Then and Now

This is a photograph of Asakusa taken a few years ago.

This is what it looked like in 1934.

Pretty cool.

Thursday Post

Police in Ottawa at first arrested two men suspected of plotting terrorist acts. The number has now grown to six:

The RCMP identified six suspects on Thursday it said had plotted a terrorist attack in Canada. One was also accused of financing the purchase of weapons to be used against Canadian Forces.

All are Canadian citizens, the RCMP said.

The case is the latest indication that Canada has a problem with “homegrown extremists,” a term that refers to Canadians who have become so radicalized by al-Qaeda’s ideology that they want to commit terrorist violence.

There has been some condemnation:

The Muslim Canadian Congress expressed “shock” at the developments, but also commended RCMP for the operation.

“Thank God these men were stopped before they could carry out their alleged plot,” said vice-president Salma Siddiqui.

The organization warned, however, that until Canada’s Muslim leadership unequivocally denounces the doctrine of armed jihad, Wednesday's terrorism arrests will not be the last. Radical figures are becoming “heroes,” Ms. Siddiqui said, and leaders in the Muslim community have a duty to diminish them.

More can be done:

Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, said yesterday’s arrests felt like “deja vu,” and blasted mosque leadership for failing to recognize the legitimate threat of homegrown extremism, even after a series of convictions in the Toronto 18 case. The mosque establishment, Mr. Fatah suggested, “keeps on saying that everything is safe, but it isn’t.”

Total ignorance:

But Scarborough imam Aly Hindy — who still believes too many people were rounded up the Toronto 18 case, and most meant no harm to Canadians — derides the “so-called war against terrorism,” suggesting the threat is largely exaggerated.

“We don’t have this feeling of any danger. We feel very safe,” he said.

Total vindication:

In a speech in Toronto on Aug. 9, when he would have already been briefed on the suspected Ottawa group, Minister Toews said he was increasingly concerned about the radicalization taking place in Canada...



But what we are seeing here is not about disagreement and debate. Our concern is with extremist ideologies that lead individuals to espouse or engage in violence. These individuals reject the values on which our country is based, and they must be stopped.”

Strong words. Use some muscle to back it up.



For some people, it's all about them:

News of the arrest of two alleged terrorists in Ottawa has some local Muslims and the police chief concerned about the impact on Muslim residents of the capital.

But others are not concerned, and some said Muslims should denounce terrorism.

Naeem Malik, president of the Ottawa Muslim Association, is concerned about the potential for a backlash.

He's hoping that there won't be a repeat of the days after the terror attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001, when Muslims were called names and told to go back to their "country of origin."

Nazira Tareen of the Muslim Women's Association said Muslims have worked hard for many years to build a peaceful community, "and we don't want these people who we do not know to come here and give us a bad name."

The RCMP and Ottawa police are planning a meeting with local Muslim leaders to discuss the potential for a backlash, Ottawa Chief Vern White said.

But Abdul Hakim Moalimishak, director of the Ottawa Islamic Centre, said Canadian Muslims have shown themselves to be patriotic and said, "I truly believe that Canadian society knows the difference between religious communities and individuals. I think they can separate that, so I'm not really that worried."

What total rot!

How is it that a single group can be so preoccupied with threats, real or imagined, that they attempt to supercede the very offending action of- as many will desperately point out- a few individuals? Did they forget that these individuals, radicalised in mosques, community centres and on the Internet, formulated a plan that would have killed or maimed innocent people? Not to mention the complete xenophobia exhibited by paranoid individuals in thinking that Canadians would snap and become violent thugs. I have yet to see that occur. As Mr. Moalimishak said, most Canadians don't think that way. This self-centred, self-serving attitude is grating as it is offensive. If Muslim groups are worried about this unlikely backlash, stop potential terrorists. Also, get acquainted with the country they live in, not just the crap that people are willing to unload on others.

Slavery in Saudi Arabia:

A Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid after she complained of a too heavy workload by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead, officials said on Thursday.

Nearly 2 million Sri Lankans sought employment overseas last year and around 1.4 million, mostly maids, were employed in the Middle East. Many have complained of physical abuse or harassment.

L.T. Ariyawathi, a 49-year old mother of three, returned on Friday after five months in Saudi Arabia.

Her family only realized what had happened to her when she complained of pain and they took her to see the doctor, Foreign Employment Bureau officials said.

"The landlord and the wife of the landlord hammered 24 nails into her when she complained of the heavy workload," Kalyana Priya Ramanayake, media secretary of the Foreign Employment Bureau, told Reuters.

Ariyawathi has been taken to hospital for surgery to remove the nails, which according to the maid were hammered in when they were hot.

X-rays showed one- to two-inch nails in her hands and legs, with one over her eyes, officials said.

The Foreign Employment Bureau is consulting the Attorney-General while the Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry is to take the matter up with the Saudi government, officials said.

We can re-build him.

Sarah Palin relaxes in a bubbly bath of total rightness:

No, the ex-Alaska governor/ex-Republican vice-presidential nominee wasn’t running for office herself. But the candidates she threw her weight behind all did well, often pulling off upsets....


At the very least, the results mean party bigwigs are going to have to take Palin seriously, rather than dismissing her as a right-wing whacko with big hair. She’s got influence and that’s something they understand.

Remember when people thought she was a total ditz and had no clue what she was doing? I'm sure they do, too, but won't admit it.


On August 26th, 1910, in Macedonia, a future angel of mercy was born:

On Aug. 26, 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojakhiu was born of Albanian parents in the town of Skopje, Macedonia.

"By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus," is how she would describe herself.

Mother Teresa, as the world came to know her, is being honoured by millions today on the centenary of her birth. Not just by the Catholic Church, which already has declared her to be in heaven, and honoured with the title "blessed." The Peace Bridge between Buffalo, N.Y. and Fort Erie, Ont., will be illuminated in blue and white, the colours of the order of religious sisters she founded, the Missionaries of Charity. More than 4,000 strong upon Mother Teresa's death 13 years ago, they already had become the largest missionary order of women in the Church -- and this at a time when religious orders were collapsing the world over....

In 1952, Mother Teresa found a woman dying in the streets, half-eaten by rats and ants, with no one to care for her. She picked her up and took her to the hospital, but nothing could be done. Realizing that there were many others dying alone in the streets, Mother Teresa opened within days Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for the dying. In the first 20 years alone, over 20,000 people were brought there, half of whom died knowing the love of the Missionaries of Charity. Nirmal Hriday is where one dying man, lying in the arms of Mother Teresa after being plucked from the gutters and bathed and clothed and fed, told her, "I have lived like an animal, but now I am dying like an angel."

The love she must have had to do all that.

How would one feel about an art exhibit featuring Nazi propaganda posters without an explanation as to their purpose or their consequence? This is just as unbelievable:

If the painting Kim Jong-il, The Supreme Commander Of The Korean People's Army, Deeply Concerned Over The Soldiers' Diet were all one had to go on, one would assume that Kim Jong-il is indeed deeply concerned about his soldiers' diets.

Inspecting a humongous piece of fish, the leader of North Korea smiles as two cheerful chefs and a military aide look on with admiration. In reality, of course, Kim Jong-il does not seem to be all that concerned about the nourishment of his military--with 1.2 million men under arms, the fourth largest standing army in the world. Numerous visitors to the Demilitarized Zone along the Korean peninsula's 38th parallel have noticed that the North's soldiers are shorter, skinnier and weaker of frame than their southern counterparts.

The idea of art serving an end beyond the stimulation of the visual senses informs the exhibit Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, currently on display at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art (MAK) in Vienna. The giant, fluorescent-coloured fish picture is but one of 100 paintings and posters in the first exhibition of art from the hermit kingdom to be opened to the outside world. It's all possible thanks to the co-operation of the National Gallery in Pyongyang and the Paektusan Academy of Architecture. Both institutions, like everything in North Korea, are state-run.

Viennese museum officials have been at pains to deny that there is any political motive behind the exhibit. Their mission is merely to provide a window into a society about which Westerners know very little. " Flowers for Kim Il Sung should in no way be viewed as a political statement, but rather purely as a unique opportunity to examine the idealizing art of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which is hardly known at all," says Peter Noever, director of the MAK, who was inspired to mount the show on a visit to Pyongyang seven years ago. "With this showing at the MAK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has broken through its isolation -- at least in terms of artistic production."

But a visit to the exhibit and a survey of the accompanying press materials and programs designed around it paints a different picture. Flowers for Kim Il Sung contains no works from before the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948. It is not, as its promoters contend, a sampling of North Korean art, but a display of propaganda in service to the late Kim Il Sung and his son. By presenting it uncritically, the Vienna museum is subtly legitimizing the world's cruelest regime.

Take the short essay by Rudiger Frank, professor of East Asian economy and society at the University of Vienna, published in a pamphlet for an upcoming symposium entitled Exploring North Korean Arts. Frank decries the "picture produced by our media" of North Korea, which he claims "is limited to news about famine, human rights violations and a highly militarized state that defies attempts by the USA and its allies to prevent it from possessing nuclear weapons." (Apparently, nearly two decades' worth of condemnations of the North's blatantly illegal nuclear weapons program by the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency -- both of which have headquarters just a few miles from the MAK -- are nothing more than the result of American machinations.) Frank claims that Juche -- the Marxist-cum-personality cult ideology founded by Kim Il Sung, which stands alongside Muammar Qaddafi's Green Book and Mao Zedong's Little Red Book as a classic in the dictator-worship genre -- "puts the human being at the centre and argues that with the right determination, anything can be achieved."

Moral relativism permeates Frank's analysis, which whitewashes the regime's internal repression and foreign aggression. "We know that reality is never the purest white or the darkest black," he writes, something that the starving masses of the North Korean countryside might dispute were they given the opportunity. Of the aftermath of the Korean War -- a conflict precipitated by a Sovietbacked invasion across the 38th parallel by the Communist forces of Kim Il Sung, resulting in over 2 million civilian deaths and the world's most heavily militarized border-- Frank writes blandly, as if there had been no responsible agent: "During the Cold War that ensued, [the Soviet Union and the United States] supported political forces that shared their respective ideals and interests."

As to the causes of the present political stalemate, he is hesitant to say anything remotely critical of the leaders who have ruled North Korea in Stalinist fashion for six decades. "Despite hard work by its people, recovery has been slow. Natural disasters, political and management decisions, and a hostile external environment have all served to aggravate the situation."

If Flowers for Kim Il Sung depicted North Korea as it actually is -- with its forced labour camps, crushing political conformity, politicized starvation campaigns, international brigandage and hostage-taking, illicit nuclear proliferation to fellow rogue states, and so on--it would not be so objectionable. The MAK is counting on visitors to possess independent knowledge of this reality and to realize that the exhibit wouldn't exist at all unless the sponsors had been willing to adopt a "see no evil" attitude toward the mercurial North Korean government. "I think we're all aware of the situation in this country as far as we know," Bettina Busse, the curator of the exhibit, told me.

Read the whole thing.


There have been many arguments about art and morality, particularly art used as propaganda, and the moral duties of an artist to portray the truth. Art is art. It either edifies or repulses. The moral duty of each person should transcend his profession. Is an artist any less culpable if he willingly paints propaganda for a tyrant? Granted, he is not the tyrant himself but he is aiding a monster. Why MAK would choose to exhibit these paintings with their gaudy colours and duplicitous tone without context points to a moral rather than aesthetic failing (though the paintings are dreadful). No one is asking for a vociferous condemnation of the Kim dynasty, only that the curators remind their patrons that the paintings are propaganda from a Stalinist state and let the patrons glean from them what they will.

And now, a kitten and monkey. Enjoy the cute companionship.

What a Coincidence

Do you see a trend here?

The Cordoba Project is partially being promoted as a monument to the three thousand who perished in the World Trade towers that fateful September morn. Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, maintains that Muslims associated with the Cordoba Initiative intended only "to look at the legacy of 9/11 and do something positive." Khan claims the American Society for Muslim Advancement represents moderate Muslims who want "to reverse the trend of extremism and the kind of ideology that the extremists are spreading."

In addition to portraying it as a memorial bridge between faiths, defenders of the mosque maintain that building a house of worship on private property is an exercise of the constitutional right that grants freedom of religion to all Americans.

The site where three thousand perished is revered and consecrated by the blood of the dead. Regardless of "moderate Muslim" intentions, Americans view the site of the 9-11 massacre as sacredly significant. In essence, lower Manhattan is a burial ground where the unearthed remains of many still reside.

Muslims who insist on placing a mosque so close to holy ground, which would not exist but for the murderous aggression committed by Muslim warriors, is eerily reminiscent of acts of dominance carried out from age to age by Islamic conquerors.

In 630 AD, Muslims captured Islam's holiest city, Mecca. It was there that a mosque was erected at the Ka'aba on the site of a building built by Abraham, the Judeo-Christian Old Testament father of faith. Muslims honor Patriarch Abraham for siring desert-dweller Ishmael, son of slave woman Hagar. Muslims claimed Abraham for Islam by building a mosque around the original Abrahamic structure, encircling the building and calling it the Masjid al-Haram.

In the 7^th century, when Islam triumphed over Damascus, the Church of Saint John the Baptist (believed to enshrine the head of the baptizer) was destroyed and replaced with a mosque. Legend has it that "Under the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid the church was demolished ... [and] Al-Walid himself initiated the demolition by driving a golden spike into the church."


Most notably, the struggle for religious dominance continues between the Muslims and the Jewish seed of Isaac on what was once the Jewish Temple Mount, site of Solomon's Temple. The Muslim descendants of Ishmael, after conquering Jerusalem in 638 AD, turned the temple into a Muslim shrine. The infamous holy place called the Dome of the Rock is situated in close proximity to the highly revered Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Around 700 AD, in Cordoba, Spain, after Muslims conquered the Visigothic kingdom, Emir Abd ar-Rahman I took possession of the Church of St. Vincent, and for the next two centuries, what was once a Christian church was transformed into the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

Before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia was the "center of Eastern Christianity." The Ottoman conquest initiated the "era of Islamic worship in the holy structure, which Mehmed II converted into a mosque immediately after his conquest."

Laughing At You

Prejudices are what fools use for reason. – Voltaire

All the Catholic girls, sit down. Remove any liquids from the vicinity of your computer.


What if someone told you that Catholic husbands rule the house with an iron rod?


Yeah, I read something like that and I thought: “Wow. Does this person have a brain stem?”

Maybe.

It’s more than likely they can’t read anything at all.

Case in point.

Ask a housewife and she might tell you her husband is the head of the family but she is the brains. It makes sense. Who spends the money the husband earns? Who anticipates every need? Managing a budget for an entire household isn’t a job for a total doofus. Aside from managing the budget, the woman of the house has other things (job, kids, ect.). That’s the real world. Whoever doesn’t get it is either single or has been living under a rock.

What the good monsignor in the linked article has been trying to impart is the theological aspect of family hierarchy. No one likes the word “hierarchy” because it conjures up images of iron-fisted rule. Everyday hierarchy is more the guy who pays the bills, takes the hits and makes the hard decisions. People who have trouble with hierarchies secretly wish they could kiss this guy because it saves them the agony of thinking a problem through and solving it. Anyway, the marital hierarchy- if it could be called that- is more like a partnership or, as Saint Paul put it , the merging of two into one:

Marriage Like Christ and the Church

22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.

24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;

29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,

30 because we are members of His body.

31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.

32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

See that? Nowhere does it say: “the husband is the boss or else”. There is the plea for co-operation in order to live harmoniously (check Confucius though his attitudes are far more draconian). If anything, there is more pressure on the husband than on the wife. Husbands have to love their wives as Christ loved the Church AND GAVE UP HIS LIFE FOR IT. Read it if you don’t believe me. A wife has to respect her husband; the husband has to take a bullet for the wife. In reality, that’s not a fair exchange but it’s one that someone is willing to live with. Things one does for love, I guess.

So why do people blather on with unsubstantiated nonsense? They do it because, quite simply, they are at a good place with their base ignorance and bigotry. It takes a lot of work to hate. It fills up a hole that Wicca, dog pictures and dreary office cubicles can’t. It’s absolutely nonsensical to even believe that Christians- especially Catholics- live under some sort of theocratic Iron Curtain. But just as the real Iron Curtain was a verboten topic for champagne socialists and Islamofascism is not even uttered by leftists, looking at reality takes work and understanding. For a pet hate, that won’t do.

So, if one is bent on disproving this post in its entirety, fine. I don’t think you can but if you’ve got the free time, go for it. Just keep in mind, you’re wasting the precious gift of life for no other reason than spite. And that’s pretty sad.

Stopped Before They Start

I should probably comment on this:

An Alberta elementary school is taking the concept of specialization to a completely new level. At R.J. Hawkey Elementary School, students heading into Grade 2 will be expected to select a "major" that defines the focus of their education for the next three years.

These majors include: the arts, sports, scientific inquiry and humanitarian/environment. Teachers are required to tailor the provincial curriculum to match these specialty areas. Thus, students in the humanitarian/ environment stream can expect to spend a lot of time in math calculating average recycling rates while sports stream students pore over team statistics.

The problem with this approach is it inevitably leads to a further erosion of academic standards. While it may sound exciting at first for students to have their personal interests reflected in every school subject throughout the day, the novelty will quickly wear off when reality sets in.

In order for students to become proficient in basic academic skills such as reading, writing and mathematics, they need to spend time specifically focused on these skills. Allowing students some flexibility in the books they read in class is one thing -- gearing their entire learning experience around a single theme is another. It is difficult to picture how this can be done without watering down academic standards...

The reality is that many, if not most, students learn best in a school environment where they receive focused academic instruction in the core academic subjects. In other words, let science be science and math be math.

Why not let students major in a particular field when they enter university, as it has been done before?

The purpose of elementary and secondary education is to prepare students for the real world. Making them well-rounded individuals not only gives them a survey of skills necessary for life but also gives them time to develop a passion for something and a goal for the future. An eight year old's dream to be a hockey player might be dashed by an injury or swept aside to pursue a career in medicine as he turns eighteen. Why groom him for only one thing when he might not be able or- perhaps- willing to make a living out of it? Not only would this proposed 'majoring' limit the skills he could potentially develop, it could also veer him into a corner from which it would be difficult to escape. Peoples' attitudes, pursuits and passions change throughout life. Just like the eight year old would-be hockey player, a student at R. J. Hawkey Elementary School might just decide to chuck his environmental studies for something else. Where would he go from there? To another school that taught the basics- math, writing and reading. If only educational standards would rise so that a student would be prepared once he reaches post-secondary age. No student poised to enter university shood wright like dis, yo, lol (I'm not making this up- we've thrown writing skills in the dustbin, much to our eternal shame).


If we are insistent on having elementary school students 'major' in something, then let that be a private pursuit. What can the parents do to encourage a child to learn or develop a skill? There has been enough effort pushing kids into sports or toddler fashion shows so that the parents may vicariously live through their soon-to-be burned out offspring but what about other things? Learning a language, seeking out help for math, art classes, playing the piano- there should be a place for these things to be taught and it should be worth someone's while. Sending a child to such classes cost. A tax credit for these activities, for example, would be a boon to parents eager to expand their children's minds.


Restricting the focus on one thing is counter-productive. It is failing to provide students with what they need not only live but also in allowing them to set goals for themselves. Choosing a path may seem easy when you don't know what lies ahead. It is quite another to bottleneck a path for someone.

Kim Jong-Il Is a Fat, Evil Man

Don't believe me?

The 20,000 defectors who have escaped to South Korea offer the most graphic and grim glimpses of life in austere, impoverished and isolated North Korea.

They talk of hunger and deprivation; of torture and fear; of constant suspicion and endless surveillance, and of their enduring desire to escape.

Kim Mi-ran, a 50-year-old mother of three children who are still in North Korea, says she first fled to China in 1998 when famine gripped the country and her family was starving.

There, she was sold for 7,000 yuan (about $1,000) as the bride of a disabled and mentally retarded Korean-Chinese man, 20 years her elder. When she threatened to turn herself and everyone else in the family in to the police, she was allowed to leave.

But the woman kept getting caught and repatriated to North Korea, where she was jailed, interrogated and beaten before being released, only to try to escape again.

"North Korean women live like a bird in a cage in China," she told a conference on North Korean human rights in Toronto yesterday.

"They don't even have the status of a stray dog. Some are sold into marriage because they want a bowl of rice. Others are forced into prostitution or become sex slaves or are simply taken advantage of."

Ms. Kim, who spent a total of four years in prison for trying to flee, insists her year in solitary confinement -- because someone had reported seeing her praying in prison--was the worst time of her life.

"To survive people had to eat what they could catch ... frogs, grasshoppers, insects ..."

Awakened each day at 5 a.m., she had to sit still on the edge of her bed for five hours before being interrogated. If she moved or glanced at her guards, they slapped and beat her.

Interrogations, conducted for hours, were done with her kneeling on the floor, with her hands tied behind her back. "They kicked my sides and breast," she said. "I couldn't even feel the pain because I was losing my mind." She tried to commit suicide by starving herself, but was dragged from her cell and force-fed.

Finally, she was transferred to a regular prison for three years, before being released in February 2007 and told to return to her hometown. "But I walked from Hyesan City for a month and escaped to China," she said. Over the next year, she made her way to South Korea via Burma and Thailand.

All of this while the Dear Leader- whose demise could lead to a power vacuum- feasts:

A fat man in a country frequented by famine, Dear Leader has bought more top-of-the-line Hennessy cognac than anyone else in the world; imported "pleasure squads" of Swedish blondes to satisfy his lust; and, supposedly, injected himself with the blood of virgins to stay young and healthy.

The battle for power after Kim Jong-Il's death would be between his son, Kin Jong-Un, the military and the political hangers-on. The ensuing bloodbath and confusion will lead to more refugees struggling to get to South Korea where they may be recognised as citizens. This is why it is important to act now.


But will the South Koreans accept reunification or let North Korea subsist as its country? While living in South Korea, I posed this question to Koreans many times. The default answer was always reunification. Reunification would be an expensive and socially awkward maneuver. It would be expensive to rebuild a backward economy and acclimatise the North Koreans into the twenty-first century. The Koreans, I found, are not patient. Sometimes, their pity for North Korea went only so far. Of, course, living in poverty and terror was horrible but actually having North Koreans in their backyard was too much to bear.


However they may feel about it, it is their problem and they had better find a way to fix it.

Friday Post

A recent poll suggests that sixty percent of Canadians believe Tamil migrants who arrived off the coast of British Columbia should be returned:

Send them home and use the Navy if necessary is the message coming from a new poll on the Tamil boat people issue.

By a margin of five to one, Canadians say the government shouldreject the almost 500 would-be refugees from Sri Lanka who arrived last week.

The Leger Marketing poll of 1,500 people, released exclusively to QMI Agency, was conducted from Aug. 2 to Aug. 4 as the ship travelled towards the British Columbia coast.

Asked which statement best described their own opinion on what should be done with the ship, which may include members of the banned Tamil Tiger terrorist group, 60% agreed with the statement: "They should be turned away - the boat should be escorted back to Sri Lanka by the Canadian Navy."

Just 17% agreed with the statement: "They should be accepted into Canada as political refugees."

A significant number, 20%, said they did not know which answer to choose and 4% did not answer.

Alberta ranked highest with 74% of respondents there saying send the boat back and just 11% saying let them stay, while Quebec was the second highest with 64% opting to send the boat back and 15% saying the passengers should stay.

One pundit quips:

There’s a poll out that shows Canadian have turned into hard-hearted, immigrant-hating SOBs.

The poll, which you can read about here, found that Canadians, by a margin of five-to-one, would take the 490-odd Tamils who floated up on the MV Sun Sea a week ago and fire them straight back to Sri Lanka. Overall, 60% agreed with the statement, “They should be turned away – the boat should be escorted back to Sri Lanka by the Canadian Navy.”

So intense is the anti-Tamil sentiment that people in Alberta and Quebec actually agreed on something, for the first time since … well, I’m trying to think of something they’ve ever agreed on, and I’m drawing a blank, so maybe this is the first time ever. Anyway, Alberta topped the Tamil-hate list with 74% of respondents urging they be shipped home (against just 11% willing to let them stay), with Quebec in second place (64% anti-Tamil bigots, 15% compassionate Canadians.)

Clearly this is a profound moment. The traditional notion of Canada as a caring, open-hearted country has died and we’ve turned into east Texas. Get the rope, boys, we got here that needs stringin’ up.

What inflammatory nonsense! Perhaps Canadians are tired of an immigration system that fails its citizens and the people for whom the system is meant to protect. The article goes on to extrapolate the current wave of discontent but even the beginning of the article is inflammatory. How can caution be racist? Would we be willing to turn back an individual proven to be a criminal after he has been living in the country for years? How much good will would that generate for the next legitimate immigrant when he arrives?


Americans still associate Islam with violence. What would give them that idea?


China, the un-paragon of current environmentalism, believes popular ideas of "carbon footprints" and the like are hooey. China is also a filthy country. Discuss.


If Rob Ford's past bad behaviour is appalling, he should definitely be the new mayor of Toronto. After all, George Smitherman is always a jerk and jerks and Toronto seem to go hand-in-hand.


(and no, I'm not apologising for this. Yes there are some tremendous people in Toronto and there are also total jackholes and the stench of vile bleeding-heart liberalism and all the muck that goes with it. Visit Alberta and Tennessee.)


When dogs won't do the trick, bears will.


The ambulance-chaser after Ezra Levant (RE: HERO, CAPE, AWESOME) has been ordered to turn over the computer with which he created false personae in attempts to entrap people with whom he disagreed:

A judge has ordered anti-hate lawyer Richard Warman to turn over a laptop computer he used to create false personas on far-right websites, so that an independent expert can search it for evidence that Mr. Warman authored a racist comment against a Canadian senator.

In a ruling stemming from Mr. Warman’s libel suit against free-speech activist Ezra Levant, Master Donald E. Short of the Ontario Superior Court ordered that a “mirror image” of the computer’s hard drive be searched for any data about the names “Pogue Mahone,” “Axetogrind,” “Lucie,” “Mary Dufford” and “Dave McLean,” names Mr. Warman gave when registering with controversial websites to monitor online racism and prepare complaints of hate speech.

“Lucie” refers to Lucie Aubrac, a hero of the French Resistance. Pogue Mahone means “kiss my arse” in Gaelic.

The computer must also be searched for a list of words taken from the racist comment, posted on Freedomsite.org in 2003 by a person identified as 90sAREover.

Mr. Warman denies writing it and hired an expert whose analysis concluded that he did not. Mr. Levant criticized that report over the choice of search terms.

Parenting at its finest:

A Texas teenager who broke curfew is headed for a reluctant adventure in babysitting.

Robert Rausch placed an advertisement offering his daughter's free babysitting services in the community newspaper in Southlake, a wealthy suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth that is home to business leaders and professional athletes.

The advertisement names Rausch's 16-year-old-daughter and says, "Want a FREE BABYSITTER for a night out?" It explains that she is in trouble for missing her curfew and offers 30 hours of free babysitting, KXAS-TV reported.

Rausch says he wanted to discipline his daughter and help others at the same time. And it appears his daughter has already learned a lesson. She says she won't violate curfew again or throw any more late-night parties.

That's how it's done.

All Is Vanity

Imagine for a moment Western civilization decided to stop vicariously living their lives through vain, insipid celebrities with no sense of shame and whose views on major issues are as informed and well thought out as a lemming that thinks it will land on its feet once it jumps off of a cliff. Imagine popular magazines interviewed people who really matter. Are there gaming magazines monitoring the level a leukemia-stricken child has attained in a video game? Do fashion magazines note how a cancer researcher accessorizes for work in a lab? Are there entertainment magazines approaching an American historian for insight into making an historically accurate film on early American history?

There should be.

Mid-week Post

House Speaker and resident twit Nancy Pelosi calls for an investigation of mosque opposition:

"There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded," she said. "How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City." (h/t Kristinn)

Calls to investigate the funding for those proposing the $100 million "Cordoba House" have fallen on deaf ears, though, as New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg has described such an investigation as "un-American."

Is the offensive debutante going to ask where the money to build the Cordoba House is coming from?



Fast facts:

- the Cordoba House (the proposed mosque near Ground Zero) is so named after the capital of the Ummayid Caliphate between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.


- the twin towers of the World Trade Centre were destroyed on September 11th, 2001 when ten hijackers- Muslims from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia- flew two jets into their sides. Mohamed Atta, the terrorists' ringleader from a wealthy family, wanted to die and be buried as "a good Muslim".


- founder of the Cordoba House project and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf declared that American policies were "an accessory to the crime that happened" (referring to the September 11th attacks)


- the building for the planned mosque was purchased by a Muslim-run real estate developer


- Saudi Arabia funds many overseas mosques


- the purpose of the proposed mosque is to inspire "tolerance" and "forgiveness".


- forgiveness would require openly admitting an offending act


- according to the Koran, "Allah does not forgive idolators"


- tolerance and toleration are two different things and neither have any true substance historically or in the Koran


- Saudi Arabia does not recognise freedom of religion


- one poll suggested that sixty-one percent of New York state residents oppose the building of the controversial mosque with the chief respondents (73%) being Catholic


- not all Muslims support the building of the mosque


Moving on....


Canadians want better healthcare without the taxes. Yes, it's called private healthcare.

Canadians aren’t keen to pay more out of their own pockets to help the country cope with rising health-care costs, nor are they calling for governments to pump more money into the system. Instead, a majority of Canadians think efficiencies should be found in the existing system, with not a penny more thrown in the pot.

Those are the findings of a new Ipsos Reid poll released Wednesday that asked Canadians how governments should keep up with the growing tab for health care without raising taxes.

The majority of Canadians, 61%, said focusing on finding more efficient ways to deliver health care is their preferred option, while 28% said a bigger piece of the tax-dollar pie should be devoted to health care, which could mean cuts in other government services.

Ipsos Reid is a private poll service, not a public one, the way Stats Can is.


Premier Dalton McGuinty yesterday issued a mea culpa over the government's handling of the controversial "eco fees," just hours after Ontario's environmental watchdog released a report critical of the province's hazardous waste diversion system.


Yep.


Canadian Sikhs want to improve their public image after a few of their number killed three hundred and thirty-one people.


Australian PM Julia Gillard believes that Australia should be a republic in the event the Queen abdicates (not bloody likely) or dies. I think Canada should be a republic. I was made to understand the issue was thrown out in 1999 referendum because Australians are fond of their constitution. Hhmmmm...

A dingo ate your republic idea.

Inuit Anglicans rebuild their church in an homage to Inuit design. That's nice.

A conference on North Korea is going on in Toronto now.


Aaaaahhh.... luxuriating in a bath of total vindication:

Letter-writer Khalil Jessa claims that "Muslims should not have to apologize for or collectively condemn the acts of 9/11 any more than anyone else." Stephen Harper apologized to Native Americans and Japanese Canadians even though he was not personally responsible for any wrongdoing to either. The United States Senate last year apologized for slavery and racial segregation though no one there has owned a slave since 1865. Germany has been apologizing to Jews for over 60 years even though the majority of the population wasn't around during the Holocaust, much less responsible.

As the people closest ideologically to the 9/11 terrorists, it is most certainly the responsibility of Muslims to condemn their acts, if not outright apologize.

And:

What Canada does letter-writer Ron Brown live in? I lived in the United States and England during consecutive liberal prime ministers and at no time did our country occupy a "prideful place on the international stage." Canada was thought of as a minor player at best, a poor relation at worst -- if it was thought of at all. Not until Stephen Harper took the reins did Canada achieve any sort of "prideful place" internationally.

There's more.

SCORCH!!!

Did you know that the Battle of Shiloh was fought in Tennessee? Go there to learn more.


Did you know that the Banff Springs Hotel is alleged to be haunted? Go there and see for yourselves.

Morons

I will preface this post by saying these people are damn lucky to be total tools in a country like Canada where bureaucratic stupidity extends to the population.

Case in point:

I'm getting a little tired of all those right-wing ranters who seem so attracted to your Letters page. I am one of those "bleeding heart liberals" who they so despise, and am damn proud of it. I support the long-form census -- yes it's intrusive -- because it provides vital information for our social programs. I support immigration because that's what we all are, except for our First Nations people. I support the gun registry because every cop in the country says it makes us safer in a way getting "tough" on crime does not.

So to all those redneck yahoos who want to turn Canada into another Tennessee, why don't you go back to your pumpkin patches and shoot something, preferably each other, and let us "lefties" try to reverse the damage done by Stephen Harper and return Canada to its prideful place on the international stage.

He's from Toronto, of course.


What's wrong with this letter? Everything.


Point-by-point:


Right-wingers? Rednecks? Pumpkin patch? Tennessee? Ad hominim much? Just for that, I'm going to strongly suggest that people vacation in Tennessee AND Alberta. Lovely places to visit, people! Inadvertently recommended by a person who thinks anything other than Toronto is "redneck" and dangerous. Think of all those wild flowers and wide open spaces. How gauche!


Furthermore, private think-tanks like the Fraser Institute reveal the cracks in the system the moron- I mean- letter-writer thinks don't exist. Hospital waiting times, cancer medicines that exist in the "redneck" United States but not in Canada, other tidbits of vital information the average Canadian should be made aware of. Consumer websites gather better information than the census. So, what good is the census, other than intruding in the lives of private citizens and gathering useless information on the various aboriginal groups that will still be sponging off the Canadian taxpayer long after this letter-writer is gone? By the way, the aboriginals crossed the Bering Strait. Grade Four history.


No, the gun registry was another expensive failure that did not track illegal firearms or stem the tide of gun violence. Any reader of the National Post would know that. Anyone who read any newspaper or watched TV or online news sources would know that. Except for the letter-writer.


Harper did not put Canada on the international stage? Really? Who boycotted Durbin? Was it Chretien? Nope.


Again, someone who clearly does not pay attention to the world outside of Ignatieff could write a letter so boorish and misinformed.


Letter two:

Rex Murphy's opinion on the Mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero is an admittance of intolerance. Essentially he states that it's OK to be intolerant just this one time because Muslims are involved.

As a Canadian who happens to be a Muslim, Mr. Murphy has equated me and all Muslims with those who perpetrated 9/11. Stating that the complex in question should have a memorial for 9/11 built into it is absurd. Muslims should not have to apologize for or collectively condemn the acts of 9/11 any more than anyone else. I was not involved in 9/11, why should I apologize? Why should my mosque apologize?

Should my Christian friends apologize for colonialism? The mosque being built in this area has nothing to do with 9/11. Making the association between the two treads terribly close to discrimination.

There seems to be a double standard when dealing with Muslims and I can assure you it is not helping the situation. People such as Mr. Murphy have created an East/West paradigm that does not exist and will only lead to those Americans who are born and raised Muslim to feel ousted by their society.

The Muslims who will use this complex are as American as everyone else. This is common ground for both United States and Islam, as everyone is created equal and everyone is equally American.

As I've said before, the building of the mosque near Ground Zero is solely for Islamic triumphalism. The Muslim body at large had nine long years to convince the US and the world that only a handful of fanatics felt like killing Jews, Christians and anyone else they didn't like yet failed utterly in doing so. Those who are planning on building this mosque have no love for the US, have expressed distrust and contempt for it, even blaming it for the September 11th attacks. The false pieties of freedom of religion or American patriotism are insulting and completely ingenuine. Just ask the Muslims who don't want the mosque built near Ground Zero. Are they haram now? If the Muslims truly think this is about freedom, then allow me to build a cathedral in Riyadh and attend Mass there. It's about openness, right?

Monday Post

A slow week....

Unless you count support for a mosque at Ground Zero and then the knee-jerk reaction to it as excitement:

The White House on Saturday struggled to tamp down the controversy over President Barack Obama’s statements about a mosque near ground zero — insisting Obama wasn’t backing off remarks Friday night when he offered support for a project that has infuriated some families whose loved ones died in the Sept. 11 attacks....

But on Saturday, Obama seemed to contradict himself, telling reporters at one point, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about. And I think it's very important, as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about."

That impromptu answer to a TV reporter covering his trip to Florida prompted a second attempt to clarify his initial statement, this time from spokesman Bill Burton.

“Just to be clear, the president is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night,” Burton said. “It is not his role as president to pass judgment on every local project. But it is his responsibility to stand up for the constitutional principle of religious freedom and equal treatment for all Americans. What he said last night, and reaffirmed today, is that if a church, a synagogue or a Hindu temple can be built on a site, you simply cannot deny that right to those who want to build a mosque.”

White House officials later said that Obama was simply saying that since there is no local ordinance that would prevent construction of the mosque, he believed local officials made the right decision to allow it to go forward.

I do not believe for one moment the mosque is about tolerance or contrition. It is about Islamic triumphalism, an effort by extremists to say to the bereaved: "We conquered you". A Greek orthodox church won't be rebuilt but someone will try their hardest to build this monstrosity.

And scorch:

At least one Republican, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, seized on the confusion. “Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade,” Palin wrote on Facebook.

Expiration dates, indeed.

Coincidence

August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption, V-J Day, Liberation Day in South Korea and National Acadian Day.

Coincidence? I think not.

It's Simple, Really

"There's one thing I wish," remarked Miss Adams, in the hard, metallic voice with which she disguised her softness of heart, "and that is, that I could see the Legislature of this country and lay a few cold-drawn facts in front of them. I'd make a platform of my own, Mr. Stephens, and run a party on my ticket. A Bill for the compulsory use of eyewash would be one of my planks, and another would be for the abolition of those Yashmak veil things which turn a woman into a bale of cotton goods with a pair of eyes looking out of it."

(taken from The Tragedy of the Korosko by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There is either one law for everyone or there isn't. If I can't board an airplane wearing a Halloween mask and carrying my three ounce bottle of shampoo and unchecked laptop on me then the covered women who think Canadians are simpletons can't board the airplane, either.


Let's make no mistake- like the proposed mosque at Ground Zero, any Islamic head or body covering is a way for a backward culture to thumb its nose at a more progressive one. It is not needed. What is also not needed are laws or protocols for separate groups. Anyone boarding an airplane must have valid documents and prove who they are. If not, they can walk to their destination.


Why not go the whole nine yards? If Sharia law (including the compulsory covering of women) is what some people want, then let's adhere to it to the letter. Any veiled woman claiming to be a widow, single mother, ect. comes asking for welfare, make sure she has a male chaperone or she gets nothing. Make sure he can prove he is related to her or we'll let the imams know there is a couple living in sin and are desperate for a stoning.


Can't have your cake and eat it, too, as they say.

WHOA!

There are some things that just stun you.


For example:





Watch the whole thing, particularly at the 2:13 mark. KA-POW!


A woman quits her job with a white board and some dirty laundry. Damn!


Ezra Levant sucker-punches Omar Khadr. No- this isn't a fantasy fight match. But if it was.... Ezra Levant just hits the nail on the head is my point.


Now, watch this baseball player do something awesome.

August 9th

(statues from Urakami Cathedral, slightly burned but relatively undamaged)

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light; an awful brightness but no noise. Nervously, Chimoto-san raised his head. "A bomb! It's at Urakami." And in the area above the church he saw an enormous column of smoke float upward, swelling rapidly as it rose. But what struck terror into his heart was the huge blast of air like a hurricane that rushed toward him. It came from under the white smoke and rolled over the hills and fields with terrifying speed and power. Houses and trees and everything else collapsed before it.... Then a deafening noise struck his ears and he was thrown into the air and hurled five meters against a brick wall. Finally he opened his eyes and looked around. The trees were torn from their roots. There were no branches, no leaves, no grass. Everything had vanished. All that remained was the smell of resin.

(taken from The Bells of Nagasaki by Dr. Takashi Nagai)

Three days after "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, another bomb- codenamed "Fat Man" - was dropped on Nagasaki, a port city in the Kyushu region of Japan. Historically, it was the site of Christian martyrdoms and foreign trade. As of 11:02 AM in August 1945, it was a conflagration of flame, heat, carbon and death.

(a view of Nagasaki train station from the sky-walk)

(old Oura Church built in the French style)



(a view from Chinatown)

Now, it is a charming port city that balances East and West like no other city in Japan. This could not have occurred unless there was peace and peace could not have been achieved without a weapon of mass destruction.

(a bust of Dr. Takashi Nagai at Nyoko-do, a museum and hermitage dedicated to him)

Dr. Takashi Nagai, a resident of Nagasaki and a Catholic convert, wrote his experiences of that in The Bells of Nagasaki. He laces the account with a keen insight into the total destruction and what started it. From that event to the rise of Nagasaki, a city no longer a part of the Japanese militaristic war machine that nearly destroyed the country.

(the brick casing for the bells of Urakami Church. The force of the blast flung it far from the epicentre)

(all that remains of the original Urakami Church. It was built by Christian converts.)

(Urakami Cathedral)

It was not the atomic bomb that gouged this huge hole in the Urakami basin. We dug it ourselves to the rhythm of military marches.

(taken from A Hill in Bloom by Dr. Takashi Nagai)

Who turned the beautiful city of Nagasaki into a heap of ashes? ...We did. We started the foolish war ourselves. (taken from A Hill in Bloom)

Monday Post

To start the week...


Michelle 'Marie-Antoinette' Obama's much-deplored trip can be explained thusly:

Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha returned from Spain on Sunday, a vacation at a lavish hotel on the Mediterranean coast that triggered her first controversy since becoming first lady. I'm told she made the trip because she promised one of her closest friends, a longtime Chicago pal who just lost her father, she would spend time with her.

Really? I think I have a better explanation: Michelle Obama is a vain tart who cares not a whit for the American people or the role of a First Lady and decided to thumb her nose at the American people who are screwed thanks to her equally vain husband because she can. It's a mouthful, I realise, but hey....


Another vain tart.


Omar Khadr is a liar and a murderer and a terrorist. How is that for testimony?


Yet another reason why one must never compromise with the Taliban (emphasis mine):

The execution-style killings of 10 people working for a Christian medical team in a remote region of northern Afghanistan fit into Taliban insurgents' stated shift in tactics: Target Western civilians, especially Christians, as "foreign invaders."


The Taliban took credit for one of the deadliest attacks yet on aid workers in Afghanistan, saying the Christian charity workers were proselytizing to poor villagers – a charge that the International Assistance Mission, which dispatched the team, denies.

Let's assume for a moment the bolded portion were true. So? It's not like Islam put its best foot forward by allowing its rotten foot-soldiers kill aid workers. Again, the West is witness to emotionally retarded blood-letters maiming and killing others because they cannot stand the idea of individuals living their lives without hindrance. It's like a nanny-state with more grenade and acid throwing.


What country is this?

The entire Ontario Provincial Police detachment at the remote Pikangikum First Nation was marched off the reserve five weeks ago by a rock-throwing mob of elected councillors and residents.

The stunning forced departure of 11 OPP members from the isolated community, reached in summer only by air or water, went publicly unacknowledged by the force until now.

It was also almost entirely unreported, with only a couple of small stories, none with any detail, appearing locally about a week after the June 30 incident.

These stories either mentioned that “some officers” had been forced to leave or described the incident as a protest in which no one was hurt.

But an OPP occurrence report obtained by The Globe and Mail paints a very different picture – of a chaotic scene that saw officers pushed and shoved as the mob forced its way into the station, with several men trying at one point to get at the vault containing the detachment’s firearms, while others cut power and phones and disabled or blocked police cruisers.

The crowd followed the police to their residence trailer, where two off-duty constables were asleep. Over shouts of “Burn it with them inside!” a sergeant negotiated permission from the mob to wake up the officers and allow them a few minutes to pack their things.

“Police then walked approximately two kilometres to the airport carrying their personal belongings and being followed by approximately 200 people, vehicles and [a] front-end loader,” the report says.

“Once at the airport,” the document continues, “police waited on the north side of the terminal building as community members continued to throw rocks over the building at them.”

Though officers were grossly outnumbered and effectively under attack, they never did abandon the community, OPP Superintendent Ron van Straalen, commander of the northwestern Ontario region, said Thursday – with those being run out of town staying at the airport until their replacements had arrived.

If the OPP want credibility, they should assert their authority. How difficult can it be with guns, tear gas and truncheons? If liberal lawyers and judges think using necessary force is an abuse of human rights, one should remind them that aboriginals won't always stay on the government-funded ghettos up north. Sometimes they head to cottage country....


Why it was a mistake to rescue the Dutch during the war (and, no, I'm not taking that back):

Our guide, however, was an oddity. A young Dutch woman with standard leftist views, she told me how she had no time for politicians who claimed Islam was any sort of threat.

But, I said, you are Dutch and in your country a movie director was slaughtered like an animal in the street by a Muslim fanatic and a woman MP had to live with 24-hour security because she criticized some aspects of Islam.

"That happened because they offended Muslims," replied the former social worker and generally good person. "You really should not offend them." No, it seems you should not.

Some of the finest men in the land bled the fields of Holland just so it could become a haven of drugs, prostituion and now Islamofascism and its ugly mirror image, dhimmitude. They can keep their damn tulips if we can get our men back. Failing that, the very least they can do is not debase themselves or cower to horrid little wife-beaters.

Because he is Salim Mansur and he speaks the truth:

I am struck by the construction boom across the city as I visit Ramallah, the legislative and political centre of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank....

There is money here, plenty of it, and those who have it are not hesitant to flaunt it.

New cars, beautiful residences, fancy stores and restaurants will startle any outsider arriving here with his head filled by the mainstream media in the West about the misery of the West Bank occupation by Israelis.

There is also poverty, Israeli checkpoints, the fence or wall separating Palestinian territories from Israel and the Israeli settlements.

And there’s the politics of resentment that spill over any conversation with ordinary Palestinians fed on a diet of half-truths and endless lies by their leaders.

But visiting with Palestinians is also an invitation to hear their bitterness about Arab leaders, and of their experience with discrimination and violence in places such as Lebanon and Kuwait.

They are their own worst enemy. Israel could have absolutely nothing to do with them and they could still tear each other to pieces.

Say what?

The controversy around the proposed Cordoba Center in New York City is only an issue because if is being used by the Republicans to raise hysteria and possibly win in the mid-November elections. Americans should understand that Muslims have been always an intrinsic part of America. They were first introduced to the continent through explorers like Estevanico and Stephen the Moor. Professor Leo Weiner of Harvard University has written a book on the PreColumbian Muslims from Spain that came to escape persecution and married among the aboriginal nations. Yarrow Mamout, a Muslim, was a first shareholder of Bank of Columbia in 1807. American history is filled with such examples, including the ten million Muslim slaves who helped build the nation.

Would he be referring to the African slaves who sold into life of servitude by Africans just as black and as un-Muslim as they were? Self-serving AND wrong.


Finally, today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. A rather trenchent and sour commentary can be found here.

What's going on? What is this -- oh yeah, August 6, Hiroshima, the anniversary. I looked around, and behind me was a group of young people in front of a banner that said, "NO MORE HIROSHIMAS". OK, I get it, so I started listening. The fellow was actually reading a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima, the usual prayer for peace and love among all mankind. Now, in my younger days, I was all Peace, Love and Brotherhood too. I still am, but I'm also, I think, a lot better informed about things like, say, the history behind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as I learned tonight, I'm also a lot less patient with the willfully stupid among us who have no excuse not to know better.


The Japanese fellow finished, accepted his applause and made way for a late-middle-age woman who I gathered was the compere for the evening. She looked and sounded like the sort of well-connected, public spirited Toronto WASP who organizes fund-raisers for battered women's shelters and the AGO.


She thanked the speaker for his "deeply felt, profound" wishes for peace, for the end of these terrible weapons, blah blah blah....


Then the killer line:


"I would like us all now to take a moment of silence together, for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and pray that they forgive us."


How about a minute of silence for the 10 million victims of Japanese imperialism and military aggression? How about 30 seconds of thought for the 100 million people they enslaved in their "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere"? How about a few seconds for the thousands of Australians who were captured, imprisoned in horrible conditions and executed by beheading, years before the US entered the war? How about the thousands of young Canadian men starved and tortured and marched to death by these very same Japanese? And how about one second of gratitude for the American, British, German and Hungarian scientists who gathered in New Mexico and spent 4 years and a couple billion dollars to create the weapon that brought down the Japanese Empire, ending its conquest and enslavement of the western Pacific? A weapon that not only ended the war in a few days, but completely destroyed Japanese Imperialism, probably forever?

Indeed.


When in Osaka, I read a pastoral letter from Japanese bishops stating that the way to forgiveness was to admit past wrongs and make amends. The Japanese government, it stated, must completely own up to its past crimes or there will never be peace.


What, then, is the more progressive statement- the doddering and inaccurate plea for the Japanese to forgive the West for a military act or the letter from Catholic bishops who wish to extend an olive branch to the people their government hurt in the past?