We rarely discuss the fact that there are places in the world
that are actual U.S. colonies. Still less do we consider whether we
are complying with our international obligations to respect the right
of self-determination for colonized peoples, and if we are not, what
we could do to change that.

A small corrective is being offered as part of Asian Pacific Heritage
Month by PBS, which is webcasting Vanessa Warheit’s documentary, “The
Insular Empire: America in the Mariana Islands” until next Sunday,
June 20.

The first film I was able to catch at this year’s One World Human Rights Film Festival was A Place Without People documenting the expulsion of the Maasai from the Serengeti in Tanzania. “Can’t at least we preserve the Serengeti for the animals and the people who come after us,” exclaimed Bernhard Grzimek, a German conservationist/zooligist famous for inspiring the creation of the Serengeti National Park. By this statement I presume he meant preserve it for other colonialists and not the Maasai, the parks original inhabitants. From British rule up to the country’s present day independent government, those in power have failed to recognize the tribe’s place in the park’s ecosystem and their role in preserving its balance for centuries.

I feel mystified every time pundits talk as if the Obama administration is trying to cut the military’s budget. It isn’t being cut, it’s being expanded by 4% even after it has already doubled since 2001. And the ideology behind that increase is pure liberal interventionism