NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

In a few weeks I'll be in Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki attending and speaking at various events and conferences about the anniversary of the Atomic bombs dropped there by the United States in World War II and also general calls for more international solidarity and networking. After the excitement of my trip last month to South Korea, I am really looking forward to going Japan next and learning more about the issues and struggles there and of course, sharing more stories of Guam. I'm still busy to the point of going insane right now with that large project I mentioned earlier that's taking up all my time this week. I look forward to it being done so I can share with people the details. In the meantime, a recent article is below about the always tenuous and sometimes colonial relationship between Japan, the United States and Okinawa. **************************** Tokyo must answer Okinawa's cries of agony by Masanao Kano SPECIAL TO THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 2010/07/14 Tokyo an...

This article reminds me of the movie and book A Time to Kill... I want to explain more about why, other than the obvious hypothetical racial replacement strategy, whereby you ask someone to hypothetically replace the race of someone in order to reveal the ways in which things are radically different or radically similar to something else. But alas, this week is going to be spent working on a huge project, which unfortunately not only keeps me from blogging, but preparing for my classes and hanging out with Sumahi. I can't wait for this week to be over, but in the meantime, here's an article asking you to think what things would be like if "The Tea Party movement was black?" ************************** What If the Tea Party Were Black? By Tim Wise, AlterNet Posted on April 25, 2010, Printed on July 18, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/146616/ Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent hap...

My apologies but for the next week or so I won't be posting much on this blog. A big side project has just fallen in my lap and so it'll be taking up all my free time for the next week and so I doubt I'll be able to find time to post here. Its actually very frustrating writing this sort of post/non-post, because for the next week I won't be writing about things going on, but that in no way means the world stops and waits for me to finish up. Things are happening right now, which I desperately wish I could write more about. There are plenty of updates about the struggle of the Gangjeong Villagers in Jeju which I haven't had time to write about. Guam will be getting the final version of the EIS for its military buildup in the next few weeks and from the previews that people have gotten so far, it doesn't look good. The military plans to move ahead with closing off the Pagat area for part of the year. So even though I won't be here, I might use the excuse of m...

I was heartened last week to read the article that I've pasted below from two US Congressman, Democrat Barney Frank and Republican Ron Paul. Their article, which I found on the website The Huffington Post and is meant to be a call for reducing the amount of money that the US Government spends on its military. That amount is not only more than the military budgets of most other countries in the world combined, but it is also the majority of the US Federal budget in general (if you include the money spent on current wars). The presence or the absence of this conversation is one of the key indicators as to whether or not a society is militarized. If it is present and not just in faint traces, but is an actual subject of debate or societal contestation, then that means the society is not militarized. It may contain some elements or some tendencies, but the fact that militarization or issues such as war, peace and how much money the military gets are open topics means that the society a...

This Friday, July 16th my most recent art show, "Before the Storm, After the Fire," at I.P. Coffee in Mangilao, will be coming down. In its place a new exhibit by artist and editor of the Marianas Variety Mar-Vic Cagurangan, called "Naked Truth" will be opening. So Friday night from 6-8 pm we'll be having an opening/closing party, where you can meet both artists, enjoy some good food and wine and also try to pick up some of my pieces before they get stored in the trunk of my car. For this last show I divided my artwork up into different themes. When I paint things, even abstract imagery, they tend to follow a set of regular themes. So even though the artwork is abstract and open to interpretation, when I paint it and when I title it, I often end up coming back to the same sorts of themes: movies, song lyrics, puns, Guam history and so on. So when I was figuring out how to hang my show, I decided to divide them up into groups based on shared imagery or names. The...

I'd have a laugh, chinatge yu' didide', over the past few years, each time that I make an assertion about the military buildup on Guam, and someone rebuts me by saying that that's just what I want and not really the way things are. This usually happens when I say something to the effect that " ti madiside esta, este na mamta' i militat." Or "this military buildup is not already a done deal." The response I get sometimes, is that I am refusing to recognize reality, that the obvious is staring me in the face, in truth about to slam me in the face, but I am just consumed in my own ideological world that the cold, hard, searing truth is something I cannot feel or admit to. Agreements have been signed, opinion polls have been conducted, fancily dressed and not so fancily dressed military brass and Washington politicians have come through giving basically the same speech over and over again several hundred times. The DOD says their gonna do it, and eve...

I need to get used to the fact that I am both unemployed and underemployed now. I don't have a full time job right now, and the job I do have is just as an adjunct professor at UOG with no benefits and very little money. For most people who know me, but don't really know me, they assumed that the moment I returned to Guam I immediately got a job at UOG being a professor. It always comes to a shock when they hear that I might have any trouble finding a job there. Its not a matter that I hate these sorts of assumptions, gi minagahet, I wish they were true and I wish that universities did work like that, especially the university here. But even though I know these assumptions to be false, sometimes they help sustain my own fantasy of myself. For instance, this past year has basically made clear to me that if my wish is to stay on Guam, then I might not be able to support myself here by being an academic, at least not as my job. The climate at the University of Guam is such that I ...

One of Chamorro singer K.C. Leon Guerrero’s most famous songs (and he totally has so many) is Guam U.S.A, which features the very catchy and memorable line that Guam is Good/ Guam is hot/ Guam is just such a little spot . Most people, even those who don’t know anything really about Guam would agree that Guam is truly just a little spot, and that in the context of global events and world history, it doesn’t really matter that much. Even for those of us who live on Guam and love Guam, we might be inclined to agree that even if this little spot is great, it’s still just a little spot. The Guam history book Destiny's Landfall for instance has a heavy ideological load to bear in terms of what story it is supposed to tell and what its own historiographical assumptions require. The book is supposed to be about Guam, it is the most comprehensive history book written about Guam up to this day, but it is also a story about Guam and its meeting with its "destiny," which over the cou...

Below are some random photos and slices of life from my recent trip to South Korea: As if a sign of fate, my hotel in Seoul was just a block away from the South Korean consulate from Swaziland. For those who don't know I spent almost two years living there as a child. At a conference celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the agreement made by both governments of North and South Korea to pursue a path towards their reunification, there were apparently some very famous people there. As you can see from the sea of cameramen on stage shooting a row of VIPs. Although I was sitting in the front row, only one guy took a picture of me. He might of thought I was a Korean soap star. A university student, stands alone amongst a flow of constant traffic. I was told that his sign is protesting the involvement of the South Korean military in the war in Afghanistan. This is an ad for a cemetary (Pine'lo-ku). Mampos ambivalent yu' nu este. I first took a picture of it because it looked ...