In APEC's Shadow: The Pacific People's Economy

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2011/11/10/13740-in-apecs-shadow-the-pacific-peoples-economy/

In APEC’s Shadow: The Pacific People’s Economy

By Chad Blair11/10/2011

John Hook/Civil Beat

APEC is “armed and dangerous” and “drunk with power,” capable of enacting violence against people and destroying whole economies.

That harsh assessment comes from Victor Menotti, executive director of the International Forum on Globalization.

[…]

Moana Nui — Hawaiian for “big ocean” — was organized by “a loose collective” of academics, activists and community leaders. The speakers talked about a “liquid nation” that struggles to sustain itself in an “American lake,” to use the title of a book by the conference’s keynote speaker, Walden Bello.

[…]

“We envision a better future for all people,” said Osorio. “We never want to lose sight that we as a native people have a stake.”

“We come here to find a way to rise up to support the liquid nation,” said Menotti.

That nation involves labor, faith groups, environmentalists, peace activists and indigenous leaders.

Menotti continued: “All our different movements have come together to challenge APEC and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agenda and assert our own agenda.”

Insular Empire "Red Pill Tour"

Vanessa Warheit, director of the film Insular Empire: America in the Mariana Islands just posted a new entry about her visit to Hawai’i and what she has dubbed the “Red Pill Tour”, a reference to the scene in The Matrix when Neo takes the red pill that awakens him to the violent and oppressive reality of his existence as he joins the resistance.

It was surreal standing over the map of the Pacific ocean in the Arizona Memorial visitor’s center, talking with Dr. Hope Cristobal a Chamorro leader from Guam, Lino Olopai, a Refaluwasch (Carolinian) master canoe navigator from Saipan, Terri Keko’olani and Vanessa about the “American Lake”, how the Pacific is depicted in the U.S. imperial imagination.  Then Lino struck up a conversation with “cousins” from Kiribati, who happened to be visiting the memorial. In beautiful contrast, it illustrated how peoples of the Pacific see Ka Moana Nui as the medium that unites peoples.

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