Press Release
Liberate Hawai’i! Rousing New Book Documenting Hawai’i’s Claim to Sovereignty
From self-described “sixties radical” Jon Olsen, this complex yet elegantly written book is an entertaining, focused history of Hawai’I and the little-known facts of the United States’ claim to the country. Beginning in 1887 with the “Bayonet Constitution” and sweeping readers into the present day, ‘Liberate Hawai’i!’ is an important contribution to the continued fervour of the Hawaiian Resistance.Jefferson, ME — (SBWIRE) — 04/21/2014 — “Are you crazy?” That’s a question that Jon Olsen expects to hear upon release of his provocative and truth-telling new book, ‘Liberate Hawai’i!’ which boldly asserts that Hawai’i is not now, nor ever has been “part of” the United States.
While offering carefully researched and fact-driven arguments for Hawai’i’s claim to sovereignty and his derision toward the United States’ arrogance for what Olsen demonstrates with documentation: their “occupation” of Hawai’i, Olsen realizes that his book may be contentious.
“I just smile,” says the author, who lived in Hawai’i for over 36 years. “All I ask is that people keep an open mind as I make my main assertion – that the United States, to this very day, has no valid claim to the nation of Hawai’i. Due to false education, people have bought into this ‘whopper’ from the U.S. government, and to many, the notion that there might be contemporary Hawaiian resistance to the empire seems ridiculous. I urge readers to take a second look and challenge their own assumptions.”
Olsen credits years of research done by Hawaiians in order to gather the legal and historical data needed to present his claims. Through that research, the author demonstrates that by U.S. Constitutional law and International law, Hawai’i is, and has been since 1898, an occupied country. Olsen believes Hawai’i can regain their sovereignty, using the recent example of Lithuania becoming free of the Soviet Union after 50 years of similar claims to “annexation.” The book also delves into how the events of the 1890s affect present-day residents of Hawaii, and what this all means for the United States’ claim to have made Hawai’i a state in 1959.
“Jon Olsen is a warrior of truth, proclaiming a vision of Hawaiian sovereignty. He is not alone. The Hawaiian Resistance that began sweeping across the islands forty years ago has become a storm of new consciousness. Where will it blow? Olsen charts that storm’s history and possibilities. For readers whose eyes can see a radically free Hawaii, here it is,” from Jim Douglass, author of “JFK and The Unspeakable.”
David Swanson was equally as complimentary, writing in his review on Amazon.com: “Jon Olsen’s new book, Liberate Hawai’i: Renouncing and Defying the Continuing Fraudulent U.S. Claim to the sovereignty of Hawai’i, makes a compelling case — a legal case as well as a moral one.”
‘Liberate Hawai’i! Renouncing and Defying the Continuing Fraudulent U.S. Claim to the Sovereignty of Hawai’i’ is available here: http://amzn.to/1n73zBH
About Jon D. Olsen
Jon D. Olsen is a self-described “unrepentant sixties radical activist” with “radical” not meaning violent or extremist, but the original meaning of “getting to the root of the matter.” He grew up in Maine, getting a degree in philosophy from Bates College, and taught high school for one year. Discovering that while actual teaching was enjoyable, enforcing classroom discipline was not, he “escaped” to Hawai’i for the next 36 years. While there, and in the process of obtaining a Master’s degree in philosophy, he was a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society, Resistance (to the Draft), Peace and Freedom Party, and in 1989, Hawai’i Green Party. In the 1970s, he owned and ran a radical bookstore with volunteer labor of his own and others seeking a more just and peaceful society.
After a few short time jobs, including working in the Honolulu tuna cannery as a case stacker, a place where he met his newly arrived Filipina immigrant wife-to-be, he found a successful niche as a marketer of solar water heating systems, which he did for the better part of the next 20 years. He returned to Maine in August of 2001, as his father was about turn 90-years-old and to reunite with the beloved family homestead adjacent to Damariscotta Lake where he had spent so many enjoyable hours fishing.
He quickly joined the Maine Green Independent Party and twice served on the State Steering Committee. Equally at home in Maine and Hawai’i, he has, from the mid 1970’s onward, taken a keen interest in the latter’s sovereignty movement, seeing it as an important part of the worldwide effort to defeat imperial rule, wherever it may be. He is the proud father of an adult daughter and adult son, and the grandfather of his daughter’s two children.
For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/liberate-hawaii-rousing-new-book-documenting-hawaiis-claim-to-sovereignty-495421.htm
Media Relations Contact
Jim Collins
Telephone: 800-910-1373
Email: Click to Email Jim Collins
Web: http://www.pieceofcakepr.com
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1862005#ixzz2za7HV4E4
I will read this book. I was going to call my next book Recovering Hawaii, but with Olsen’s work I have not only changed the title of my proposed book but the emphasis.
Book Review:
The author lived in Ko Hawai’i Pae’aina for 36 years and is thus familiar with the issues, it targets an American audience. Jon Olsen outlines why Treaties entered into are still lawfully in effect, the author presents a condensed version of the unlawful 1893 overthrow, purported annexation and fraudulent statehood plebiscite. These grounds are familiar to most activists so expect no new insights.
Olsen devotes a whole chapter to a comparison with Lithuania, it is well presented as an analogy however the U.S. is an insular country, the late Professor Van Dyke done similar in “Who owns the Crown Lands of Hawai’i?” devoting a chapter to the British (Crown) Estate lands. Americans overall are predominantly more concerned with accruing $$$ not economies and national histories of other countries. The 2007 protests at Nawiliwili Harbor in Kaua’i over the superferry is well accounted for, he cites a book “The Superferry Chronicles” by Pakik, Koohan & Jerry Mander (2009) Koa Books.
The strength of this book is in the latter part Olsen suggests the advantages of forthcoming Independence to residents, control over immigration and foreign policy. Water and sustainability, U.S. demilitarisation and how Sovereignty needs to be made a major focal point on local TV and newspapers. For this he is to be commended as few Sovereignty leadership activists have to date come up with a Master Plan or economic blueprint for the long term future. Olsen suggests it should be ecologically oriented along the lines of the Green Party he is familiar with. There is no index to the book so it is handy to dog-ear pages or colour marker highlight features you may need to refer back to later. Aloha.
[…] United States. A detailed history of the overthrow and illegal annexation of Hawaii is described by Jon Olsen in Liberate Hawai’i. A lawsuit was filed challenging the annexation but the federal court refused to consider the […]
[…] United States. A detailed history of the overthrow and illegal annexation of Hawaii is described by Jon Olsen in his book “Liberate Hawai’i.” A lawsuit was filed challenging the annexation but the federal court refused to consider the […]