michael lambe's scrapbook

A GOOD PLACE
Yesterday HJ introduced me to a GOOD PLACE. I’m talking about a place that emanates GOODNESS and that is filled with GOOD THINGS. I came away from this place with a sense of hope and enormous well-being. The place is the house of Kawai Kanjiro, a leading 20th century potter who was also a writer and sculptor and it’s spookily close to where I work. If you click on the pictures below you can get a better look at his works (and there is some information about them too).

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There’s further information on Kawai Kanjiro here: GOODNESS.

LIVE PAINTING
Later that evening we proceeded to Gojo Guest House Cafe for Yui Katou’s Live Painting Event, some highlights of which you can see below. The fellow getting all avant-garde with the flute is Yui’s dad.

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CLUSTER
In the news today I read that 46 nations of the world have agreed to push for a global ban on cluster bombs. America, Russia and China however are still resisting because they value military strength over human rights. Here’s why cluster bombs should be banned:

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A GINGER. NOT A WHINGER.
Former teenage dope-fiend Harry Windsor, (previously famous mostly for not looking much like his Dad) is off to Iraq. I have mixed feelings about Ginger Windsor going to Iraq. On the one hand I’m inclined to think: “Good! Now send the rest of them over there too!” On the other hand it’s a wonderful propaganda tool for the establishment, promoting all those old irrational beliefs in duty and service and the glory of a righteous war etc. You know, all those fine ideals that get good people killed or maimed every day, when they could be working and raising families and living for their country instead of dying for it. There’s a line in Brecht’s Galileo, Galileo has recanted his theories under pressure from the Inquisition, and his pupil laments:
“Pity the country that has no hero.” Galileo replies: “Pity the country that needs a hero.”

Clever that.

Hurray for the DPP! That’s literally all I have to say today.

Ironically, according to Google Analytics, I’m really not alone. “Hello!” and “Aloha!” to readers in Redmond (U.S.), Toronto, Wokingham (U.K.), Valbom (!), La Rochelle, and Takatsuki and thank you for allaying my deep and long-held suspicion that no-one was actually reading this at all.

And here are my favorite headlines today:

Donald Rumsfield has been arrested and will be shortly up before a World Court tribunal for his various and plentiful crimes against humanity.

I’m just kidding. In fact he’s merely quit. Still it’s a start I suppose.

Another glorious victory in the march towards a socialist utopia: Daniel Ortega is reelected in Nicaragua.

Peace in our time! In Nepal at least… Hurrah for Nepal!

Britney Spears goes skating after announcing divorce.

That last one would be facetious (hence the lack of a “why not learn more?” link).

So some time ago I said I’d be telling you about the Michael Franti DVD “I KNOW I’M NOT ALONE: A MUSICIAN’S JOURNEY THROUGH WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST”.

It’s good. Here’s Franti’s own introduction:

“After years of watching and reading about war in the Middle East, I began to grow really frustrated with the news; hearing generals and politicians explaining the economic cost, and the political cost of war without ever talking about the human cost of war. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live under foreign military rule, so I went to Baghdad, Israel and into the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, to hear from the people affected by it most: taxi-drivers, restaurant owners, craftsmen, nurses, doctors, poets, children, families, soldiers, and of course my personal favorite musicians. So I took some of my friends and my guitar, and a video camera and this is what I saw…”

I expect a lot of people thought he was completely mad. As his driver/interpreter Maher Al-Wahhash, made clear, what Michael Franti wanted to do (i.e. meet ordinary people on the streets) was in no way safe:

“If you want to go out, we have to go to some places where people know me… Otherwise you cannot feel safe. We can go to some places without being authorized by the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) or being authorized by some others but if you want to take the risk we can take you there… No security of course, but we are going to mix with people, locals and mixing with locals…[is] completely dangerous because you can expect at any time to be attacked, or …yeah some people may try to kidnap you and these things are happening now. This is what they brought to Iraq from overseas. This is the new freedom.”

I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate the bravery of someone with a high profile like Michael Franti, going out to meet the locals in Baghdad.

To break down barriers he decided to write a song in Arabic, but knowing he would never be able to master enough of the language he wrote a song in which one word “habibi” (meaning something along the lines of “friend” or “beloved”) is repeated over and over again. The scenes where he plays this song to both Iraqis and Palestinians (much to their pleasure and amusement) are pretty funny to watch.

He also played to the American troops, which considering the strong political message of most of his music must have made him feel quite uncomfortable. About this he said:

“This was the hardest show I’d ever done in my life… In the end I was surprised at how many of them told me that more than anything else, they just wanted to go home.”

What Michael Franti found in Baghdad was a city without basic amenities: no water, no electricity, no healthcare and also no security and no respect. His driver/interpreter spoke poignantly of his dreams for the future:

“I wish to see a secure Iraq, a peaceful Iraq, and I wish the people to get decent jobs, to make a decent living, and I wish the Iraqi people to have the power to control, to rule their country themselves and to rebuild their country themselves. I wish that the Iraqi people and the American people become really friendly and forget all about the past. I wish that we could meet again one day in the future. Enshallah.” (If God is willing)

After Baghdad the charismatic musician went on to Israel and the occupied territories where he had the opportunity to play with musicians such as the mixed Israeli/Palestinian group Sheva and to talk with both ordinary people in the refugee camps, Israeli soldiers, and the victims of both sides of the conflict. Peppered throughout the movie are some pretty telling statistics, such as these:

“Israel receives $16 million per day in aid from the U.S.”

“60% of the population living in Gaza live under the UN poverty level of U.S. $2 per day”

“Of the 4.2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, 1.4 million live in refugee camps.”

There is also of course the personal witness of Michael Franti himself and his infectious music:

“It was so amazing to see kids whose families had had their homes demolished, who’d been shot at, and who’d been beaten, whose parents were dead, who were so excited and so happy to be around music. Once again “Habibi” was a huge hit!”

“I KNOW I’M NOT ALONE” is a fascinating and moving movie. If you get the chance to, watch it.

Wow. That’s one very brave chap.As Rik Abel said to me last night now that I can embed videos I don’t need to actually write blogs at all any more. So here’s another bit of Michael Franti for you singing about something very very important. I’m watching his DVD about his trip to Iraq now so I’ll be writing about that soon.

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Here’s a nice story from Greenpeace:

“Thanks to enormous pressure from the thousands of emails and letters sent to their European headquarters by you, our supporters, McDonald’s has agreed to stop selling chicken fed on soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest… McDonald’s and other big food retailers have worked with us to develop a zero deforestation plan. The plan will also help bring an end to the land-grabbing and social injustice that is rife in the Amazon…”

You can read more here: LINK

Who said “Writing letters never achieves anything”?

Actually, if you want to be really good, take five minutes to write to KFC here:
LINK
and ask them to follow McDonalds’s lead.

Now my friend Philippe said to me this evening, “What do you think of what’s going on in the Lebanon?” and I said, “Well, they’re just bastards basically aren’t they?” And he said “Who Israel or Lebanon?” And I said, “Child-murdering Israel and the gun-running American bastards who are backing them up.”

(click to read an overview: LINK)

(click here to read how Uncle Sam has been illegally using a Scottish airport to transport child-killing bombs to Israel: LINK)

And then he said, “What do you think we should do?” And I said, “I don’t know. I feel powerless.” And so he said “Tell your friends. Keep talking about it.”

Well, here’s one simple fact: “Save The Children reports that 45% of the Lebanese dead are children, as are 200,000 of the 500,000 refugees forced to flee the bombing. (Save The Children, ‘Crisis in middle east – children hit hardest,’ July 21, 2006; LINK”

Here’s another: “The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.” (David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper, ‘US Speeds Up Bomb Delivery For the Israelis,’ New York Times, July 22, 2006)

By the way, I watched Nicolas Cage in “Lord of War” this evening.
It’s a good movie, though Cage’s dead-pan narration is a little too dead a lot of the time… It’s the story of a free-lance arms-dealer and the abysmally amoral and murderous trade he’s involved in. But at the end of the movie the point is made that the World’s biggest suppliers of child-murdering weaponry are of course, the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia and China, …who also happen to be the five permanent members of the U.N. security council. Make’s you proud, don’t it?

See reviews and trailers here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lord_of_war/

I have to tell you, it may be good for the rice, but I don’t like the long grey muggy rainy season. The long-grey-muggy-rainy season gets me down. Last week my genial colleague Kou-sensei, told me that Gion Matsuri marks the end of the rainy season. “You only have 7 days to wait” he said. The Japanese never cease to amaze me in their belief that they can tie the different seasons’ beginnings and endings down to such specific dates. Maybe they could in the past, but the weather certainly isn’t behaving this year. It rained every day through the festival and on Monday it proceeded to bucket. It bucketed all over Yamaboko-junko, (the climax of the festival in which the Gion Matsuri floats are dragged up to Yasaka-jinja). It bucketed on the floats with their precious tapestries and antique ornamentations, it bucketed on the crowds of tourists who came to watch and it bucketed on the hapless participants pulling the ginormous floats down Shijo-dori. I watched the whole thing on TV, while sipping coffee from the comfort of my room while the rain continued to bucket down outside. The TV commentators said they couldn’t remember a Yamaboko-junko that had been so badly bucketed on. It’s been bucketing down pretty continuously ever since. It was so bad this morning I thought “Sod it! I’m not cycling through this.” and took a taxi. On arriving at school, I was busy getting my final lessons of term ready, when my colleague Jules said to me “I wish we got rain days, eh.” Then I went to the office to get the key to my classroom and one of the staff told me all lessons were cancelled because of the rain. It was bucketing down see? I reckon that boy Jules has special powers.

Anyway, that’s it then. Term has ended. My last lessons were cancelled so it was a bit of a damp squib but I’m not complaining. Six weeks of (fully-paid) freedom stretch before me. Time to write? Time to study? Stay tuned.

Oddly enough, it stopped raining quite soon after lessons were cancelled. But the forecast for tomorrow: buckets.

I finally got around to seeing the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line”. It got a lot of good reviews, eh?

(see reviews here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/walk_the_line/)

But to be honest I didn’t like it. This is how it goes: haunted by the loss of a beloved sibling in his childhood, this naturally gifted singer-songwriter becomes addicted to the drugs so freely available “on the road” but finally overcomes them through blah blah blah… Wait a minute, I’ve already seen this movie! It’s called “Ray”! Admittedly, Johnny Cash did have a drug problem (and an alcohol problem – strange they edited the alcohol out of the movie). But that shouldn’t be the chief focus of his life-story. He was so much more than that. And “Wa-keen” Phoenix made him look like a big doofus too. I didn’t like that. Johnny Cash had sass. He was a chap and a half. He was hard. He was complicated. He was deeply cool. I didn’t get that impression from the movie.
Anyway, make your own minds up. Trailer here:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/walk_the_line/large.html

Comics and short stories from the Philippines here:
http://fullybookedonline.com/eventdtl.php?id=10
I like this one：
http://www.fullybookedonline.com/defiant.pdf
But then I would.

Finally, the serious stuff. I’ve been doing a bit of reading on the latest Middle-East crisis and here are the key-points I’m eager to share.

Propaganda and prejudice in our media here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10591
“The reporting we are seeing from the BBC and the other broadcasters is racist; there is no other word to describe it. The journalists’ working assumption is that Israeli lives are more precious, more valuable than Lebanese lives. A few dead Israelis justify massive retaliation; many Lebanese dead barely merit a mention.… That is why the capture of two Israeli soldiers is more newsworthy to our broadcasters than the dozens of Lebanese civilians dying from the Israeli bombing runs that have followed. The eight Israelis killed on Sunday are worth far more than the 130-plus Lebanese lives taken so far and the hundreds more we can expect to die in the coming days.”

Scary stuff here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10590
“Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.”

(I really hope that’s just a bit of leftist scare-mongering. I really do.)

Some statistics from the Lebanon here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10589

“Every airport has been attacked and rendered unfit for travel…Every port from the south to the north has been attacked by the Israelis…. Several major gas stations and electrical stations have been destroyed…. The major bridges in the country have been destroyed. 64 to be exact…. The main arteries of the country have been destroyed — from the south to the north. … This means that travel between main cities *throughout Lebanon* is physically impossible….”

And the worst part: “Homes in the South have been deliberately targeted and attacked. How can we prove intent? Several ways. First: In open fields, the bombs have hit the homes and not the fields surrounding the homes. … Entire families, entire families, have been killed thus far in the South. In separate attacks, four families — father, mother, and their children — have been massacred.”

And I think this article gives a good overview:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10581
“Israel takes entire populations hostage; it has done so with the Palestinian population and is doing the same now with the Lebanese.”