Ea-spiration

Desire is not necessarily destiny for Hawaii

Growing up in Hawaii in the seventies, I had read about the fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom in Helen P. Hoyt’s The Princess Kaiulani¹ (1974), one of the first books I ever read.

From the book’s Amazon listing because my copy is in storage. Photographer unknown.

And that was all I ever heard about the Hawaiian Kingdom for nearly two decades. Even a required Hawaiian culture course in school - one of the few bright spots in child prison - did not mention it. The topic seemed forbidden. Forgotten. I had to study American, European, and Asian history and even Islam, but not the history of the island I lived on.

Then everything changed in 1993, the hundredth anniversary of the American overthrow of the Kalākaua dynasty².

Images from Scenes from the Centennial, on DVD for $50 in enemy money.

During four days in January 1993, thousands observed the centennial of the 1893 act of war against the Hawaiian Kingdom. ‘Iolani Palace, Ali‘iōlani Hale and the Queen's statue were the sites for the commemoration, which included a historic march, speeches, music and presentation of ho‘okupu (offerings).

Suddenly it seemed as if a dam had burst. The word sovereign(ty) was everywhere. Savren! SAVREN!! I doubt most people knew what the word meant. The Hawaiian Style Band’s “Living in a Sovereign Land” (1992) belatedly became a hit.

There’s a celebration on the palace grounds

People need to know what's going down

There's a proclamation from the powers that be

Says our island nation has got to be free

Living in a sovereign land

Neoliberal Feudalism

wrote of how

the shitlib NPC mobs were placed on idle-mode stand-down — this would literally not have happened unless they were comfortable and accepting of whatever role they now have for Trump.

Fool’s Gold: How Trump’s Populist Return Is a Trap for the Naive

In 1993, the opposite happened in Hawaii. The NPC mobs got the Bat-Signal to get mad. And they’ve been mad ever since. Inverted Hawaiian flags are a common sight.

An inverted Hawaiian flag on the cover of the February 2020 issue of Honolulu magazine in front of the Hawaii State Capitol. Source

I also often see the Kānaka Maoli flag:

Image by ZooFari

The Kānaka Maoli ('true [or ‘native’]³ people' in the Hawaiian language) design is purported by some to be the original flag of the Hawaiian Kingdom, though this claim is unverified and widely disputed. It was introduced to the public by Gene Simeona in 2001.

[…]

Gene Simeona claims to have unearthed the Kānaka Maoli flag in 1999. Simeona said he encountered a descendant of Lord George Paulet who told him about an earlier flag. Simeona claims to have found evidence of the Knaka Maoli flag in the state archives, though any sources he may have used have not been identified. Subsequent efforts to verify Simeona's claim have been unsuccessful.

Despite the lack of verification about its historic use, the design is popular among those who prefer its lack of apparent colonial imagery.

It is telling that the actual flag of the Hawaiian Kingdom contains the Union Jack:

Source

The use of the Union Jack is a legacy of the British Royal Navy's historical relations with the Hawaiian Kingdom and, in particular, the pro-British sentiment of its first ruler, King Kamehameha I. The current design has been in use since 1845. It was retained by the Republic of Hawaii after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. Likewise, after U.S. annexation in 1898, no change was made to the flag design used by the Territory of Hawaii before Hawaii was granted statehood.

I am amused by Hawaiian nationalists who hate the Waste but love a flag with the Union Jack. They dare not admit that their beloved royals were Anglophiles:

As a young prince, King Kamehameha IV had visited England and was impressed by the rich ceremony of the Church of England, compared to the dour simplicity of the American missionaries who educated him as a child. His queen consort Queen Emma had a British grandfather and was brought up in a house of a British Anglican doctor.

[…]

In 1859, Emma wrote to Victoria of the United Kingdom to request a clergyman from the English church.

[…]

The [Anglican] Church of Hawaiʻi became the official royal church, with land donated from the royal family's holdings, not the government. Emma was baptized, followed by a young David Kalākaua who would later also become [Hawaii’s last] king.

King Kalākaua’s niece Kaʻiulani’s full name was Victoria Kawēkiu Kaʻiulani Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa Cleghorn. She was the daughter of a Scotsman, named after Queen Victoria, christened at the royal Anglican cathedral, and educated in England like her cousins. “Accustomed to the life of a Victorian society woman,” she “and her [Scottish] father assumed the lives of itinerant aristocrats traveling across Europe and the British Isles” in the years after the fall of her kingdom. What a nationalist!

Hawaiian nationalists today who reject the Royal Jack have replaced it with a Rasta-influenced flag.

The Ethiopian Royal Standard used by Rastafarians. Source

The color scheme of the Kānaka Maoli flag clearly indicates that it is a recent creation postdating the Jawaiian boom of the nineties.

A lion is soooo Hawaiian. Not terribly Jamaican either. Source

So the choice of flags reflects a false dichotomy between the pseudo-Anglo Hawaiians of the past and the pseudo-Jamaican Hawaiians of the present. Notice the common denominator: the xenomania. Nationalists’ conceptions of the ‘self’ often unintentionally incorporate others.

It is perfectly acceptable to display either the inverted or supposed royal flags. What is striking about all this ‘dissident’ activity in Hawaii is how open it is. How permitted. How … engineered.

Paraphrasing Neoliberal Feudalism, this would literally not have happened unless the Regime was comfortable and accepting of whatever role it now has for the ‘sovereignty’ movement.

In Notes, I pointed out that Hawaiian ‘sovereignty’ activists “are mostly literal employees of the very government they pretend to oppose.”

Those dependents have had a special segregated subcampus at the University of Hawaii since 1997.

Just part of the vast University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. Zoom out to see the whole thing.

I agree with this part of a Yelp review:

Its not easy being the most beautiful building on the University of Hawaii Manoa campus...but Kamakakuokalani does it effortlessly!

It is a definite step away from the bold and serious Western structures that UH has to offer. Its architecture reflects the various meanings of what it means to be Hawaiian. The loi kalo (taro patches) is a great tribute and cultivation of our ancestor Haloa. It is truly a beautiful site to be seen on Dole st. And this is just the outside.

Image by wikiwiki360

No one can say that the subalterns were forced into substandard structures.

I don’t like knowing that I and the tax slaves of the state had to pay for them, though.

Sotiris Rex

replied:

Would true enemies of the USSA take its money and offer degrees in one of its institutions?

Enroll now and get a “concentration” in “Envisioning the Nation”.

The Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies quarantines and neutralizes faculty and students alike. No one there is a threat to the system because they are a part of the system. In future Stacks I will contrast those LARPers with real revolutionaries in history.

This Stack you are reading right now is more dangerous than anything at the Center.

How scary can the Center be if it has a Vision Statement™ almost out of Dilbert?

The Center for Hawaiian Studies inspires academic excellence, cultural integrity and political strength rooted in the Ea of our ancestors.

Almost, because of the Hawaiian word Ea which Scott Adams would never use. Whenever you see an unfamiliar Hawaiian word in English these days, it is almost always a mechanical substitute for an English word chosen for emotional manipulation. Use the Hawaiian word, and anyone who questions you becomes racistimperialistcolonialist. Or at the very least, cold and uncaring..

Ea has a wide range of meanings⁴ (I’ve omitted the examples which include the Hawaiian Bible, yet another example of Anglophilia here⁵):

1. Sovereignty, rule, independence.

2. Life, air, breath, respiration, vapor, gas; fumes, as of tobacco; breeze, spirit.

3. To rise, go up, raise, become erect.

I believe all three are connected: the living are erect, and those who can stand on their own are independent.

I suspect the first meaning is from the last two centuries. As a nationalist symbol, modern standard Hawaiian is averse to borrowing, and existing words have been repurposed to translate English words for concepts absent in traditional Hawaii.

This Hipsta Pravda article I read last night is about ea-spiration: the desire for Hawaiian sovereignty.

It is notable for both what it includes … and excludes.

It is largely a list of grievances - all of which I agree with. It may be worth reading if you are unfamiliar with the situation in Hawaii.

It does leaves out one major recent grievance - the telescope affair which inspired the Honolulu cover with the inverted flag that I posted above. tl;dr, paraphrasing Neoliberal Feudalism again: the NPC mobs were placed on attack mode in 2019 and then idle-mode stand-down during CONvid in 2020 — this would literally not have happened unless the Regime was comfortable and accepting of whatever role they now have for the Thirty Meter Telescope. All the people enraged about da teleskop six years ago are silent about it now.

Far more importantly, it leaves out how “Hawaiʻi Must Become Self-Governing”. What the underpants gnomes of South Park call “Stage 2”.

Source

Desire, no matter how righteously motivated, does not guarantee destiny.

The author never defines ‘sovereignty’. It’s a prettyword. Don’t think. Just feel. Too bad she didn’t use the Hawaiian word ea which would have been even prettier - and an excuse to accuse any naysayers of racismimperialismcolonialism.

The author denies that ‘sovereignty’ is “impractical or impossible”. Maybe it is or isn’t, depending on how it’s defined.

I wish the author had cited examples of Pacific island countries like

• The Kingdom of Tonga, independent since 1970

• The Independent State of Samoa, independent since 1962 unlike American Samoa

• Niue, independent yet in free association with New Zealand since 1974

• The Cook Islands, independent yet in free association with New Zealand since 1965

• The Federated States of Micronesia, independent since 1979 but under a Compact of Free Association with the USSA since 1986

• The Republic of the Marshall Islands, independent since 1979 but under a Compact of Free Association with the USSA since 1986

• The Republic of Palau, independent since 1979 but under a Compact of Free Association with the USSA since 1994

• The Republic of Kiribati, independent since 1979

• The Republic of Fiji, independent since 1970

• The Republic of Vanuatu, independent since 1980

• The Solomon Islands, independent since 1978

• Tuvalu, independent since 1978

In Hawaii we are taught nothing about other Pacific islands, much less about their paths to independence, despite the fact that many of us have roots across Polynesia and Micronesia. I didn’t even know Niue, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu have been countries for decades until now!⁶

Advocates of Hawaiian ‘sovereignty’ never seem to mention any of the above precedents, even though their indigenous populations, like the Native Hawaiians, are all part of the huge Austronesian (South Island)-speaking family of peoples.

The vast Austronesian world in a map by Pavljenko licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Rattling off the above list of independent island countries might silence some critics.

Unfortunately, other critics might ask how ‘sovereign’ the above islands are. And some of that subset of critics might already know the answer:

• The Kingdom of Tonga’s “economy is characterised by […] a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population who live abroad (chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). […] Tonga was named the sixth-most corrupt country in the world by Forbes magazine in 2008.”

• In the Independent State of Samoa, “development aid, private family remittances from overseas, and agricultural exports have become key factors in the nation's economy.”

• Niue gets NZ$14 million a year from New Zealand for its population of about 1,700.

• The Cook Islands’ “economy is supported by foreign aid, largely from New Zealand. China has also contributed foreign aid, which has resulted in, among other projects, the Police Headquarters building.”

  • The Cooks also attract foreign wealth for the wrong reasons: “According to The New York Times, the Cooks have ‘laws devised to protect foreigners' assets from legal claims in their home countries’, which were apparently crafted specifically to thwart the long arm of American justice; creditors must travel to the Cook Islands and argue their cases under Cooks law, often at prohibitive expense. Unlike other foreign jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, the Cooks "generally disregard foreign court orders" and do not require that bank accounts, real estate, or other assets protected from scrutiny (it is illegal to disclose names or any information about Cooks trusts) be physically located within the archipelago. […] In recent years, the Cook Islands has gained a reputation as a debtor paradise, through the enactment of legislation that permits debtors to shield their property from the claims of creditors.”

• “Financial assistance from the U.S. is the primary source of revenue” in the Federated States of Micronesia.

• “[A]id from the United States represents a large percentage of [the Republic of the Marshall Islands’] gross domestic product”.

• The Republic of Palau has “a significant portion of gross national product (GNP) derived from foreign aid.”

• The Republic of Kiribati “is one of the least developed countries in the world and is highly dependent on international aid for its economy.”

• The Republic of Fiji is “is increasingly reliant on remittances from citizens working overseas.”

• The Republic of Vanuatu is a tax haven, and 30% of its revenue may come from selling citizenship for about $150,000 (“[w]ith demand from the Chinese market booming”). At the turn of the millennium it was dependent on “remittances from foreign workers, and large aid packages from the Asian Development Bank (in 1997) and the US Millennium Challenge fund (in 2005).”

• The Solomon Islands’ “economy had collapsed and the government was bankrupt” by 2001. Foreign police and troops came to keep the peace, and aid has come in from “Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan, and Taiwan”.

• In Tuvalu, “[g]overnment revenues largely come from fishing licences (primarily paid under the South Pacific Tuna Treaty); direct grants from international donors (government donors as well as from the Asian Development Bank); and income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund.” That fund was “was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand […] Financial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF [Tuvalu Trust Fund], and provide other forms of development assistance. The U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu,” as are “[r]emittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships […] Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships […] The United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks.”

The author of the ea-spiration article correctly views Hawaii today as being “trapped in a cycle of extraction and dependency.” But aren’t the ‘sovereign’ countries above also trapped in such cycles despite being “self-governing” in the author’s words?

If ‘sovereignty’ is just a matter of prettywords, then, yeah, if Great Orange God and the rest of the swamp wanted to, they could let us go ‘free’ on paper but keep us as a de facto Murrican colony like most of the Micronesian countries (the Federated States of Micronesia [which does not encompass all of Micronesia], the Marshalls, and Palau) which under the Compact of Free Association (COFA) have⁷

access to many US domestic programs, including disaster response and recovery and hazard mitigation programs under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, some US Department of Education programs including the Pell Grant, and services provided by the National Weather Service, the United States Postal Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and US representation to the International Frequency Registration Board of the International Telecommunication Union. The Compact area, while outside the customs area of the United States, is mainly duty-free for imports.

Most citizens of the associated states may live and work in the United States, and most US citizens and their spouses may live and work in the associated states.

[…]

The COFA allows the United States to operate armed forces in Compact areas and to demand land for operating bases, subject to negotiation, and excludes the militaries of other countries without US permission. The US in turn becomes responsible for protecting its affiliate countries and responsible for administering all international defense treaties and affairs, though it may not declare war on their behalf.

[…]

Citizens of the associated states may serve in America's armed forces, and there is a high level of military enlistment by Compact citizens. For example, in 2008, the Federated States of Micronesia had a higher per-capita enlistment rate than any US state, and had more than five times the national per-capita average of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan: nine soldiers out of a population of 107,000.

Native Hawaiian-only Kamehameha Schools - the only overtly racially segregated education institution in the USSA that I know of - had a ROTC/JROTC program for a century until 2002. I knew of one Kam grad in the service almost two decades ago. In my neoCON days a couple or years earlier, I got to speak to another Native Hawaiian soldier shortly before he was sent to the ‘sandbox’. I have no idea what happened to those guys.

The story of colonized peoples’ love affairs with military colonizers is one I should tell in another Stack.

The indigenous-invader relationship isn’t as simple as the Two Narratives make them out to be. (Or even as this post makes it out to be.)

The Hipsta Pravda article, like all mainstream media here, promotes the Activist Narrative, a familiar tale of noble natives victimized by AmeriKKKans. Ironically, it is the AmeriKKKan government that props up this narrative by selling it at its state university.

A red flag!

But why would the USSA support Hawaiian nationalism? Especially given

Rurik Skywalker

’s observation that

everywhere the Western spook state was active, it was fighting against nationalism in whatever native form it manifested. Even WWII from Washington’s perspective was about the United States intervening to destroy nationalism and sovereignty in Europe.

Because the Regime’s best ‘opposition’ is the one it controls. See the anime L.Gaim (1984-1985).

See Hamas.

Even Hamas was created to destroy any real nationalist opposition movements to Israel as well.

The Hawaiian ‘nationalists’ on the gov payroll make nationalism look bad. Instead of calming explaining the case against imperialism, Prof. Haunani-Kay Trask, the late founder of the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies and the goddess of the ‘movement’, wrote the poem “Racist White Woman”, which starts,

I could kick
Your face, puncture
Both eyes.
You deserve this kind
Of violence.
No more vicious
Tongues, obscene
Lies.
Just a knife
Slitting your tight
Little heart.

Would you be surprised to learn that

• Trask had White ancestry (Trask isn’t an indigenous name)

• Trask had a White partner, author of American Holocaust

• Trask’s uncle was a member of Hawaii’s One Party (not the elephants) and the head of the Hawaii Government Employees Association

I saw the poem in print in a book in the University of Hawaii bookstore. Because government bookstores stock rilly dangerous stuff, maaaan.

The Apologist Narrative gets much less media coverage. It’s not in the UH bookstore. Does that make it right? No, but it’s what passes for ‘Right’ here. It’s promoted by mostly anonymous commenters. Almost no one is brave enough to make these points in public, even though they are pro-Murrican on supposedly ‘Murrican’ soil :

• Liliʻuokalani, Hawaii’s last queen, was a tyrant who wanted a new constitution that “that would restore absolute monarchy”.⁸

• Therefore those who overthrew her struck a blow for FREEDOM!

• Hawaii is waaaay better off annexed as an unsinkable aircraft carrier-cum-random people zone shopping mall because DEMOCRACY! And mainland money without which the state would die. Governor Dr. Josh Green, MDeeee’s website says, “Hawaiʻi secured roughly $3.8 billion federal dollars through grants in federal fiscal year 2023. With a population of approximately 1.4 million, each person received roughly $2,654 from the federal government.” DOGE terrifies the chattering class here while the masses have no idea how dependent they are on the rest of ‘their’ country.

Sorry, I can’t present the Apologist case with a straight face, even though it was my position during my neoCON days. My biases are now closer to those of the Activists - and the author of the Hipsta Pravda article.

That having been said, the Activists would hate me if they read this - if they knew who I was. They do not want allies without the sacred Nnnnative blood - even though their beloved queen was married to - OMG - an American White cishet male. The devil incarnate! Prince Consort John Owen Dominis

was a Royal Commander of the Royal Order of Kamehameha, the Royal Order of Kalākaua, and several others. From 1863 he served on the King's Privy Council. Dominis served from 1864 to 1886 in the House of Nobles, and from 1868 until his death as Royal Governor of Oʻahu. He served on the Board of Health, Board of Education, Bureau of Immigration, and was Quartermaster General and Commissioner of Crown Lands. From 1878 to 1886 he served as Royal Governor of Maui. In 1886, he was appointed Lieutenant General and Commander in Chief.

John Owen Dominis c. the 1880s, shortly before his death in 1891. Source

Nobody wants to talk about Dominis today. Or the Maoli-Haole (Native-White) Alliance of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the early postannexation period. The big untold story is the erosion and erasure of the Alliance and the rise of the anti-White Activists. I don’t claim to understand what happened.

There is a lot of history in Hawaii hidden behind the simplistic Activist-Apologist paradigm. The Alliance does not fit the paradigm, so into the memory hole it went.

Always look for the common denominator in false dichotomies. The Activist-Apologist paradigm is built on a foundation of statism and romanticism. A ‘choice’ between the noble native queen or the holy Constitution (and I don’t mean the one the queen wanted).

Neither Liliʻuokalani nor the Founding Fathers would have liked me. They might have gotten along better than one might expect, given that Liliʻuokalani was educated in English by White American Christian missionaries like Amos Starr Cooke⁹ from Connecticut and his wife Juliette Montague Cooke from Massachusetts. They had more in common with each other than either had with me.

Amor Starr Cooke ran a boarding school for Hawaiian royals like Liliʻuokalani. Source

I can’t pretend to long for the return of the monarchy (which to be fair, is not what all Activists want: e.g., the author of the Hipsta Pravda article doesn’t seem to want it). Liliʻuokalani was not my queen (or the queen of anyone alive today, obviously).

I can’t pretend to embrace the Founding Fathers either. American patriotism for me has always been performative, and American history has always been someone else’s story.

So neither side of that false dichotomy appeals to me. I am a nowhere man, not Hawaiian, not American, and certainly not Japanese either. I don’t feel a reflexive allegiance toward either the Hawaiian Kingdom or the USSA. (I used to be drawn to Japan, but that romance went horribly wrong - a Stack for another day.)

I don’t care about ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ anymore. I am not one of those people who

think that the enemy of their enemy must be their friend. They assume that there are good guys and bad guys and that the enemies of the bad guys have to be good guys.

Rurik is right:

But there are no good guys and there are no friends in politics.

Only bad guys and worse guys and all of them are enemies.

No exceptions.

And I don’t excuse the ‘lesser evil’ anymore. I stopped making excuses for Trump last year.

I don’t need to believe in a good guy - in a queen or the Murrican ‘freedom fighters’ who opposed her - to get by.

I don’t believe in prettywords like the ones the author of the Hipsta Pravda uses:

A self-governing Hawaiʻi, built on the values of aloha ʻāina [love of the land], ʻāina aloha [beloved land], kuleana [responsibility] and mālama [preservation] could prioritize the well-being of its people and environment over military interests and corporate profits.

A Hawaiian dictionary will not save Hawaii.

The author mentions “power” only three times (emphasis mine):

1. “Lawsuits, led by these [American] companies, stripped our counties of the power to regulate these businesses, leaving our keiki [children] at risk.”

2. “imagine what could emerge if there were radical shifts in power, economy, and governance”

3. “At least Sen. Akaka made an honest effort, flawed as it may have been, and unacceptable to many of those it aimed to help, to carve out real autonomy for Hawaiians within the existing power structure.”

I doubt she wants to explore the p-word as deeply as Rurik:

[…P]ower has its own set of rules. The name of the game is power — gaining it and retaining it. Not ideological consistency, or loyalty or anything else.

Power takes many forms. Like brain power. Which Hawaii is sorely lacking in.

That puts it at a serious disadvantage against not only the USSA but also Russia and China. (And Japan if it were still playing the imperial game.)

Any realistic road map to ‘sovereignty’ must take that non-Republican elephant in the room into account. And others I don’t have time to go into.

Ea-spiration is easy. Achieving it is hard.

1. You can read my crimethought take on Hawaii’s last princess here:

2. It is technically true that the USSA government did not overthrow the monarchy, but the conspirators were Americans and were supported by USSA Marines.

3. The Hawaiian word Maoli is cognate to the ethnonym Māori.

4. I’ve omitted a fourth meaning (‘to smell’) because that ea is an unrelated homophone with a different etymology. Two different Polynesian words merged in Hawaiian.

5. Obviously the Bible isn’t of Anglo origin, but it was part of the Anglo cultural package that Native Hawaiians embraced in the nineteenth century.

6. Size is my excuse for Tuvalu, which is only ten square miles (26 sq km) with only ten thousand people, making it the second least populous country in the world after Vatican City, not counting Niue (population 1,681 in 2022). I can also use the size excuse for the Cook Islands (population 15,000). But the Solomons have a population of seven hundred thousand - too large for me to overlook.

7. I have long thought that China could set up a nominally independent Tibet and Uyghurstan which would be like 21st century western (not Western!) versions of Japan’s short-lived puppet state of Manchukuo (on what is now the northeastern part of the PRC). Now I realize China could also set up its own version of the Compact of Free Association with its new neighbors, and most of the non-Chinese speaking world would never notice.

8. Not the word I would use. I was shocked to see an Apologist Narrative term in a ‘neutral’ Wikipedia description of the queen’s proposed 1893 constitution.

9. Cooke would cofound Castle & Cooke, one of Hawaii’s Big Five. At one point it was “the world's largest producer of fruits and vegetables”. It is still a force in Hawaii today, albeit no longer much in the public eye. Larry Ellison paid C&C $300 million for most of the island of Lanai in 2012.