NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Around this time last year Howard Zinn passed away. He was most famous for his seminal counter history of the United States A People's History of the United States, but he wrote many other works as well and was a long time activist and support of numerous progressive causes. After I began teaching World History last year, I found that much of the way I talk about things, even history, tends to be at a level which is hard for your average UOG undergraduate to understand. When you starting talking like Levinas, Derrida, Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek and Avery Gordon to talk about history even if students are interested, they sometimes lack the vocabulary or a friendly framework to even engage with what I'm saying. The first time I taught World History 2 (from 1500- the present) I made the mistake of giving my students Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, without prepping them much or giving them an idea of what it was about. Needless to say the discussion was gut...

There has been much talk recently over the cultural and historic properties in the Pagat area of Northeastern Guam, and where exactly Pagat begins and ends. Last weekend and this past weekend I went with members of We Are Guahan into the northern section of Pagat to see what artifacts we could find. Although we weren't the first to find them, we found quite a bit of latte and lusong, which I'm sure I'll be writing about very soon on this blog. The issue of historic relics and cultural artifacts reminds me of the current situation in Gangjeong Village, on Jeju Island in South Korea. Although the villager of Gangjeong have been fiercely resisting the creation of a military dock there which will be used by both US and South Korean Navy forces, the construction and hence the destruction of parts of the coast and the land in Gangjeong have already begun. As usual, the blog where you can find the most update to date info on this (which is graciously translated into English by...

Published on Tuesday, February 1, 2011 by The Guardian/UK Why Fear the Arab Revolutionary Spirit? by Slavoj Žižek What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question is what will happen next? Who will emerge as the political winner? When a new provisional government was nominated in Tunis, it excluded Islamists and the more radical left. The reaction of smug liberals was: good, they are the basically same; two totalitarian extremes – but are things as simple as that? Is the true long...

For several years cricket was my only way of wasting large amount of time watching some sort of professional sporting event. Well, unfortunately for me, being in both Guam and San Diego, the actual watching of cricket was regularly impossible, and so I had to settle for reading bulletins and watching written play by play commentary. In the past few months I've begun following Starcraft 2 as a new distraction, which I both play on my own time (although I am not very good), but I also follow as my new sporting waste of time. It might be surprising to some that video games have now reached the level where they no longer only have people who are good at them in the sense of being the best player of Street Fighter II in your family, but rather people who are good at a professional level, or people who are good at the global level. For a few games such as Starcraft 2, there are actual cash prizes for winning tournaments. As I've written about before on this blog I starting playing ...

Last week while teaching World History I, or history about Ancient Civilizations, we were discussing the meaning of the term history and what are the different ways we can see history as an essential and important part of our lives, but also the ways it fails us, as in what its limits or impossibilities might be. I always like to remind my students that for every reason or instance that you argue that history is important and good, you could come up with just as many reasons why it is useless or not important. Most students articulate their thoughts on history through its importance in knowing where one came from and not making the same mistakes of the past. Those who have a more critical edge to their minds often bring in anonymous bad guys, who may manipulate history and take advantage of ignorance and give people some sliver of history that serves their interests, hoping that people will follow without knowing any better. That is always a key moment in the class where people stop th...

I’m an avid fan of the television show House M.D ., whose main character Gregory House, is a brilliant doctor who can sometimes diagnose people by simply looking at them for a moment, but who is also a misanthrope, someone who detest people, even the patients he saves. For him each disease is a puzzle to be solved and so who the person is, matters only in terms of helping him cure the illness, and so House is generally rude and sometimes cruel to his patients, as their feelings are irrelevant, since all that matters is solving why they are sick. In the second season he is asked by a patient, why he became a doctor since he clearly hates humans. House evades the question at first, but later recounts a story of when his family was stationed in Japan and a friend of his was hurt hiking: When I was 14, my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock-climbing with this kid from school. He fell got injured and I had to bring him to the hospital. And we came in through the wrong entrance a...

Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies and, Along With it, Reason and Justice Tuesday 28 December 2010 by: Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., t r u t h o u t News Analysis While much condemnation has rightly been expressed toward Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, a less-reported and potentially more sinister measure is set to take effect on January 1, 2011. This new law, which was passed by the conservative state legislature at the behest of then-School Superintendent (and now Attorney General-elect) Tom Horne, is designated HB 2281 and is colloquially referred to as a measure to ban ethnic studies programs in the state. As with SB 1070, the implications of this law are problematic, wide-ranging and decidedly hate filled. Whereas SB 1070 focused primarily on the ostensible control of bodies, HB 2281 is predominantly about controlling minds. In this sense, it is the software counterpart of Arizona's race-based politicking, paired with the hardware embodied in SB 1070's "sho...

It is the start of yet another school semester at UOG, hopefully this won't be my last there and hopefully I'll be able to get some sort of permanent position there in the next few months. But as always, putting together my syllabi for the start of the semester invariably gets me thinking about how the semester will unfold and of course, how it will end. For my Guam History classes that means thinking about the grand political status showdown I incorporate into each semester. At the close of each semester that I teach at UOG, I make my students in Guam History undertake a project called “I Chalån-ta Mo’na” which is a political status forum/debate where the class is divided into three groups each of which represents a different possible political status for Guam. They spend a few weeks ahead of time researching and preparing arguments and then come together to argue over whether statehood, independence or free association is the best choice for Guam’s future. When the project...

Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Lecture*, December 11, 1964 The Quest for Peace and Justice It is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor. Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing. I experience this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. Many of them are young and cultured. Others are middle aged and middle class. The majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet conviction...