PRAISE FOR "LIBERATE HAWAI`I"
DigitalJournal.com - April 21, 2014
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 fervor of the Hawaiian Resistance.
“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 Hawa`i.
Due to false education, people have bought into this ‘whopper’ from the US 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 US 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 Hawai`i, and what this all means for the United States' claim to have made Hawa`'i a state in 1959.
Pre-publication reviews of the manuscript ‘Liberate Hawai`i!’ have attracted glowing reviews from readers who appreciate Olsen’s nuanced and meticulously researched arguments.
“Using a wide range of historical documents, anecdotal reports of trespasses, abuses, and oppressions, refreshingly humorous analogies, and moving personal stories of resistance and determination, Olsen has created a work of history, intrigue and injustice that informs and engages, is hard to put down – I read it in two days and then read it again – and may help to catalyze a movement in support of Hawaii’s equivalent to the movements that freed the former Soviet republics to determine their own paths to the future,” from Ellen LaConte, author of ‘Life Rules: Why So Much Is Going Wrong Everywhere at Once & How Life Teaches Us to Fix It’ and the memoirs, ‘On Light Alone’ and ‘Free Radical’.
“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 Hawai`i, 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 US Claim to the sovereignty of Hawai`i, makes a compelling case -- a legal case as well as a moral one.”
