies also must be researched, developed, tested, and evaluated to ensure they are thoroughly tested and just going to skip ahead, skip past the sky, ideally. Driving around a tube in the dark. Much remains to be learned about our ocean environment, including how sonar affects marine species. To minimize impact, the Navy works closely with the National Marine Fisheries Service, and while training and testing at sea, the Navy implements a number of mitigation measures. Some measures include monitoring for marine mammals and sea turtles before and during training exercises and testing activities, and reducing or stopping sonar use if the animals are sighted within certain distances. If there's any way of minimizing sound, we will do it. We do take precautions looking at where each ship is going, and we also look at each biologic they're transiting through. If we can predict like where they're going to be, then we will maneuver through there without affecting them. The Navy is a world leader in marine species research and has funded and partnered with universities, institutions, and researchers to study marine species physiology and behavior and share information to better understand the ocean environment. This work helps environmental regulators, the scientific community, and the Navy better predict the potential effects our activities may have. It also contributes to the scientific community's improved knowledge of marine life and habitats. In the Mariana Islands, the Navy conducted marine mammal surveys and recorded more than 377 cetacean groups, including multiple species of dolphins and whales. Well, we're putting forth the effort to make a better Navy compared to back then. Things are changing, there are more regulations, restrictions, but it's shaping up for the better. It's a lot cleaner Navy. As far as the environment goes, we are putting like money into research. The Navy strives to minimize impacts on coral reefs by conducting pre-landing surveys prior to amphibious operations and participating in the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. Onshore, the military has programs to protect threatened and endangered species, control invasive species, and protect cultural and historical resources, including ancient Chamorro, Spanish Era, and World War II sites. The military is committed to protecting the island's natural and cultural resources and heritage and strives to minimize the effects of its training and testing activities on the environment. Testing and training are crucial. What we do here makes the United States its territories and the world safer. So you can get some visuals from there to know the type of geography and part of the ocean we're talking about right now and all the wars that have basically had a triangulation around Gohan. And at the end, you can see some greenwashing, some like justifying of climate devastation that the U.S. military causes for our planet by talking about funding research and the benefit that the Marines, the military has to marine life, which is very much overshadowed by the impact of our military on our climate crisis. So let me introduce our first speaker and our speakers might be referencing that video for context later on. Our first speaker is Dr. Kenneth Goffigan Cooper, who is an assistant professor of political science, specializing in security studies and international relations, and Chamorro studies at the University of Guam. He holds a PhD in political science and MA in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His dissertation focused on the complexities of military presence and security in Guam through the concept of sustainable insecurity. His research interests include the role of islands in global politics, Indo-Pacific geopolitics, militarization of the Pacific Islands, decolonization, and the reconceptualization of security. Thank you so much, Dr. Cooper. And I'm going to allow you to share your screen really quickly one moment. All right, so do a small seat. I'm glad to be here. So while I get this set up, hope everyone's doing well, no matter where you're at. Yeah, morning, night, afternoon, I hope we're all doing okay. Trying to lift the mood after that video. And because my presentation is going to bring the mood back down. So let's have a temporary uplifting of mood. Okay, so I'll go ahead and share here. Okay, so I'm going to be talking about Guam primarily, and we'll go into why there's a sort of split. But I'm talking about the anatomy of a spear's tip, right? And so I think I should begin by saying that I was at a lavender farm in Maui when my mother called me crying. It was April of 2013. So between exasperated prize, my mom yelped and pleaded and she said, son, please pray for us. And at the time when I was in Maui, I had no idea what was going on. And she said they're going to bomb us. North Korea is going to bomb us. And she was referring to a threat made by North Korea, saying that their missiles can reach the water surrounding the military bases in American territory of Guam. So 2013, and this really got me thinking, and this led me to wonder why Guam. So my presentation today is really focusing on giving a context of why Guam. We hear Guam in these particular contexts of war or potential threats. So why us? Okay. And in reference to that video just real quickly, I know the other speakers will get into this a lot more than I will. But here in Guam, we tend to live in a permanent state of mitigation, right, where it's always finding this mitigation framework that obviously puts a lot of our interests as secondary. So first to situate Guam, the island, which is a mere 212 square miles post-large American military bases, there's Anderson Air Force, which occupies the northern tip of the island, and Naval Base Guam, which is primarily in the south. There are also scattered installations. Okay. But we also see the continuing development of Marine Corps base camp laws. The military currently occupies around 27% of the island. And the strategic importance of Guam has led to our nicknames such as the tip of the spear, Fortress Guam, and America's Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier in the Pacific. So why Guam? Robert Rogers and Destiny's Landfall wrote that Guam in short was destined after Magellan to be a pawn in the real politic of foreign powers. And I still think that in many ways we are viewed in this way, so what about us? Well, we're closer by 14 hours flight time and five to seven days sea transit time to East Asia than is any other US-based facility. We offer the regions in the Marianas in total, offers the region's live fire bombing range. We have an excellent deep water port with significant room for warfare expansion. We have facilities for the US Air Force. We have large aviation fuel storage depots, and we have a large Pacific weaponry storage, as well as a naval magazine capable of holding considerable conventional nuclear munitions. So this is why Guam is such a key piece, and we will see later in the presentation in the continuing sort of escalations here in the region. Now we also constitute what is called the center of the second island chain. So for those of you who know about the island chain strategy, Guam constitutes the second, the first island chain is really regarding primarily like Taiwan and then Guam is the center. So Guam will help provide logistical support to the first island chain. A lot of this stems from this man, Alfred Thayer Mayhan, who believed in his book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History that America getting a blue water navy would be a great sort of boon for the country's expansion and power projection. And in one of his letters, he wrote this, No situation in our possession equals Guam for protecting every security interest in the Pacific, because by basis of operations allow the US to protect commerce during peacetime and of course be strategically located during wartime. And so we can see that as early on as the early 1900s, obviously when we were acquired by the United States, this sort of strategic thinking about the island is not new. It goes back all the way to Mayhan. So what I like to call it is the imperial magic trick, because if you look at depictions of islands in general, we're either or we're important strategically, but we're also disposable. We are simultaneously both. We are places of exploitation and we're also places of nothingness. And this is encapsulated in this report when they were talking about the acquisition of islands where the Navy admirals, one of them said none of the islands in question, possess natural features of values other than the military standpoint. And thus acquiring these islands should not constitute territorial aggrandizements because they don't have any economic value. So that's the imperial magic trick. Are we unimportant and useless or are we extremely important? And I think it's both at the same time in different perspectives and it allows a discursive justification for the acquisition of islands in a way that doesn't cost political headaches in larger geographical landmasses. So if we look at the annual report of the governor, 1905, to look more closely at Guam, we see here the location of Guam in the center of the Western Pacific, make it of great and recognized strategic value to the U.S. and it has neither present nor prospective economic value and should not then excite the interest of other than scientific and military men. So we see this thought, right? We're going from 1890s and we're going to end up in 2021. So I call this, when we look at the situation in Guam, the macabre waltz, right? A dark room with two ghouls dancing together to truly bring life to the macabre waltz of Guam's complex situation today. When you take off the mass of the ghouls, you see the manipulation of our geographical location holding arms with our lack of sovereignty as an unincorporated territory, which is our current political status. I believe that our current political status is a ground by which the United States can gamble with Guam for the pursuit of their national interests and what they newly deemed the Indo-Pacific region. And thus it is in U.S. interests for Guam to remain a colony. Whether it is the geopolitical game played over Chinese development in the South China Sea or the escalating crisis in either the Korean Peninsula or heating up with China in the way that they describe it, the vulnerability and strategic significance of Guam is often reduced, where we become a rung on the escalation ladder, then a national territory to be protected. And I think that's a huge difference. So let's look at these two ghouls dancing together in this macabre waltz. The first is our endurance, geographical endurance. This is Vice Admiral Jonathan Greenert, who wrote, Guam is a hub. Guam has geography, and that will be enduring. It is now becoming very important to us again. Guam will always be strategically important because of its geography alone. So ghoul one, geography, strategic manipulation of our geographical location to unincorporated territory. When Chamorro's were pushing for citizenship, the Navy actually testified against it. And one thing they said in their testimony against giving Chamorro citizenship and civilian government was the geographical location of Guam in the midst of foreign territory, with foreign commercial and colonizing interest to be considered, together with the racial problems of that locality, combined to provide a fertile field for international disputes. So that was the Navy's testimony opposing this Chamorro push for civilian government. So I hate to be the bearer of bad quotes, but that seems what I'm trying to do today, the set of the context of bringing all these quotes here, right? But here we can see it. We can see it clearly. This macabre waltz that I call it, geography, unincorporated territory, holding hands together to create the most fertile field for control of Guam, right? We're American territory, which reduces the political difficulty, right, of building and operating assets there with Sasha Davis likes to call operational unilateralism. You don't need to ask permission. There is no mother may I in Guam, right? And that's a problem. Furthermore, as they say, Guam with its pro military population and 7.7% unemployment is unlikely to offer local opposition. Okay. And then lastly, I want to give you, bring you to this last line here. We can do what we want here and make huge investments without fear of being thrown out, right? So thus the macabre waltz, our geography and unincorporated territory works well, very close together. Now, the logic of retention, as we see, because I'm going to go into the more recent developments, okay, that video actually did provide some context into how we were used further on in the 1900s. But Guam was initially used as a calling station, right, but technical obsolescence, even if we don't use coal does not equal political obsolescence. And I think this is the logic of retention for islands such as Guam. Even if some outdated technology is no longer in the military's best interest, that doesn't equate to letting go of their territories because Guam in their mind will probably remain strategically important, especially in the current geopolitical environment that they are discussing. Thus, unfortunately, all Indo-Pacific geopolitical roads tend to lead to Guam. And the geopolitical tectonic plates that shift in the region create various forms of earthquakes for the island. And I think that's very scary for the people of Guam. And it's something that we, the people of Guam and the CNMI, need to pay close attention to these developments in the region, no matter what, okay. So here are some things that are currently occurring just to bring you to the present with my remaining time, okay. The ages of shore deliberations, pretty much this top priority in the Indo-Pacific command to create a 360 degree integrated air and missile defense system in the island, okay. This is Admiral Philip Davidson who, before he retired, pretty much said it is the key piece of an Indo-Paccom strategy for the containment of China, right. And they say, he said, when you look at the way the threat capability, threat capacity is manifesting from China in the future, whether it's ballistic missiles from the land or whether it's cruise missiles from air and maritime platforms, you're going to need a complete clock, a 360 degree coverage in order to help defend Guam. In the 2022 NDA passed by the house recently, this was also included, but it was pending a report on how they would, what would be the best air and missile defense system that's integrated, okay. So there, we can see this, right. Guam has not lost political obsolescence from mayhem till now, right. There's also Malabar that just happened interesting, where the militaries, what they're calling the Quad, US, Japan, India, Australia, had their exercises in August 2021. So just last month, it was high temple naval exercises, which was supposed to create what they call a testimony of synergy among the four Quad countries. Furthermore, there was Forager 21, which was really a theater army, first core ability to deploy land power forces. But what I think is important is that Operation Forager 21, what many of us may not know is that Operation Forager was the name of the operation to retake Guam from the Japanese. So now from Operation Forager during World War II, what is the symbolism between Operation Forager in the 1940s during World War II and Operation Forager 21, right. So, you know, there's some symbolism there. In addition to this, there's a lot of continued money, right. Just this past week, we had a $122 million contract for Marine Corps firing range that was awarded, and our own representative, our delegate in Congress called the recent military exercises in Guam. There are a few real opportunities this year to help Guam's economy. So this is very complex. Yeah. So I want to end with two things. My presentation today, what it really tried to do is just track the history of geopolitical thought in Guam. What the other presenters will do is really, I think, talk about what Dr. Robert Underwood said. The military is a 12-foot giant in our house. He's bound to step on some of your children. And in many ways, we see this on an everyday level. So here's what I want to leave you with. One warm Guam weekend. My daughter, Inina, and I were playing outside in my backyard. It was around 5 p.m. and it was a beautiful day with the wind blowing and the hot sun preparing for its rest. Then as I pushed my daughter on the swing we bought her, a loud noise came overhead. And we saw a large black plane breaking the sound barrier and flying above us. My daughter immediately got scared and wanted me to carry her. Sleeping past the piercing decibels of military planes taking off with the weight of munitions, lies the Chamorro voice waiting to be heard. Beneath the curse of our lack of sovereignty and the manipulation of our geography, true genuine security for the Chamorro people is waiting. Truly, we in Guam deserve a cartography in which we take the cartographic pens away from the Pentagon and map our own policies and paths. My daughter deserves a future where we can all she can hear is a sweet wind blowing in her face as she swings in her childhood backyard. So to that end we cannot stop fighting for our right to self-determination even in the face of the increasing strategic importance of the island in American strategic thoughts. To do any less feels too much like giving in to the self-fulfilling prophecy that we are just Destiny's landfall. And let's not forget that the tip of the spear is always the bloodiest. Thank you. So before we transition to the next presentation I will say that my presentation mainly focused about Guam but Guam and the CNMI due to political separation after the Spanish-American war constitute two separate governments under the United States. So Guam is an unincorporated territory and then we have the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. So that's just a little bit of why my concentration focused on Guam acknowledging that there are two different governments and histories. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much Dr. Cooper. Thank you so much for summarizing so much of your research and reading through those very infuriating and nauseating colonialist imperialist quotes and for sharing that image of your beautiful daughter. And we're gonna move to like Dr. Cooper said speaker who's gonna talk more about the Northern Mariana Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Dr. Teresa or Issa Ariola who is currently an assistant professor of critical indigenous studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. She is also the chair of our Commonwealth 670 Saipan, a community advocacy group dedicated to research, awareness, education about militarization and its link to indigenous self-determination. Issa's research focuses on the intersections of militarism, indigeneity and the environment among indigenous Chamorro and Rafa Luwash peoples in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands where she was born and raised. Thank you so much Dr. Ariola. Thank you Madison and thank you Dr. Cooper for that awesome presentation and you know I'm really going to be talking a little bit about my own work and the way it intersects with my personal life growing up on on Saipan and that video really gave a lot of good context for what I'll be talking about but just to kind of clarify really quickly I'm coming from the scene of my side um born and raised on Saipan so um that kind of changes the perspective just slightly but um to give some background in the mid 1970s the scene of my negotiated a covenant agreement that many of you are probably aware about but it put us in a political union with United States and the kind of colloquial understanding of this relationship is that um you know we could maintain self-governance maintain ownership over our lands as as as those of Northern Mariana's descent um because there was from the beginning an acknowledgement that land was scarce and it held deep cultural significance to our people um so when return we received U.S. citizenship but we also agreed to kind of giving up and I use I don't use that term lightly but giving up a portion of our lands for national defense purposes and this includes the island of Feralon Mendoniza which is is used for live fire training and bombing currently right now it's only about 45 nautical miles away from Saipan portions of the island of Tinian next to Saipan about 10 minutes from Saipan and a small lease area on the actual island of Saipan so um I kind of look at the scene of mind this overall broader discussion as the contingency islands right we're always kind of talked about as the backup and yet we comprise a really integral um you know portion of this overall build up um but I think that history is important because you know we maintain two separate governments so we negotiate separately for land use etc you know with the U.S. military and the the kind of problem up front that this creates is this false sense of segmentation and military planning which is something we see all the time especially um with the DOD's release of its multiple environmental impact statements um and this is this is something that's been critiqued now for years by community members both on Saipan and Guahan that you can't break up military planning into these multiple projects without assessing their overall you know cumulative impacts throughout the entire archipelago including the water and the air right we're not just talking about land and so it's also interesting because there's this weird paradox here where you know while the military presents all of these different segmented projects seemingly disconnected they simultaneously characterize the Marianas as this homogenous strategic location as Dr Cooper was mentioning right for each training and testing um because in the words of the DOD it's a quote U.S. territory it provides urban training environments expansive airspace expansive surface and subsurface sea space and the military is able to use live ordinance and authorized training spaces right so there's a couple of things I'll just kind of point out in the context of what the military calls this Mariana Island's training and testing study area um which is about the size of India it's just under a million square nautical miles so that gives you a sense of how large it is um and one of the things that's always kind of struck me living on Saipan and has been an important part of my own research is this notion of realism or realistic environment so you'll see them talk about the marianas is realistic environments a lot the navy um as the navy calls it and um and it's the formulation of the islands as these realistic training spaces that simultaneously kind of stamp out the liveness of the area of what is alive you know about the place about the people and the non-human environment that spans the lands and the sea throughout the region um and so you know sometimes and you might see in a training video like the one we watched that the mention of indigenous people but we're usually talked about um as being important in so far as we're seen as sharing the space they often say that we share the space with the military or in the context of cultural heritage for example like artifacts um the the second thing that I want to kind of bring up is the notion of readiness and I'm sure we'll be able to discuss this more during if we have some time for Q&A but and and even the overarching kind of theme of build-up that began during the Obama administration as part of the pacific pivot but over the years the question really in in the CNMI and my community has become like what are we what are we readying ourselves for what are we building up to you know where is all of this going um from the perspective of the marianas there often seems really to be no end in sight when it comes to readiness because this um perceived conflict with china and other adversaries like north korea as as dr cooper also mentioned we all have our kind of um stories about north korea you know the stories that we hear when they say that they're going to bomb um it provides this feel for endless militarization in the region and so you know does the military need to prepare you know they they they can prepare yeah sure but how do we fit into that kind of broader picture of readiness as a a society that continues to bear the brunt of the the social and economic um costs of this preparation with little knowledge of really what's happening especially from the perspective of those living in the the continental us um and then lastly another really important intersection that i think experience with militarism in terms of its planetary scale is of course the way it it merges with climate change um in the marianas and you know we're all especially in a forum like this we're all pretty much aware that we simply can't talk about climate change without talking about militarization um in part because we know the dodias one of the biggest polluters on planet earth right but but also from the perspective of of the cnmi it's that militarism is really coinciding with a lot of devastating natural disasters that our community has been dealing with over the last five years and so in particular two super typhoons including um typhoon utu which had a record which was a record breaking typhoon um that we're quite literally still recovering from um on the island but the concern in this regard um is the increasing strength of these super typhoons due to climate change and the further dependence that this entrenched between us and the military for aid you know for example and it really continues to put us in this vulnerable position and strips us of um further political bargaining power for relying so heavily on this on this aid and funding to get out of these disasters um and you know one of the points of this kind of analysis is really to underscore the fact that climate change is viewed by the military as what's called a threat multiplier so the idea that climate change exacerbates other security problems like food scarcity water scarcity for example um but it doesn't acknowledge its role in producing that actual problem and instead one of the tactics at least in our community that's so often employed when the navy comes out is that it shifts the attention on to like the scientific research that's being done right and all of the technologies that it employs in the mitt study area so so there's this idea that the mitt serves us this training and testing site plus this bonus because it's also a study area for marine mammal research for example as you saw in the video and and so for example the navy's tagline is defending freedom protecting the environment um so just to close before I talk I mean just to close um before I talk just briefly about some of the kind of activism and work that's happening in the CNMI um by the group that I'm really humbled to chair and represent which is our Commonwealth 670 as Madison mentioned I just want to share that um you know from the Marianas readiness it can't simply come at the expense of indigenous livelihoods as it's always been right we're constantly being forced to choose between national security and the preservation and of our own people and our own ways of life and that's not that's not a choice right um readiness is defined by by the DOD as the ability of individual units and the armed forces to execute their assigned missions promptly and competently um but this shouldn't be it you know include using Oceania as the sacrificial lamb to be offered at the wins of the military industrial complex the the rhetoric on island and daily conversations often leans to one kind of angle when you talk about China and that really is fear right if the US leaves what will happen China will come in and completely overtake us people say this sometimes right and then we'll really be in trouble um and that says a lot about the way that the the media constructs China as this impending threat and so much about the way that we're taught to understand what China is doing in the region and of course this distracts us from seeing the immediacy of what's happening like right in front of our faces with the destruction of our islands that's happening right now all the all of the different training and so some of the work um Madison am I okay with time yes you have up to three minutes okay great meaning so I just want to close by talking about the the the advocacy work um of of our common wealth um which is a group of um it's an indigenous and woman led a group in the CNMI that's situated on Saipan and we really try to build on a lot of the great work that other advocates that have come before us in our own communities and abroad um to really try to speak up and talk about these consequences because it's still really hard you know to talk about these issues in our in our in our own communities right so um really trying to to to push solidarity across Oceania right in Okinawa in Hawaii working with Chamorros in the diaspora legislature legislators in Guahan and trying to team up with other more national organizations like OBRAC overseas based relignment enclosure coalition and world beyond war um to really get the word out that our islands aren't dispensable in this build-up and that we really have a say as the rightful owners of this place right um one of the things that I'm really um I think a Madison might have put the um we have a petition going around as well that's based off of President Biden's recent executive orders but the group has also tried to introduce resolutions in the CNMI government um one of them was introduced by a representative Sheila Bauton and it really tried to um it aimed to protect the CNMI from any further harmful military activities but there was some pushback but we also received a lot of community support and many in the CNMI actually came out to testify about the fear of continuing these military plans with seemingly no end in sight or little oversight over the irreparable damage to our cultural natural resources and the group is also working with Asia Pacific forum on but forum on women law and development to train women in our community to connect militarism to self-determination again all of these really important conversations that are happening there's a large resistance movement and I'm very happy to be a part of that alongside these other panelists here and with that I'll just close and hopefully we can open some conversation up in the Q and A so thank you so much since it was mossy thank you so much Dr. Ariella um thank you for bringing in more perspective um from the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and for sharing that video that I shared at the beginning um that was Issa's idea to give some context with that navy propaganda video um so please check out the petition we put in the chat um to ask Biden to honor his executive orders um commitments to environmental and racial justice um and I'm going to introduce our next speaker um who is Monica Nick Flores um she or they pronounce a queer Chamorro artist and activist. Nick is a member of dynamic community orgs that focus on Chamorro self-determination environmental justice and the protection of sacred sites Pratehi Litaquian I'm sorry if that's not the best pronunciation and save save Ritidian Hagan from Alaw Guahan an independent Guahan all of which are part of the Fanon coalition coalition um that Nick is a part of um thank you so much for all of the work that you do in this resistance work Nick and I'm going to give you privileges very quickly to share your screen with the audience and to share more about um the work you do and your community. All right Saina Masi, Madison, Hafa Day everyone, Menagofa Koyngi for those of you uh where it's nighttime and Mega Masi, Mega Masi again and thank you Madison and Code Pink and all the sponsors and organizers for today's event and also a special thank you to the honorable representative of Bauta who is joining us thank you so much for being here and I just also want to thank the previous speakers Ken and Issa and and just like Ken said um I don't have anything fun to share uh that's actually Julian's job that's what Julian's here for uh to sweep us away and inspire us so for now I I'm going to um contribute more devastating information and and it's just really exciting to see a lot of um friends from all over a lot of allies um and Chamorro's in the diaspora who are here with us so it's great to see all of you thank you for being here um so um I'm humbled to join this panel and stand in solidarity with all of you for for peace and for genuine security in all of our homelands and my name is Nick Flores and I'm speaking to from Guahan in the Mariana's homelands or Lagos Sangani the homelands of the Chamorro people. I'm a core member of Protea La Texan, say a Ritidian, a direct action group and community organization dedicated to the protection of natural resources culturally significant resources and sacred sites in Guahan specifically those located in sites identified for U.S. military live fire training. We oppose the establishment of any military firing range and stand in solidarity with groups in the northern Mariana's and the larger pacific region for the prevention of further environmental degradation and desecration on sacred lands and we support the return of ancestral lands to native peoples. I'm also a member of Ihagan from Laon, Guahan, which is an indigenous Chamorro women's and gender diverse organization and so these groups you know are fairly new in the story of the Chamorro resistance movement and so it's very important that I note that we are here today doing the work we're doing because of the strength and love of our ancestors and of course because of the work that proceeds us in the mentorship of many elders a lot of whom are native women and I have to mention some of them Anti-Hope, Crestoble, Dr. Lisa London, Nisavadad, Mama Jill, Kitchichoben, and Venti, Anti-Devi Kanata and of course, Meyaz Wase, Sinta Kaipat from the NMI and I want to say a special acknowledgement for Anti-Cat McCullum who is a direct descendant of the families at LaTexan who lost their land because of the because of military occupation in the federal government taking their land forcing them to leave a bi-eminent domain and she recently lost her husband and so I just want to say that we hold Anti-Cat in our hearts and all of these elders continue to inform and inspire the work that we do so you know I just want to I'm going to be going back and forth between sharing slides and talking and I just wanted to start off by sort of giving a little bit more context you know since we started off with propaganda and Ken's presentation you know so I know a lot of you already know a lot about Guam and our political status that we're an unincorporated territory that means that we have U.S. passports we cannot vote for president we have limited participation in in Congress a delegate that doesn't have a true vote we have exclusions on certain programs such as unemployment and social security disability insurance we have very limited federal funding and we have many restrictive federal territorial policies that inhibit our economic sovereignty such as the Jones Act and of course in terms of the military expansion we often don't have you know a very powerful or strategic or strategic role in in that planning and so I'm going to go ahead and just share a map also since Ken was talking about strategic location just to give you a sense of really Guam's proximity to you know where we are in the Pacific you know and and and how that geography is constantly used to to objectify us and justify the environmental racism and violence that that that continues to take place here and in the Marianas and throughout the Pacific and even throughout the rest of Micronesia really and so you know Guam currently has about 170,000 give or take we have a current DOD population of over 14,000 but it's going to go up it goes up all the time probably 40,000 overall and currently the Department of Defense occupies 29 of the entire island and so for a very small place that's a lot and the government of Guam owns even less than that 19 percent and so that is to to give you a sense of of you know some of the some of the yeah just where we are in the geography that that Ken was talking about earlier all right and so let's see Jules Jules is with me right now in the so hey Jules so I can't I can't wait to hear from you but uh okay so sorry it's just showing me that you're you're you're presenting with me right now so anyway so sorry about that so in recent months you know Guam has been and continues to be the stomping ground for several U.S. military exercises and Ken mentioned some of these so we had the Talisman Sabre Pacific Iron Pacific Forager just recently and so this meant up 6,000 U.S. personnel U.S. military personnel were here we had B-52 bombers an undisclosed amount of B-52 bomber strikers all kinds of vehicles and weapons raptors missile defense units here for these exercises that were multi-domain operations throughout Oceania and so in early September the territorial epidemiologist testified before the Guam legislature that this current wave of COVID-19 cases here in Guam is directly related to those that military activity that we started to see first the rise in military cases before we saw the rise in the local population and this happened also just last year in March when we were burdened with about well over a thousand positive sailors from the U.S. theater Roosevelt who were housed in local hotels and also several military members broke movement restrictions visiting several local businesses causing a spread in the community and of course again harming economic recovery and so these are second and third waves are directly related to military activity and there's been a lack of transparency with the military cases we used to get the military cases reported every single day now those are not those are kind of kept under wraps and so I there's there's a lot at stake here I'm going to go ahead and show you a few pictures let's see so right now you know with COVID everything happening in COVID unfortunately it hasn't slowed military activities and and construction slash destruction so I'm just going to share a picture in February we hosted a protest this is in front of the government office or the government main headquarters this we hosted this in February and then in April we hosted a ceremony for several ancestors who were desecrated at a construction site there were four burial sites including 12 ancestors that were desecrated and just recently in August so this is a ceremony we hosted in April and just recently in August more more remains of our ancestors were found both in the the marine base kentomen is being built unfortunately it's named the Blas Marine base after a former congressman of Guam this is part of the erasure that the naming of these sites takes away from the original land place names of these villages and also assigning tomorrow names to to this base is so problematic I don't think a lot of family members of the Blas family support that so I wanted to go ahead and show some some pictures so this is where the desecration of those burials took place this is a google earth image at the kentomen which over which was which is actually took place at the village of maugua or maugua and this is a tremendous amount of of land actually equivalent to about maria my friend really loves to remind me of equivalents about 925 football fields of land cleared if you can that gives you a visual I also wanted to share since Ken was talking also about the base here's another google earth image of the base at northern Guam it takes up that's practically the whole part of the north of the northern island and you can see that's where the clearing is there these are the four ranges that are being built and as Ken mentioned a second contract has been awarded for the live fire training range complex to black construction latex in is over here I actually have ties to a village called in napson which is on the other side which will be impacted so I have ancestral ties to these lands as well and then I also want to share another picture of here we go these this is a closer view of the ranges over latex in including a gurneyed range while these ranges are in operation for over two thirds of the year we will not be able to access these sacred lands at latex in and that's that's that's what's so heartbreaking about that is that texan is one of the few places that is accessible for Chamorro's to go in and collect traditional medicines to fish and for the original landowners to go and connect they have they even have some family members buried there and so right now the us fish and wildlife occupies that land as a refuge wildlife refuge and they don't have the public access is already limited so it'll be closed three four two thirds of the year sorry two thirds of the year just for the operation of this fire range and that doesn't include you know when other groups such as other forces from the from Asia and the pacific come here to train they include our own Guam National Guard so just to give you some numbers we're talking about the clearing of about 1219 acres of limestone forest for the construction of the ranges and the base we're going the ranges themselves will see close to 7 million ammunitions a year fired right over what is our main source for fresh drinking water our northern lands aquifer on top of that the base is installing new wells which will withdraw 1.2 million gallons of water a day so not only is risk for contamination greater the withdrawal is the demand on the aquifer is going to be incredible and we have 10 newly listed endangered and threatened species including traditional medicines that will be impacted 269 historic properties will be harmed 63 of which are eligible for the national registry of historic places and this all with this long history of contamination that's that's taking place here we have 19 superfund sites 80 contaminated military sites that have never been cleaned up and as well as you know the fact that Guam is a downwinder for nuclear radiation from from you know the horrible crimes against the marshalese people that took that you know took place with the with them with the nuclear testing and so with that you know we continue to get reports that remains of our ancestors are found more remains were just found at what this place called andy south where the urban combat training area is being built and so the work of potato sex and saber city and is and and the other groups that I'm a part of really fight against the destruction and desecration of culturally significant sites but also you know wanting to really bring about awareness and to help inform our our community that these are clear injustices of us imperialism environmental racism and the violation of our inherent rights as indigenous people which is to protect and defend all that we hold sacred including our land air and waters and I think those were some of the those are the main points I wanted to make I think with that I'd like to close with uh if I can let's see I wanted to close with a picture of sorry I wanted to close with a few pictures of of some of the some of the family members of potato sex of the Texan rather and so I wanted to share some pictures because you know we really need to be aware that this is this is native land that was stolen and occupied as is all of the military occupation in Guam and like that video that says you know the merc is is that all this training and activities taking place on lands that are owned and off you know by the military that's that's a lie these are stolen and occupied lines and we need to call them what they are and um and so I it's in really I really want to end with sharing some images of the families whose land was stolen at the Texan um this is my friend Maria Hernandez and her cousin Chrissy and and Maria's mom is Lou Bejado who is an amazing activist for the Texan Maria now had oops sorry Maria now has two babies and so we're looking at about five generations fighting for the return of that land and this is Chrissy's mom and then I also wanted to share this slide um so this is anti-cat here who I mentioned earlier um and she says you know that her grandparents didn't want to give up uh Retidian and and it breaks their heart that this fight continues and so um at one point uh Retidian was actually considered excess land um sorry I'm in an office that has power saving uh things so um it's still dark right now but I promise I'm not I'm not trying to uh be romantic or anything I'll turn the light on in just a second but um there are all these laws to prevent you know the taking the federalization of um of uh this property because it was deemed um excess and so it should have been returned to the families so after World War II the land was condemned via eminent domain and families were forced to relocate despite objections and anti-cat's family was actually sued by you by the federal government for not taking the money that they were offered for that taking by eminent domain so after decades it was considered excess and it should have been returned to the families but instead the navy got it so that it could go to US Fish and Wildlife and continue to be federally occupied and so um I think that's everything I wanted to share today just thank you so much for your time um again it's an honor to be here with all of you and um Sina Masi thank you so much thank you so much Nick for sharing um those images and uh your story the five generations of resistance is heartbreaking and inspiring and thank you for sharing um about anti-cat and that acknowledgement um which I'm sure is not easy to share in front of an audience so um I also put some info in the chat folks can see about some of the climate impacts especially regarding whales and drinking water and forests um and I want to introduce last but not least we were promised um a fun ending presentation from Julian so the fun part of this webinar is that you all get to um take action about something that you may not have been this aware about before ideally because we know that so many folks in the US are not aware that their tax dollars are going to this um oppression um active harming um ongoing um occupation um and militarization um and so I'm going to introduce uh Julian and I'm going to put uh when Julian's speaking I'll put an article that Julian wrote um about Guahan um Julian is an indigenous writer and human rights lawyer working at the intersection of international indigenous rights and environmental law a native son of Guam Julian founded his own law firm to advocate for the Marriott peoples of the pacific region Julian lectures at the university of Guam and the William S. Richardson school of law where he teaches international law and pacific island legal systems he has published numerous books and law articles on a range of international law and human rights issues he lives in Yonah Guam thank you Julian for being here today thank you so much Madison um I really appreciate the opportunity to um to be here with all of you um and I guess I'll just start by saying uh whoever said I was going to be the life of the party lie to you because I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do other than try to kind of say a few things that perhaps uh not the word said um I think all the speakers said a ton of things um and in some ways you know when we talked about Guam right because it's so far removed it's so much on the colonial periphery right it's so far out of that it's it's just always this peripheral issue even when we're confronting empire even when chalmers johnson is writing a book about empire even when kathry lutz is writing a book about every there's there is this sort of sense that we have at least the indigenous people you know who call guam our home you know that we are always never we never managed to figure in any sort of central way in the discourse even when that discourse totally involves like our daily life and even because our daily life like I mean I feel like my full-time job is confronting empire like I look literally like five days a week this is what we do I'm like I'll just let you know that I'm a lawyer for protege le texan um for nakes organization uh nake who just spoke and we filed it's it's just we're lurching from one lawsuit to another like you know we're working with center for biological diversity earth justice i'm just like all of us and we're just um we kind of are in this sort of like I guess you can call it the great game together you know we're locked in this terrible waste of time I mean we all are trying to do our best right we're trying to like fight within this system in terms of like the lawsuits that we're all filing left and right um and mostly losing by the way and we win some for sure but but I think that's part of what we have to do we have to really sort of pick this apart to understand that so much of this sort of like arsenal on offer you know so many of the federal environmental statues for example that so many of us are litigating under to try to stop the fire range protect the eight spotted butterfly uh you know um challenge the um like as isa said our earlier speaker challenge the segmentation of the various environmental impact assessments you know because the US should have done them all together all of these cases right most of them we've lost I mean so like I think in part because of like very convenient sort of like um doctrines that serve imperialism like the political question doctrine which is just a very it's just basically a way for federal courts to evade any responsibility for you know like helping solve any of these problems you know and they say this is a this is an issue better left to the political branches of government so we are going to exercise judicial restraint and stay out of this we've seen a lot of political question doctrine sort of evasions we've also seen like even you once like where is this from in CNMI and she represented Bob out is here as well in the CNMI a group of awesome organizations community-based organizations working with earth justice we filed a lawsuit there challenging the marine location from Okinawa to Guam and the CNMI and we lost that case um on on some very very technical ground about redressability it's like a prong of the standing test what I'm I'm not trying to take you out of law school I'm trying to like point out how fucking clearer it is to me that we have like all in some ways wasted a significant amount of time believing that the law is capable of providing the redress that we're interested in and I'm saying this as a lawyer who litigates a lot like I am now all I know is that all I keep thinking about you guys is is something that Alice Walker wrote when she said the way forward is with a broken heart I feel like ridiculously broken hearted and I'm just like sort of plowing through it you know but the only thing that's still keeping my shit together is being in community with people on the ground in civil society groups I mean watching groups like Code Pink do their thing I am so supportive of the cut the Pentagon budget like all of this and what we're seeing now like we have to be I don't have a very like a more robust conversations about the limitations of the law and legal process and what how many because only because our political energy like our time I mean these are finite resources we are all lurching from one crisis to another we can barely I mean I have activists lawyer friends activist friends across the country and we're all kind of locked in this thing right and we're all in this sort of thing together and we're running out of time and climate change has put us on an unforgiving timeline you know it's and it is just all become very clear to me so much so that like I probably will take a break from law or leave it all together in a year I mean I've done almost everything that I wanted to do with it the last thing was filing this submission on behalf of particularly Texan to the office I mean to the human rights council we're trying to now invoke international huge I guess the UN's body of independent human rights experts to try to pronounce on the illegality of the military buildup we succeeded recently and we actually got a historic joint allegation letter from not only one but three three special rapporteurs who are actually like calling the US military you know to this to account I mean it was it's kind of unheard of because the Chamorro people my people our people we have been going to the UN for 40 years with no progress we've just sort of used all the available so I guess what I'm saying is like when you look back and you stop and you pause for a second and we're honest we have just wasted an incredible amount of our time you know and our political energy which is finite which we don't have endless supplies of you know barking up certain trees and trying to do this and I think what we really need to be doing at this point is not only interrogating language on the one hand I mean I have some specific points I want to talk about what with regard to that video that began this program and also on the other hand just trying really really hard to rekindle our radical imagination with each other and finding ways to do it you know because like so let me let me stop there and now talk about some of that language tracking the language right like that propaganda thing that started this webinar right the ESA like they were just listing all the buzzwords right endangered species that the protection of the core reef the US being on the reef task force the protection of culture historic resources and the US military striving to minimize the adverse impacts on the environment so I'm going to take them one by one we just sued the US fishing wildlife because they advocated you know like what's happening essentially is the fishing wildlife like NOAA I mean both when it comes to the terrestrial and the marine environments the agencies entrusted by the federal government to protect these species for example on land and sea and at sea have advocated their role essentially what we're having is if these agencies that are supposed to protect these species are not protecting anything they have essentially given waivers to the US military so this is effectively what's happening is like they can talk a good game about environmental protection but they almost never protect the environment because they keep waving all of the requirements so what you have actually in these documents you have what's called incidental take statements have you if you've read all of these after all of the and then you actually it just lists all the species that the federal agency is totally aware that the US military is going to destroy just kill like we shouldn't call them incidental take statements we should call them death lists that's what they are you know like this like we have to track like all of this and so the ESA right like the Marianas fruit bat the Marianas a spot butterfly the pacific slender toad gecko these are just some of the endangered species like some of which actually have critical habitat designations already the US military I mean they basically fishing wildlife is just giving them a take statement they're giving the military past left and right so that's why the projects are allowed to proceed with regard to the coral reef the US military when this first project was first announced wasn't actually interested in some say they've scaled back some of the plans but one of the plans was the birthing of a nuclear aircraft carrier and that would have entailed the destruction of 40 football fields worth of thriving coral reef so but you know like so this is what we need to do we need to track their use of like every like refute every single point because clearly that's doing and not and I don't mean in the court of law but you know on the streets when we're like basically lobbying when when US taxpayers are lobbying their representatives I mean it is absurd that Pentagon the budget what was it a 715 million what I've been running $80 billion record highest Pentagon budget in the history of US military yes and that is such a good point Madison but what's another point related to that it actually grew in the house right house added on another $25 billion so bringing it to 740 and then higher right so what we're doing is another thing we need to wow I thought I wasn't going to talk long but clearly I'm now sort of on a roll so if I could just have a two and a half more minutes um we should track that as well is that is that okay Madison okay one and a half I'll really go no you're fine you're fine so another thing um is we need to start to like return to some of the original language like now we're so used to calling it the military industrial complex but its original name was the military industrial congressional complex I mean if Congress is going to be a better fellow call it what it is Congress is just throwing I mean and now and that is not even to mention you know the house's inability and the progressives inability to really stop funding Israel even the iron dome all of it like this is all I'm just kind of wow I'm kind of going to church right now I'm going to dial it back you dial it back um because I'm I'm just as a writer it matters to me I use words like I use precisely the words I'm very deliberate about them and I feel like but non-writers too we all have to be exceedingly specific you know precision matters when we're confronting empire in a really really significant way and I think in actually in a way that's under examined I do believe that um and so that is one of sort of the things that I'm trying to sort of encourage to and the other one I guess is we need to tell better stories um I believe this is true in the climate context as much as they demil context and that is in some ways you guys when the IBCC report came out right we we all you know freshly sobered by all of those facts you know ocean acidification mass coral die-up like sea level rise all the timelines are bumped up we're just it's like all of that doom right and on the same other hand the this presentation and this webinar like the facts of empire it's a spreading canopy and it has no intent to stop like we know that the US is goading us into another war I mean with China we know all of it is happening that's why we strategically forget to mention other facts right so like paying attention to what facts what what's excluded as much as what's included in the conversation like no one like obviously the state department is very quick to condemn China and come out with all of these statements but they there's no mention of the fact that China basically has lifted over 700 million people out of absolute poverty there's no mention of all the ways China like contained COVID like I mean there's so many other things that need to be sort of talked about so we so we need to track stop track and stop empire as soon as it uses language the language of othering you know there's a violent othering going on and it starts with our language it starts with the words that we choose to use or don't use you know and being really like hyper vigilant about empire's use of language is super important um I guess the last thing I'll say is just um taking all of this you know like um this is sort of why um I when I say we need to tell better stories I I believe I mean for me this this happened last year I experienced this um the US military personnel were running around rampant violating all of the executive orders as nake said um spreading contamination and disease in the community and it was so much to handle and at the same time our youth like suicide rate including youth suicide was going up it was one every six days so it was just so much death and it was so accelerated it was so fast and I couldn't breathe you know and I and I and I realized like part of what's happening I is that we have lost our ability to speak to each other and part of that is we're not we're all sort of collectively being buried by an avalanche of facts and it is up to each of us to claw our way out and stories might be the way to do that stories like if we connect on a human level like person to person that we can resist sort of the the the the othering process because you know we can connect to each other stories in a way so that's why I started writing really deeply personal stories about like losing my father for example in the book that I just wrote but but the reason why I'm saying all of this is because we have to deploy that feminist insight that really useful feminist insight you know that the personal is political and if we can find new ever new ways to do that if we can find ways to do that like with just bring all of our innovation and all of our sort of political imagine imagination to the task of making the personal political we can make a whole lot more fucking progress okay that's it I think that was those are all the major things I wanted to thank you so much sorry for going over thank you so much I can ask everyone to unmute for a second and we can give a little round of applause thank you for thank you Julianne for so much of giving us insight into your legal world and the frustrations around using the system to achieve any kind of safety or liberation and for the calls to action to start fostering more of a radical imagination in in anti-war peace work and in racial justice work economic justice work more ways to communicate and to remember that the personal is political thank you so much we really appreciate having you as well as all the other guests nake dr. Ayola dr. Cooper I'm just gonna ask a couple questions and then we're gonna finish up so we did plan for this webinar to be a little longer than an hour well we might go a little bit over an hour and a half but I'll try to close up soon so these questions will be at all of you all so if you both want to answer something feel free to just let me know and chime in or if just one of you wants to take some on and if there are questions in the chat we can try to get to them if there is time thanks everyone for sticking around we really appreciate it so my first question is in response to some of the things we've seen and heard tonight what does the way the military defines their stance quote forward deployment quote troop readiness in the pacific what does that actually mean um and when the US government and military speaks of quote deterrence uh or quote defense it's you know grandfathered into the department of quote defense with regards to stated enemies like China or today we mentioned North Korea the DPRK um how is this misleading about the power dynamic between the US empire and its stated enemies I can I can try to get that so you know when we hear forward defense deterrence denial all these sort of words right I mean the basic military strategic logic is that forward basing actually provides a further deterrent effects right and that was deterrence you know we all mean it's different from compelence you know sorry sorry I'm I I'm IR nerd so apologies okay but deterrence you know preventing another state from taking an action via changing the cost of calculation for them right so they believe you as military believe via I mean we always we see this with the iron chain strategy today that having these distant bases helps extend the deterrent effect away from the homeland homeland and prevent attacks from the homeland and so that's what I was trying to say that I think when we think about all these things what is Guam situated as right is Guam if security for example is a territory to be protected against a threat is Guam actually a national territory to be protected or is it a tool to be used and I think those are some uncomfortable political questions that we need to ask ourselves in Guam because the very popular political rhetoric is that the basis protect Guam right so we need to reorient and furthermore I think we can see this this whole deterrence rhetoric which you know has its roots and strategy and military logic I just want to read something regarding that in Guam okay missile defense in Guam can convince an adversary that attack will fail or that the cost of overcoming missile defense systems would outweigh the benefits of success right and surprisingly what we are starting to see like in a piece illustrated or authored in foreign policy the the periodical was a piece to make Guam a state right and the whole logic for making Guam a state is that Guam would be under the permanent sovereignty of the US and it would signal to China that an attack on Guam is completely unacceptable and would provoke major consequences right so we see Guam being used in this tool for deterrence by denial right showing hostile forces that they will not win right and the 360 missile defense system is a part of that now what we also see in the rhetoric is you know we have for example I forgot to mention in my presentation the British aircraft carrier that visited Guam recently right and a bunch of countries making Indo-Pacific strategies right this new Indo-Pacific which is a new geographical imagination is that we are seeing the lines being drawn with upholding what they're calling the free and open Indo-Pacific right so there we're struggling to see this be used as a justification for further power projection and expansion yeah now the other question about misleading right and this is something that I wanted to talk about a little bit right is you know there's this whole branch in the national security world you know there's a debate and I actually agree with a lot of them you know there's like the Quincy Institute for example that believes in a foreign policy of restraint now but the restraint folks a lot of times and this is a piece I wrote for responsible statecraft they actually say that even if we were to reduce the US was to reduce its basing footprint and for defense deployments Guam and Diego Garcia are two bases that should remain operational because they serve as a convenient location that are low cost and fully capable that avoid what they call strategic baggage of foreign territory right so that's where I am trying in my work in IR national security is even in these arguments with progressives where they're trying to reduce the basing footprint where does that situate Guam and then secondly to the misleading let's say that tomorrow we woke up and it was not misleading let's say that the US national security strategy was exactly right on China's that and China is a threat right absolute threat to its egemity let's say they woke up and it was not misleading do the results change right is Guam do we then accept that Guam will be used as someone right there human shield right so are we only opposing Guam's militarization because the rhetoric of intensification of geopolitics is misleading or not I mean that's just something to think about if we woke up tomorrow and it was like China is an imminent threat will progressives then wake up and say well I don't know maybe we should use Guam as the sacrificial shield right so that's a conversation an uncomfortable conversation that I think we need to ask ourselves and lastly and I think we in Guam need to remind the world that geopolitics is built on the backs of people like us right and that whether something is discursive or material or whatever whatever the fact is is that preparation for war is dangerous for us in Guam in a way that may be materially different from others right because we see that building up internal balancing capabilities in the region for the US right trying to show that we can counter the US can counter attacks from China or North Korea in Guam requires preparations that affect our homelands and as Nick said right and so that these are sort of the uncomfortable conversations is that even if it's a misleading rhetoric if it was exactly correct does that then justify Guam's usage in that potential way and so I'll end there but yeah thank you thank you for going into that and much more depth and kind of falling from what Julian said making sure we are being specific and not generalizing or using narratives that don't serve everyone but I think that does highlight how regardless of what the operating threat that the Pentagon and Congress are using to drama more funds for our military there's always going to be another one and there's always plans for another perceived threat the Pentagon calls this threat inflation theory and Guam will be in the crosshairs of that threat and I know like China and the DPRK were planned to be the next eminent threats like as early as the fall of the Soviet Union because the Pentagon needs a new threat inflation idea for the people to be manufactured into consent for war essentially so I'm going to ask just a couple more just kind of about organizing and what folks here especially US citizens can do so one question is how has coalition building been going in opposition to this militarization I know Nick spoke a little bit about this but what other communities have you worked with across the world internationally and is it difficult to organize across islands what strategies help with all of that we're in the place with COVID where there's a lot of digital organizing happening so has that always been the case for you etc are you able to unmute and might have changed the setting sorry about that folks okay there we go thanks yeah um actually if I could just also add to Ken's answer of that question previous question before we talk about a coalition building in terms of the forward deployment and troop readiness in the Pacific you know what it actually means and since 2016 we've been hearing this rhetoric that China has a bomb called the Guam killer and has put it in parades and you know and has taken it down the street for to get all kinds of people you know riled up and that's actually part of the rhetoric the Pentagon is using now for you know for the for this for the for this massive um demand for funds for the Pacific deterrence act it's that that is part of that rhetoric that they're using and even just last year um let's see we had the the Anderson Air Force base has had something called an elephant walk where all of the jets and planes did their own sort of parade and procession and it was really to demonstrate to to China probably um that you know they can generate combat air power at a moment's notice and then you know also in July we started hearing about um there were these news stories national news stories about the the THAAD missile defense here and and patriot missiles but these are solely you know meant to defend the the military's um resources on the base not the people of Guam and so that's part of the the misleading rhetoric too that you know that misinforms our community that the THAAD is here to protect the people of Guam the island's resources know um all of that uh just you know um posturing really is is is part of the problem so I just wanted to add that um none of those are are for protect real real genuine security they're all they're all they're all really yeah they're not and so and in terms of um you know a coalition building you um let's see um well for Taylor Texan um Ihakefama Lao and Guahan independent Guahan we're all part of the finokee coalition here and the finokee coalition is really working focusing on tomorrow's self-determination um all of us all of our groups have been really doing a lot of this kind of work digital work um trying to think of digital more digital campaigns because it's also we're dealing with digital burnout to a certain degree as well right um so um but this is it's always great to to see community here as well and um I we've you know we've I see a lot of folks here we've presented with just recently for you know in opposition um the talisman saber you know or um friends in Okinawa Japan and in Hawaii as well so um we're constantly trying to build connections um figure out ways we can work with each other joys here I hope to do some cool projects with joy in the future uh focusing on art um and then of course we want to work with uh with Issa too to see how PLS are and and our Commonwealth 670 can can collaborate um so so and we just really want to thank Code Pink too because this is historic an all-tremoral you know Marianna's focused uh panel this is great because it really is bringing our struggle um to a much larger audience and helping us gain more support too for our work so thank you so much uh Siza Smasi thanks and um just don't not know you can follow our campaign in in the chat code pink dot org slash china um twitter dot com slash china not enemy but thank you for for adding that and I put in also a link to um the urgent tomorrow self-determination appeal petition um um and I'm just gonna ask one more question I kind of alluded to and um if any of y'all can't unmute because I think I changed the setting accidentally um just uh direct message me and I can unmute you if you want to speak um definitely want to give you all a chance to speak if you'd like so I just wanted to ask um for folks here I can expand it internationally I think you know we have a lot of international supporters for our campaign um in our coalition et cetera but how can US citizens here in the US mainland that's where I am Turtle Island um help resist the US uh war buildup and increased militarization of Guam and the Marianna's and if you want to extend that to how the international community as well um any ways that we can take action I know we have a bunch of petitions here um anything else that you have to say on that I guess I'll just go um only because one of the things I've been thinking about recently was we should have a freedom flotilla like it should just be in the style of the ones that have already happened I mean I just call reached out to and right recently about this idea um because I think this is exactly what you know what's happening all the war games are being played off you know the off the coast of Guam and DOD is currently militarizing a section of the ocean here roughly the size of India and so this is just a massive thing that has just global significance and we should have a just a bang up you know supposed like a global civil society sort of event um you know we should invite other groups to who have historically done really important work in this region like Greenpeace um who you know is the one who helped the Rangalapese people in the Marshall Islands leave Rangalap that was still irradiated on the rainbow warrior you know that those kinds of campaigns and be a little creative with them um to do more direct action um but also um just like all the basic things like signing the petitions but really realizing that you know like just as taxpayers you know and being in proximity to the metropole like you you know US uh actors in particular um can do a few things like better lobby congress like our our congress person doesn't have a vote and even if he did he would vote pro-military anyway so like using like using um your contacts is also really important um there's a ton of like specific things and I won't go into too much detail but like me and also reaching out to civil society groups in Guam and better connecting because we have tons of ideas some of them are legislative and policy in nature and some are direct action in nature so there's like a wide range um but also just sorry to go back to the very first question of I just think again if we're tracking the language you know like what your first question was about for deployment you know like from China's perspective you know it looks very different it's like as far as China's concern it's not also sending its warships on you know on the west coast of California but they believe that the US warships are right off the you know here so they believe that that is a question so it's just you know and also like tracking which countries are actually speaking in terms of multi polarity and which ones are not I mean those are there's a whole bunch of things that we need to do but and also just last thing I'll say generally just don't be I mean be a really good citizen don't be goaded into this war with China like we have to just put all of our eggs in this basket I know it's praise but with the with the whole I mean right when Afghanistan like right when that happened we already knew we already knew that China was next we were like it's it's a it's a it's a longer game and like the US has actually been very clear about announcing this Hillary Clinton in 2011 went to East West Center in Hawaii and called this America's Pacific Century and if you track all of the things all of the quadrennial defense review reports all of the speeches I mean we have been headed to this road for quite some time where we're just sleeping in some ways like some of us you know and not called pink obviously but other groups in the who are like based in in the US Continental to US have been sleeping on this issue for far too long thank you yeah I was just going to mention yeah Julien you reminded me Kamala Harris just recently went to Singapore and something really similar after the withdrawal like the Pacific is I'm forgetting the language now but it's like the Pacific is the center again you know of this this this war right like we all have to kind of shift our attention away now to the to the to the Asia Pacific realm right and so it's like it's just like this constant recycling and so yeah I mean I mean there's so much to say here but you know you quickly you quickly find that when you do deal demilitarization work you have to reach out right it's so global in scope you immediately are connected to so many people so quickly right but one of the things that I've noticed with this work too and I think it's really important is like you know it's just the work in our own communities right like it's it's kind of amazing to be on panels like this and to hear people that kind of understand you know where we're coming from but even in in our home communities I think it's a lot of work like for example OCW our group has like an anonymous membership where you can join because people are still like worried about speaking out about a lot of these issues right because we're so interconnected to the military so there's also kind of that portion I think of the activism and the work that that takes a toll as well but it's all very much interconnected and so yeah I just wanted to mention that and again just a big thank you to Code Pink for making this possible making these these conversations possible. Thank you all so much I think we're going to end there because we are a little bit over an hour and a half which was the intended length and thank you to all of our supporters who are here today as well as loyal supporters who are here at all of our webinars we do have some upcoming ones next week next Wednesday we have on October 6th in the morning Pacific time I'm participating in no Cold War Britain stop Asian hate UK rally featuring some recent victims of anti-Asian violence in the UK and we also have part three of our series on the US and China with coalition peace initiative initiative and this week week three is going to be on McCarthyism in the 50s Vincent Chin, Wenho Lee and more so you can check those out in the chat or on our events our action calendar at codepink.org and yeah I want to honor that it was mentioned that this is historic to have an all Chamorro panel which I'm very much appreciative of I'm so happy that you can all speak and I hope that the magnitude and the stakes of the impact on Chamorro communities was made clear today because I know that it's not made clear in the mainstream media in the US and generally in the West and beyond so I'm really just hoping that we're able to honor that and to understand the impact that our tax dollars and our military budget has on indigenous peoples and our environment and our planet. I hope you all have a wonderful morning evening wherever you are in the world and this will be on YouTube later thank you so much