Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Curry and Bingo Party

Posted on November 12, 2019 by johnrachel

Curry is of course from India.  But the Japanese put their own spin on it and have come up with quite a few of their own variations, some spicy — but not that spicy — some mild, all quite delicious, at least to this Westerners palate.  Curry is extremely easy to prepare and is a very common everyday dish, one served at school lunches, outdoor markets, festivals and other social gatherings, restaurants, certainly at home for evening dinner.  Curry here is always served with rice.  Here we only use homegrown local product, often grown and harvested by the very people in my immediate community.

Bingo I assume was imported from the U.S. — though it’s roots are in Europe — and is quite the rage here.  When I used it as a teaching tool for my English students, it made sense.  Match pictures and words.  Build a vocabulary while learning to “hear” English. 

But I soon discovered that Bingo is played all of the time here.  It’s certainly fun for all ages and a good excuse to give things away, something else Japanese love to do.  Giving gifts is like shaking hands or breathing here.  Whether it’s a social obligation, heartfelt gesture, tradition, or habit, it’s always great to be handed a special gift by another individual.  

Every year our village of Noma has their curry-bingo party in November.  Last year I won some kitchen utensils and two years ago a kite.  I can feel your envy across the vast stretch of cyberspace!

There is so much community here in Japan, at least where I live.  Maybe this isn’t the case in the big cities, but certainly here, the folks living in Noma, the neighborhood community on the eastern edge of the city I reside in, get together regularly and work on some project, celebrate a holiday, hold a ceremony, or just have a good time.  It’s very charming!  More importantly, because of all of these social affairs, I feel like I belong here, as a member of an extended family.  The regular socializing also gives everyone a stake in keeping the neighborhood safe, clean, wholesome.  Friendly smiles and greetings are the norm.

I say sometimes I feel like I’m living in a fairy tale.  But maybe what I have is just the comfortable, civilized way things should be for everyone everywhere.  Life’s not just singing solo.  A little harmony greatly improves the song and the rhythm of life.

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Life In Japan: Festival of the Portable Shrines

Posted on October 24, 2019 by johnrachel

Every year during the third week in October we have a most unique and marvelous festival here called the Festival of the Portable Shrines.

I don’t exactly know either its “purpose” or how to describe it.  Hopefully the photos and video will offer some idea what an exhilarating two days we have here in Tambasasayama, as the streets fill with colorful costumes, huge shrines either on wheels or being carried by the heartier men — many of whom are extremely inebriated on local sake — and visitors from all over who come to enjoy the festivities.

We see a lot of unfamiliar faces.  This festival coincides with the soybean harvest, and our town is known for having the most delicious soybeans in Japan.  So we see Japanese from all the surrounding prefectures — the Japanese equivalent of states in the U.S. — even from as far as Tokyo, which is over 500 kilometers (320 miles) away.  There’s also a decent mix of Westerners in town.  ALTs — Assistant Language Teachers who typically teach English in the area junior and senior high schools — converge from the entire region.  This is also the time that the exchange students arrive from Walla Walla, Washington — which is Tambasasayama’s sister city in the U.S. — to experience a two weeks concentrated dose of Japanese culture.

Here are a few photos.

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And here’s a short video compilation from just last week.

See you next year!  Bring your smiles.

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Life In Japan: Harvesting Rice

Posted on October 12, 2019 by johnrachel

First, they prepare the soil.

Then they plant the rice.

The rice grows.

Then . . . 

[ DRUM ROLL ]

They harvest the rice!

Can you feel the excitement?

Granted it’s not as riveting as World Cup Rugby. . . or watching the Oscars . . . or having Vladimir Putin drop by for lunch.

But it’s what they do here in Tambasasayama — year after year.  It’s the cycle of farming, the rhythm of the seasons, the drumbeat of life.

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Being raised in a major city, a factory town no less, I find this whole business fascinating.  Almost magical!  Detroit didn’t have any farms back then, though I hear these days there are quite a few organic gardens in the empty lots remaining after the houses are burned down. 

To really do this right requires bringing out some industrial-strength gadgetry.

I tell people I live in the middle of rice and soybean fields.  Indeed we do.  They of course rotate the crops to keep the soil full of vitality.  And throw other vegetables into the mix.

Just a few days ago, quite late in the season, they finally harvested the rice growing directly in front of our home.  As you can see in the photo below, we have a forest right behind us.  That’s my wife Masumi’s Mazuda Demio sitting out front of our place. 

She thinks it’s funny I take so many “farm photos”.  I guess it is.

 

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Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

Posted on September 22, 2019 by johnrachel

Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

There are so many answers to that question, it’s difficult to know where to begin. But here are a few right off the top of my head, based on our current foreign policy and the thinking mapped out by the truly remarkable collection of political leaders currently at the helm.  One of these real geniuses offers insights into the kind of guy he is in the above video.

Anyway, please stand at attention with your hands over your hearts, as I offer twenty-four of the reasons why we should wage war on Iran.

1)  Because we can.

2)  We have all these bombs.

3)  What good is a military if you don’t use it?

4)  We love spreading chaos!

5)  Destroy, divide, conquer.

6)  Have you ever seen Hassan Rouhani on Dancing With The Stars?  Obviously he hates our freedom and our television shows.

7)  God told us to.

8)  Israel told us to.

9)  Saudi Arabia told us to.

10)  Lindsey Graham told us to.

11)  We want to start a world war (see #2 above).

12)  We got over the Vietnam Syndrome but now we have to get over both the “Afghanistan Syndrome” and the “Syria Syndrome”.

13)  It’ll piss off Russia.

14)  It’ll piss off China.

15)  It’ll piss off Hillary Clinton because she wanted to be the one to start it.

16)  Donald Trump will get re-elected because when we’re at war we have to rally behind the president (I think it’s somewhere in the Bible: “Don’t change horses’ asses in the middle of a war.” Leviticus? Corinthians?)

17)  Hollywood needs new settings for its upcoming war movies.

18)  War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

19)  Americans love war as long as it’s NIMBY.

20)  Jared Kushner.

21)  War makes lots of money for investors, especially the already ultra-rich.

22)  It’ll hasten the Rapture.

23)  Peace is for pussies.

24)  Iranians revealed their diabolical anti-Americanism by putting their country in the middle of all our military bases.

There’s more.  But I think this is a damn good start!

You have a problem with this?  Too bad.

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Julian Assange: Lest We Forget What Courageous Journalism Looks Like

Posted on September 10, 2019 by johnrachel

New Zealand citizen journalist Suzi Dawson, herself a whistleblower who has taken political asylum in Russia to avoid persecution by the New Zealand government, listed what she considered the ten most important achievements by Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  This was in a interview with Jimmy Dore, October 27, 2018.

Here they are:

1)  “Wikileaks has been keeping the historical record intact, and is actually combating the digital loss as web pages and websites are constantly being taken down from the internet by the powers that be.  In this current paradigm they’re actually scrubbing entire websites and domains at every opportunity.  They’re trying to erase information from our living history.  And Wikileaks’ founding charter says that any information that’s at risk of censorship or deletion can find a safe harbor at Wikileaks.”

2)  “Wikileaks enables victims of persecution to have admissible evidence to fight their cases in court.  40,000 cases around the world have had Wikileaks documents submitted as evidence to the court.”

3)  “They’ve maintained a 100% accuracy record over ten years of publishing.”

4)  “Wikileaks is still publishing despite the full force of the Empire being used against them.  Intelligence agencies, financial service providers, hostile media and law fare, and of course now Julian Assange’s solitary confinement, we still see Wikileaks releases being published.”

5)  “Wikileaks has established a digital library of over 10 million documents, containing pristine datasets, the full relevance of which will only become apparent years into the future.  Every current news story can be further informed by doing a key word search to see what Wikileaks archives contain about topics or persons or places that may be relevant to that news story.”

6)  “Wikileaks has established a whole new way of doing journalism.  They also initiated the first anonymous drop boxes, which we now see that a similar technology is being used by media outlets across the globe.”

7)  “Wikileaks has become the vanguard of press freedom, always pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable in publishing.  And that is incredibly important because as they are pushing those boundaries further and further out, it allows independent media and citizen media to fill that space in between.  We can go further and do more significant things because Wikileaks is out there taking the heat for us.”

8)  “Wikileaks has published leaks on every country in the world without geopolitical bias.”

9)  “Wikileaks leaves no source behind, and not only do they go above and beyond to support their sources, they’ve actually established other organizations to support other at risk journalists and whistleblowers, such as the Courage Foundation, and we now have proven that Julian Assange was involved in the establishment of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.”

10)  “Julian saved the life of Edward Snowden, who is renowned as the greatest whistleblower of our generation, and was brought to you by Wikileaks.”

Julian Assange should be getting a Nobel Prize, not being persecuted.

What can we do to save this courageous, heroic man?  This is not just about one man, as admirable and honorable he is as a person.  This is about freedom of speech, freedom of dissent, being able to stand up to power and avoid complete and total, across-the-board repression by burgeoning corporate-state totalitarianism.  The media is already a pitiful shell of what it once was.  Silencing the Julian Assanges of the world will just accelerate the demise of public discourse built on honest investigative reporting.

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Book Review: “The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin”

Posted on September 9, 2019 by johnrachel

It takes enormous courage to write a book like this, which goes completely against the narrative promoted by America’s foreign policy and military establishments.  Courage because now any defense of Putin and Russia as actors on the world stage will not be met with reasonable, polite rebuttal and rational well-supported refutation, but personal vilification, marginalization, attacks on character and integrity, aspersions about disloyalty and lack of patriotic commitment, allegations of treachery and even sedition.  Lacking anything — e.g. facts — with which to rebut and refute the message, opponents of a balanced, objective, truthful analysis of Russian-American relations must resort to attacking the messenger.

Early in the book, Mr. Kovalik describes the process which radicalized him, what personal events opened his eyes to the barbarity and hypocrisy which has been centerpieces of America’s history from its earliest days.  His transformation occurred during a visit to Nicaragua during his college years.  He learned then to question and always be highly skeptical of the “official rationale” inflicted on the general public in the U.S., because it was often driven by the covert intent of obtaining — often manufacturing out of thin air — consent for America’s diplomatic bullying, manipulations, wanton aggressions, destructive interference, regime changes, and outright subjugation of countries across the planet.

History is the best teacher for understanding the present.  Our history, as is thoroughly explored and documented in this short but incisive volume, is riddled with false flags, misrepresentations, distortions, propaganda and outright lies, all carefully calculated to serve the real agenda of our government.  This is to provide unambiguous support for U.S. corporate interests; ruthlessly undermining any nation which dares to consider even the most diluted iteration of socialism; and punishing — all too frequently destroying — any country, often even murdering its leaders, for independently adopting policies which don’t disproportionately benefit the U.S. and honor the authority of the U.S. as world hegemon.

What has Russia under Putin done?  It put Russia’s interests first, it openly criticized the U.S. for its wanton aggression and disregard for international law, called out the U.S. for its consistent meddling in the affairs of other nations, including all too often violently overthrowing governments it doesn’t approve of, and moreover had the audacity to deploy national defense mechanisms which frees it of being blackmailed by U.S. military might.  For the U.S., which regards itself as the “exceptional” nation selected by destiny to control the world, these constitute an inexcusable affront which must be answered, a challenge which must be eradicated, even if this requires a world war which might go nuclear.

So it’s Russia bad, Putin badder.  Every imaginable and imagined accusation, typically presented as fact, is spewed out and flung at Putin and Russia.  And thus what we get as “news” these days is a childish white hats vs. black hats depiction of the momentous battle of Great Good America vs. Scary Evil Russia, a facile scenario now dubbed as the Second Cold War.

The extremes our government spokespersons and the obsequious media has gone to in order to strike fear in all of us about Russia and to incite a personal hatred for Vladimir Putin, should by themselves raise suspicions and reasonable doubts about what’s going on. But when the media is controlled by six major corporations with unshakeable deference to official government propaganda and those who fabricate it, and political leaders from both major parties who are owned by Wall Street, the big banks, the corporations, the ruling elite who obscenely profit from perpetual war, all everyday people get 24/7 is yarns about the Russian threat, Putin’s bloodthirsty desire to return to the glory days of Russia as a great power, Russian aggression, Russian invasions, Russian meddling in our otherwise perfect democracy, Russian targeted assassinations, Russian plots to subvert and destroy freedom-loving countries, Russian blame for everything from STDs to plugged toilets and family squabbles. It’s a premeditated program of brainwashing inflicted on a gullible and generally hapless American public.

The only possible pre-revolutionary antidote is thorough, unbiased investigative journalism, potent research, historical knowledge and perspective, personal insights shared with candor and clarity, all of the foregoing assembled by an author of the high caliber of Dan Kovalik, into an immensely readable and superbly informative book like The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.

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The Richest Sociopath in the World

Posted on August 27, 2019 by johnrachel

[ This article appeared almost a year ago at OpEdNews and Dissident Voice.  It was written before Jeff Bezos divorced his wife, MacKenzie, after 25 years of marriage. While the final settlement affects his total net worth, the important calculations and the overall thrust of the article are still solid.  Wealth inequality of this level is a grotesque, socially destructive artifact of capitalism.  I think I was able to capture the scale of Mr. Bezos’s wealth and mind-numbing callousness to his employees and the country which has been instrumental in helping him build his empire.  Mr. Bezos had better hope that the “camel through the eye of a needle” warning was just the mad ravings of a smelly proto-hippie wandering in the desert way back a couple millennia ago. ]

Obviously the above pie chart is a put-on.  It is well-documented that working conditions for most employees of Amazon are abysmal, dehumanizing, bordering on the abuse we normally associate with slavery.

Moreover, the median employee’s salary under Jeff Bezos’ imperial lordship is $28,446.  No one working a regular job there has paid off their credit cards and is driving to work in a Mercedes.

Jeff Bezos is referred to as The Richest Man in the World and his personal fortune, while growing by $191,000 each minute, is currently estimated at $168 billion.

So “$28,446 vs. $168,000,000,000? While I can acknowledge the simple math, I find the contrast of such numbers on a gut level difficult to grasp.

To get a handle on such inequality, let’s try approaching it from different angles.

One way to put the disparity into perspective is to recognize it takes Bezos just under nine seconds to earn what Amazon’s median worker does in an entire year.

Another is to recognize that for a worker to go through Jeff Bezos’ current personal fortune — and of course, it continues mounting at accelerating levels as I write this — at his/her current median annual income of $28,446 per year, WOULD TAKE 5,905,927 YEARS! That’s close to 6 million years!

For Jeff Bezos himself to go through his current $168 billion, assuming his earnings stopped dead this very moment — which as you and I know they won’t — SPENDING $1,000,000 A DAY, would take NEARLY 460 years. Yes, even spending $1 million a day, in the year 2475 he’d still have plenty of cash, tens of million of dollars mad money.  We can feel confident that he wouldn’t be foraging through the dumpster behind 7-11.

Now, further consider that while the $28,446 median salary is above the national poverty line for a single individual if that person is the sole breadwinner for a family of four, it is marginally above it, which is why many Amazon employees must rely on government assistance to keep from starving.

As well as calculation, I did some speculation — a simple exercise in imagination.

Apparently Bezos’ wealth generating machine is raking it in so fast, he’s currently making $11.5 million per hour … every hour … 24 hours a day … seven days a week. $11,500,000 per hour!

So here’s what I was picturing in my mind’s eye …

If for 40 hours of the 168 hours in a week, Bezos were willing to scrape by on a mere $5,840,000 per hour, he could give every one of his 566,000 Amazon employees a $10 per hour raise.  Of course the remaining 128 hours in each week, Bezos could continue earning his normal $11.5 million per hour, not having to share any of it with the pathetic slobs who work for him.

Rhetorical question: Does Jeff Bezos have any concept of what that $10 per hour increase would mean to his employees?

I’m not going to even suggest here I’m offering this for Bezos to entertain.  There are so many advantages to him both as a putative member of the human race and the employer of over a half million workers — advantages that are so OBVIOUS — if they haven’t occurred to him by now, then his brain functions in ways beyond my understanding.  For one thing, he could point to his new fig leaf of “generosity” and ask people to stop calling him a selfish prick.  Second, Amazon employees I’m sure would respond to his largesse with greater company loyalty and increased tolerance for his onerous working conditions.  And he’d still be the richest SOB on the block and could mock the pauperish Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as pitiable wannabees.

Consider . . .

The most poorly paid Amazon employee now makes $12 per hour.  The $10 per hour raise I proposed would boost those $12 per hour workers right up there with Costco employees, who make an average of $21 per hour.  And with the across-the-board $10 per hour increase, Bezos’ higher paid employees would be earning among the finest wages in the world provided by a major corporation.

And by golly, there’s a plus side to the plus side . . .

Bezos’s bold and gracious gesture would result in a public relations coup of cosmic proportions!  Amazon would no longer be demonized — well, not quite as much — by us bleeding-heart lefties as a capitalistic scourge and one-way ticket to Hell for the future of mankind, even if its environmental record is appalling and its business model generally the stuff of steroid-laced neo-feudalism.

Granted, Bezos would have to do some belt-tightening.  He’d have to watch his pennies but could probably manage it, eh?  Maybe he could skip a couple meals and do some of his own weeding at his estate.  After all, after lavishing the $10 per hour raise on all of his employees, he’d only be pulling in $1,705,600,000 per week.  I know I know!  Like me you’re probably getting all teary-eyed for the poor guy.

Let me get to the extremely anti-climactic conclusion of this lament qua analysis.

Since nothing will change until the system itself changes, meaning the one in place now that creates, incentivizes, and lionizes the obscenely wealthy — reference current holder of the Office of President of the United States of America — I can only recommend this …

We have been labeling Jeff Bezos as ‘The Richest Man in the World’.  Yet, quite honestly I don’t personally know any human, man or woman, who behaves like this gluttonous chunk of self-indulgent meat.  It actually makes me nauseous to think we’re members of the same species.

Thus, from now on let’s use the correct terminology.

Let’s call Jeff Bezos what he really is . . .

THE RICHEST SOCIOPATH IN THE WORLD.

We could probably order bumper stickers to help correct the record . . . from Amazon, of course. 

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Book Review: “The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela” by Dan Kovalik

Posted on August 5, 2019 by johnrachel

In one concise statement, Dan Kovalik sums up the criminal — if self-serving and for now effective — foreign policy of the U.S. across the planet:

“The US appears to be intentionally spreading chaos throughout strategic portions of the world, leaving virtually no independent state standing to protect their resources, especially oil, from Western exploitation.  And, this goal is being achieved with resounding success, while also achieving the subsidiary goal of enriching the behemoth military-industrial complex.”

A divided Korea, a decimated Vietnam, endless war in Afghanistan, a barely functional Iraq, a destroyed Libya, ongoing destruction of Syria and Venezuela, relentless attacks and incipient war on Iran, give us more than a glimpse into the awesome power of America’s military might, its malice and ruthlessness in projecting that power, its no-holds-barred no-moral-qualms no-body-count no-questions-asked ends-justify-the-means tactical use of genocide, its jaw-dropping hypocrisy in portraying itself as a force of good, its psychopathic exceptionalist world view which judges all other nations and their populations as dispensable, and its ultimate loyalty to a tiny autocratic ruling elite who use “democracy” as just another tool in their bag of tricks to promote absolute corporate tyranny — the framework of fascism Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism — and global hegemony.  It’s for good reason that the U.S. is now often referred to as the Empire of Chaos.

The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, as the title suggests, more specifically focuses on the horrors inflicted by the U.S. government on Venezuela.  This thorough, extremely well-researched, and fully supported exposé covers the current crises in and about Venezuela, intentionally and purposefully instigated by the U.S. to overthrow its current government and plunder the country’s rich oil reserves.  Just as importantly it offers rich and revealing historical accounts of America’s past dealings with Venezuela and almost identical scenarios with other Latin American nations, detailing the darkness and corruption that lies at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, and how that has cast a pall of oppression over the entirety of South and Central America, the nations of which have the geographical misfortune of being in America’s self-declared hemisphere of influence — read that as hemisphere of total domination and ruthless exploitation.  From Chile to Haiti to Panama to Honduras to Nicaragua to El Salvador to Colombia, we see the brutal deployment of U.S. political and military assets leaving whole countries impoverished, the poor without hope — often deprived of even food and water — and piles of nameless corpses in escalating numbers, dismissed by the U.S. government and its lapdog media as collateral damage of the Great Imperial Project. 

By the end of Kovalik’s chilling indictment of U.S. malfeasance in its war on the people of Venezuela, what is astonishing and shocking is that the U.S. is again getting away with such overt and illegal aggression, by not only using the same play book, but by using the same players.  With Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Bolton as National Security Advisor, and Elliot Abrams as Special Envoy to Venezuela, at the helm of the project to take Venezuela’s government apart and replace it with the puppet regime of the unelected Juan Guaido, we have three of the most notorious of the notorious — murderous, lying thugs — doing the dirty work.  All three have sordid histories of inciting war and orchestrating regime changes.  Abrams was indicted and convicted for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair.

The thought-provoking Plot to Overthrow Venezuela is very well-written, with a clarity, accessibility, and erudition which puts it in a class with the best works of Noam Chomsky.  The Foreword by Oliver Stone is a worthy and deserving way to get things started.  I give it the highest possible recommendation, truly one of the most engaging and informative books I’ve read in ages.

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Life In Japan: My Bike Ride to Teach English

Posted on July 25, 2019 by johnrachel

I’ve recorded what is possibly the most boring video ever made but some snoopy folks wonder if I really do live out in the country, in the middle of rice and soybean fields.  Well skeptics, here’s proof.  Sorry the camera shakes so much but maybe viewers can get some idea how incredibly beautiful it is here in rural Japan.

If you actually make it to the end of the video, you’ll see that I teach my classes in a yurt (photo above), a structure which is Mongolian in origin.  What can I say?  The Japanese love to mix and match.  Unfortunately, this one leaks in the rain, is a cauldron in hot weather, and a freezer in cold.  What I endure to spread the mother tongue!

Now I only have adult students.  But a while back I had two young sisters, ages 6 and 7, who were about to move to Guam.  Because it’s a U.S. territory, English is the predominant language and for them to attend school there required them getting up to speed.  Here are Mio and Joyce.

I also had some “guest teachers” for one class, a recently-married couple from Sweden — actually they’re German but live in Stockholm — my wife Masumi and I met couchsurfing a few years back.  They came to Japan and since their English is so good, I paired them up with my adult students for practice.

That’s the story.  I ride my bike to and from class whenever it’s not raining.  Many of the photos appearing in other essays at this site were taken on that bike ride.  I frankly never get tired of riding anywhere here in our traditional, rural town.  There’s still a lot to see and discover.  People I hardly know often wave.  Smiles are our common language.

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Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Barbecue

Posted on July 16, 2019 by johnrachel

Notice something about the barbecue in the photo? 

There are two things. 

Typically in the U.S. barbecuing is open flame, either over wood, charcoal, or with more sophisticated high-tech grills, over gas.  In Japan, it can be any of those, but just as often barbecuing is done with a hot plate, as shown.  Conveniently, they have hot plates for indoor barbecuing, both at home and at restaurants. 

We own a high-temperature electric griddle so we can barbecue in the middle of winter or during a typhoon without filling the house with smoke or being asphyxiated. 

Secondly, I’m used to seeing mounds of meat and only meat.  Yes, they also barbecue mounds of meat here: Unbelievably delicious beef, pork and sausages, though rarely hamburgers and hot dogs.  But the Japanese also love to barbecue just about anything else that can be barbecued!  The volunteer chef above is “barbecuing” — actually stir-frying — noodles with cabbage.  Later, he removed the plate and open-grilled the entire range of items for the day’s feast.  Corn, squash, onions, eggplant, potatoes, different varieties of mushrooms, garlic cloves, squid.

It seemed odd to me when I first arrived.  Now it makes total sense.  Barbecued vegetables are fantastic!  And don’t get me started about squid.  Squid is one of those things I thought was completely weird before I moved here.  Squid and octopus.  Now I’m totally addicted.

We have a village barbecue at our community center every year in the middle of July.  The neighborhood organization pulls out all the stops.  A splendid time is had by all!

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