His recent poll on the military build-up is a perfect smoking gun — the descriptions under each question indicate the purpose of the survey, which is to facilitate military control. It is a tool of the psychological operations that the military is engaged in, to mold public opinion.
It is also offensive that the professor happily talks about using free student labor to do the military’s work. This is a perfect example of the unaccounted costs of military occupation — the hourly wage the students would have been paid is nowhere in the list of resources that Guam’s people give to the military. We are just supposed to be grateful that the military gives jobs.
Several of his assertions are misleading as well — e.g. on crime, yes, there are lower crime rates among soldiers overall than comparable civilians (because they are a fully employed, heavily monitored population and some of their crimes go unpunished by the military because they want to keep their numbers up, and some civilian crime is property crime based on poverty and untreated drug addiction), but they are much higher in the categories of child abuse and rape, and they are not much lower overall when you control for age, i.e. crime rates are higher among youth, which the military population is.
Overall, what should be pointed out is that this professor is a DoD employee whether he received a grant or other amenities from them; like free dinners, for doing this research. (The UOG should definitely find out how he benefits personally from doing this research). We all know that he was a military brat who settled here and made a name for himself using his position at UOG.
What I can say is that when university researchers get grants from the pharmaceutical industry, we know that they are more likely to find the drug they are studying to be safe and effective than independent researchers.
The same goes for military funded research — it finds what the military buyers of the research want to find — everyone’s happy and the disgruntled just need “more information.”
What is especially angering is to see the University of Guam used in this way.
HOPE A. CRISTOBAL
Former Guam senator
