NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since I can't speak Japanese, I have to rely on translators and interpreters to learn more about recent protests in the country. I'm grateful for a growing group of people who have been helping me understand more and more about continuing and recently developing protests. Videos on Youtube, some thankfully subtitled with English have also helped. I wanted to share some of them below, to help others understand more about life in Japan in terms of peace and protest.

Every month the group SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea) holds a peace action in near the US embassy and the city hall in downtown Seoul. It’s called Self-Reliance Peace Unification Action, and it is basically a small sit-in style rally. The event even comes with its own small red-seat cushions which are laid out prior to the start of the event, rewarding those who come early with more comfortable seats from which to listen and observe. When I first arrived at the protest, it was primarily old people there, who were all holding signs which I was told described different things such as reunification, demands of the South Korean government to stop trying to take away civil rights and the closure of US bases in the country. After seeing so many manåmko’ I asked my interpreter and guide Sung-Hee if this was a good representation of the activist community in South Korea, meaning are most of the progressives here are a little bit older? For several years, when I first

There's a combination of statements that I keep hearing lately which makes me laugh everytime I hear it. It also makes me sad. One Youtube via The Uptake , or The Young Turks or on Crooks and Liars , I keep reading and seeing video of people making a particular set of angry and defensive statements which make me wonder what sort of medication these people are taking to keep their heads from exploding because of the contradiction that they angrily stab themselves with. Kalang un damang este na contradiction matokcha' gi i tintanos-ña. Ya achokka' sigi nai ma bulokbok i dinagi, ti ma siesieñte. Ti ma realilisa hafa ma sasångan. Sen na'chalek este, lao na'triste lokkue'. Ti nahong i guafi gi korason-mu para i sinangån-mu. Debi di un na'daña' i hinasso-mu yan i guafi (passion), osino i hiniyong na este na brodie na klasin sinangan. First I hear someone, fihu un åpa'ka, say that they don't want no damned European, French, pansy, socialized govern

I gave a joint presentation last week on Chamorro sovereignty. at a Pacific Educational Conference at UOG along with fellow island intelligentsia and all around intellectual radicals, Victoria Leon Guerrero, Dr. Lisa Natividad and former Guam Senator Hope Cristobal. The room was packed full of teachers from Guam and around Micronesia who wanted to know more about what the presenters meant by Chamorro sovereignty. Ya-niha i fina'nu'in-mami. In na'hassuyi siha put este na asunto siha. In my part of the presentation I talked something I often discuss on this blog, the cultural vs. the political, or the way in which colonized people or minorities tend to be reduced to exotic, flavorful cultural practices in their communities, while another superior culture, generally the colonizer or as Pat Buchanan likes to say " white folks " get to be in charge of The Culture, or the political culture. This Culture is the gatekeeper culture, the one which gets to decide where ev

Right now, I'm working my final thoughts post on the DNC last week, but at the same time trying to pick up and get ready to leave for Guam next week. In the meantime, there is still plenty of discussion keeping me distracted about John McCain's VP choice Sarah Palin.

******************************* The Exotic Candidate Is The One With Eight Houses by Bob Cesca August 13, 2008 The Huffington Post This week, for example, Cokie Roberts and Michael Crowley , along with a creepy monster squad of Republican stalkers , have been trying to peg Senator Obama's vacation in Hawaii as proof that the script is accurate. Hawaii, they say, is only for exotic elitists . Senator Obama is in Hawaii. Therefore, Senator Obama is an exotic elitist. See how that works? Never mind that this Hawaii-is-exotic-and-elitist gripe came from a not-elitist millionaire with the not-exotic name "Cokie." This Cokie phenomenon is a solid example of the script's paradoxical, fictitious awfulness. Despite similar griping from the McBush Republicans, the truth is that Senator McCain is far and away the more elitist and exotic of the two candidates. Fact. No bias here. Let's start with Hawaii and do the list. Senator McCain met and fell in love with his cur