"While migration to the US is an attractive option for many in Micronesia, it is far from easy. Not only are there the usual difficulties with relocating and navigating a new social milieu, but discrimination toward Micronesian migrants is rampant..." -Sasha Davis

"There may be support from some for the Americanization of Micronesian societies, and feelings of affinity and patriotism toward the US may be widespread, but there is plenty of animosity toward the US in the 2nd island chain as well." -Sasha Davis, Islands and Oceans

Isabella Sumang advocating for Palau's right to real sovereignty where the people can write their own constitution and make their own laws. www.tiktok.com/@d.luchei17/...

"...the US treated these islands (Micronesia) as areas of strategic denial, sites for military bases, and sacrifice zones for nuclear weapons testing. The US blocked attempts for formal sovereignty... by disallowing any foreign direct investment for 3 decades." -Sasha Davis

"It is inaccurate to state that there is an urgent need for a robust US military presence in the Western Pacific to counter an imminent, articulated Chinese threat, because that threat appears to emanate more from actors in Washington than it does from Beijing." -Sasha Davis

"...the Pacific continues to be treated by external states not so much as a home to Indigenous inhabitants but as a stage on which to compete with each other militarily, politically, and economically." -Sasha Davis; Islands & Oceans, Reimagining Sovereignty & Social Change

"Whether we are talking about unincorporated territories such as Guåhan, commonwealths such as the Northern Marianas,... or incorporated/occupied archipelagos such as Hawaii, there is nothing post-colonial about the contemporary Pacific." -Sasha Davis, Islands & Oceans

"On the left side of the political spectrum, indigenous groups, anti-imperialist social movements, and progressive anti-capitalists have looked to enhancing sovereignty as a way to resist the exploitation of transnational capitalism..." -Sasha Davis, Islands and Oceans

"Anti-militarization social movements prioritize regulative principles that include environmental protection... an articulated desire for political self-determination/decolonization, concern for human health, and the ways militarization particularly affects women..." -Sasha Davis

AmeriKKKa is trying to send deportees to Palau😡 islandtimes.org/palau-u-s-ex...

AmeriKKKa is trying to send deportees to Palau😡 islandtimes.org/palau-u-s-ex...

"Anti-militarization social movements prioritize regulative principles that include environmental protection... an articulated desire for political self-determination/decolonization, concern for human health, and the ways militarization particularly affects women..." -Sasha Davis

"On the left side of the political spectrum, indigenous groups, anti-imperialist social movements, and progressive anti-capitalists have looked to enhancing sovereignty as a way to resist the exploitation of transnational capitalism..." -Sasha Davis, Islands and Oceans

History repeats itself😔

"As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo. All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous working conditions..." -S. Kara

"At no point in their history have the Congolese people benefited in any way from the monetization of their country’s resources. Rather, they have often served as a slave labor force for the extraction of those resources at minimum cost and maximum suffering." -Siddharth Kara

"...Across twenty-one years of research into slavery and child labor, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of global cobalt supply chains." Kara, Siddharth. Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

"The ongoing exploitation of the poorest people of the Congo by the rich and powerful invalidates the purported moral foundation of contemporary civilization and drags humanity back to a time when the people of Africa were valued only by their replacement cost." -Siddharth Kara

"The scramble for cobalt is reminiscent of King Leopold II’s infamous plunder of the Congo’s ivory and rubber during his brutal reign as king sovereign of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908." Kara, Siddharth. Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

"Few nations are blessed with a more diverse abundance of resource riches than the Congo. No country in the world has been more severely exploited." Kara, Siddharth. Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Excerpt from "Revolutionary Suicide" by Huey P. Newton

"Given the extent to which USAID programming was a central part of U.S. engagement in the Pacific, small island nations have been hit particularly hard by these pauses and cuts..." www.csis.org/analysis/shi...

"Scholars of and from the Pacific Islands... have drawn attention to the way in which the United States has treated the Pacific as a historical sacrifice zone for nuclear and missile testing, the prosecution of war, and the resource extraction that comes from imperial designs" -Van Jackson

"How can we reconcile the United States at once expressing commitments to ‘protecting the sovereignty of Pacific Island states’ while warning explicitly that any Island nation hosting a Chinese military presence could end up provoking a US military response?" -Van Jackson

‘Our lack of rights and liberties was integral to military strategy…we would receive too much power if we became a fair and equal part of the union.’ -CHamoru historian and poet Michael Lujan Bevacqua

"Guam and CNMI, which lack sovereignty, are sacrifice zones for US strategy, but so are Palau, FSM, and the Marshall Islands—the Compact nations—despite retaining sovereignty over their domestic affairs. All are within a formalised US sphere of influence." -Van Jackson

Guam’s Indigenous Groups Challenge US Militarization, Colonization www.hrw.org/news/2024/10...

"In this way, Guam and its adjacent island nations (CNMI, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and FSM) are preferred targets because they host substantial concentrations of US militarypower... and, crucially, are perceived to invite a less severe US retaliatory reaction..." -Van Jackson

"As is common in military strategy, he (MacArthur) makes no accounting for the toll that military emplacement in the Pacific imposed on the Pacific; no mention of the Pacific being held at risk of attack because of its role in facilitating US warfighting in Asia..." -Van Jackson

"...the United States was strategically interdependent with the Micronesian region... Strategic interdependence is not mutual or symmetrical interdependence but rather an admission that US security is dependent on being able to control Micronesia." -Van Jackson

Why Would the Tiny Island Nation of Palau Be Complicit in the Israeli Genocide of Gaza? @codepink.bsky.social www.codepink.org/palau_compli...

WTF?😡 www.rnz.co.nz/internationa...

AmeriKKKa is trying to deport undocumented migrants to Palau😡😡😡

WTF?😡 www.rnz.co.nz/internationa...

'The manufactured vulnerability of migrant workers is both generated by and constitutive of racial capitalism; the architecture of labor migration is intended to guarantee capital accumulation and uphold racialized gendered citizenship.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'The transformation of land into a sedentary commodity and policies criminalizing migration are both antithetical to a rich history of land stewardship, trade, voyaging, and kinship networks between islands in Oceania.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'Formed in 1924, the US Border Patrol’s first generation of agents was recruited from the ranks of the Texas Rangers and Klansmen, laying the ground for the culture of racism, militarism, and violence still prevalent in the agency.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'US politicians preoccupied with border fortification hypocritically violate the borders of the places they bomb, mine, and pollute.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

'Australia’s oppressive offshore detention system, including on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, is squarely connected to the genocidal history of colonization and racist regulation of migration by White Australia.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'Migration is treated as a recent phenomenon, even though the genocide, displacement, and movement of millions of people was unequally structured by European colonialism for three centuries...' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'Most ironic, the migration crisis is declared a new crisis with Western countries positioned as its victims, even though for four centuries nearly eighty million Europeans became settler-colonists across the Americas and Oceania...' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'A long arc of dirty colonial coups, capitalist trade agreements extracting land and labor, climate change, and enforced oppression is the primary driver of displacement from Mexico and Central America.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule

'The border, however, is less about a politics of movement per se and is better understood as a key method of imperial state formation, hierarchical social ordering, labor control, and xenophobic nationalism.' -Harsha Walia, Border and Rule