michael lambe

Message from Avaaz:
Gaza is dying — the battle has moved deep into its cities, jam-packed with 1.5 million civilians lacking food, medicine or water… But the global movement to end this war is building — as we spread the word the petition is at 430,000 signatures and rising, it has been delivered to top leaders [...]

Several days after the indiscriminate slaughter in Mumbai, it is still unclear exactly who is responsible. One BBC article has suggested that the smiling killers we have seen on CCTV, may have been less terrorists with a cause, than mere nihilistic celebrity seekers (like the pathetic creatures who shot up Columbine and Virginia Tech and [...]

Message from Avaaz:
This morning, we received this tense demand for action from from Liberata Rumumba, a refugee and women’s leader in Eastern Congo pleading for Europe to send peacekeepers to protect her people, (click below to watch).

We know how to help. Last week, Avaaz ran a hard-hitting advertisement in The Times of London, pressing [...]

Post 101 on Deep Kyoto tonight is on a really nice cafe called Cafe Kocsi.
And there are two fresh posts on Japanese Reboot; one is a review of the vocabulary studied so far and the latest is a simple kanji lesson: 瓦.
Lately I’ve been highly entertained by the newly animated version of David Rees’ Get [...]

A funny sort of a day today; my first class being unusually well behaved and even the most intransigently awkward students being extremely well-behaved and doing exactly what I told them to do, I was early on in a very good mood. But then the last class of the day, which is usually friendly [...]

This has to be the most uncomfortable summer I’ve had yet; too hot at night to sleep, and too hot in the day to eat… I spend all day indoors sitting in my underwear in front of my fan. But perhaps you don’t want to picture that. (Email me if you do). And of course, [...]

I was reading today, about the last surviving veteran of the WWI trenches, the magnificently named Harry Patch, and I was thinking that this remarkable man, at 109, and having all those memories that no-one else living has, he must be feeling pretty lonely. And here’s the thing, he never spoke about the war until [...]

Well, I’ve decided to name and shame yesterday’s rat-infested restaurant. Apparently, all restaurants are required by law to get thoroughly cleaned out once a year, so they are obviously cutting corners there. They have a problem, they are aware of it and clearly are not taking any steps to do anything about it. So, the [...]

There’s a good article up on Z-Net about the Prime Minister’s denial of responsibility for the mass rape of women during WW2. Here’s why you should read it:
Looked at in starkest relief, the democratically elected leader of the world’s second richest nation — one that currently aspires to international leadership in the UN Security Council [...]

Generally, I try to keep this blog happy, positive and upbeat but I’m not happy today and if people don’t like it, that’s too bad. This news has made me very angry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s grandfather was a war criminal who got away with it. However, as Shinzo Abe claims that convicted Class A war [...]