Ranting and Roaring

No Top 10 predictions or lists from me, and just one moment of introspection. 2002 has been a very strange year for me: I watched my daughter grow from 9 months to 19 months; I’ve worked in a “real” job for the first time since 1995; I lived in Vienna for almost 10 months of the year (which has totally ruined Toronto for me); I own for the first time in my life a “real” house made by a bastard builder who still hasn’t paved our driveway; I made my first real progress toward learning a foreign language (German, the 16th most useful language in the world). For the first time in my life, I’ve actually made a concentrated and sustained effort to improve myself — and I’m not sure how it worked out. 100 of you have dropped by every day, even though I’m not sure if I have anything to say — this blogging thing has introduced me to some great writing (and writers — here and here for two Canadian examples) and it’s a little depressing to see how effortless it is for these folks. Every word is a struggle for me. There’s more to be said, but that’s about enough. I don’t think I’m going to understand 2002 until at least ’04.

Why didn’t I see this before? U2 are the punk Yes. Five words that explain the last 19 years of the music I’ve been listening too. Not that it bothers me too much: I liked Yes; I still love U2.
I just make a point of never listening to what muscians have to say. Otherwise, what would Midnight Oil being doing in my CD collection?

Doc Searles admires this WWII History, version 3.0 which he claims “rings true to [him]“. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa claims that Japan surrendered at the end of WWII because of the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan and not because of American use of nuclear weapons, and furthermore that the Americans deliberately put the Japanese in a position where the use of atomic weapons would become inevitable.

Let’s examine some of the bizarre claims and/or fallacies in Mr. Hasegawa’s argument (such as it is presented in the article above):

• Hiroshima was nuked on the 6th of August 1945.
  The USSR declared war on Japan on the 8th August, 1945
  Nagaski was nuked on the 9th of August.
  Japan announced its surrender on the 14th of August,.
  • Hasegawa’s argument would be much more plausible if Japan surrendered after the Soviet’s declaration of war, and not after the second nuke (though admittedly, the timing is pretty tight).

  • The balance of probabilities is far weighted to the fact that the Soviets declared war because they knew Japan was going to be forced to surrender in the very near future, and thus would get to share in the peace.
    The ability of the USSR to grab a few of the Kurile islands while Japan was being walloped by the US (both with conventional and nuclear weapons) hardly suggests that the USSR would be able to mount or meaningful contribute to a military conquest of Japan. The US had just spent the last three years getting it’s pacific fleet in place. Where the hell was the Soviet fleet? Errr… The Soviet marines (equivalent)? Busy raping German Fraulines, as far as history tells us. There is no way the Japanese would think anyone other than the US was the primary threat.
• The Japanese, if Hasegawa’s argument is to be believed, were more concerned that the Emperorship would be abolished by the Soviets that the Emperor would be atomized by the US. This is pretty far into eyes rolling territory for me.
• “At the February 1945 meeting in Yalta, President Franklin Roosevelt worried that the only way to secure a Japanese surrender was by drawing the Soviet Union into the war“.

  Obviously, we wasn’t worried that this was the only way: he was investing billions in building nuclear weapons.

  And then “Stalin agreed to launch an invasion“. Well super. Why didn’t he declare war then? More evidence that the Soviet’s declaration of war was opportunistic: the heavy lifting was done, and now (half a year later) it was time to come in scoop up the spoils.

  The US’s goal was to utterly defeat Japan, not colonize it or turn it into a vassal state. If the USSR would be needed to do this, well fine, but obviously the US continued with the “A”-plan (so to speak).

• And finally, the kicker, the “blood-thirsty yankies nuked the Japanese for laughs, to show the commies who the boss is” part:
  He also refutes the idea that President Truman bombed Japan because it refused to surrender unconditionally under the July 1945 Potsdam proclamation. Instead, Mr. Hasegawa suggests, Truman may have included the surrender clause, knowing that Japan would not agree.

  In other words, the U.S. imposed unacceptable conditions, thereby creating a reason to drop the bombs
  

  This line of argument is trivial to refute. The conditions were acceptable: Japan formally accepted them on the 2nd of September, 1945.

Hasegawa goes on to add that he expects to be “attacked” because he’s shitting in our war mongering nuclear mythology nest. “Perhaps I’ll be attacked by various people because I am trying to debunk the myth about the atomic bomb“. Or perhaps he’ll be attacked because we think his argument reeks of conspiracy theory-type argumentation: that any story that fits some of the facts could be true.

To summarize, Hasegawa’s core argument is that Japanese were more afraid of a Soviet occupation than an American one. Given that the Americans were staging massive fleets with tens of thousands of invasion troops in the seas around Japan, and were flattening Japanese cities in an eye blink, it strains the bounds of rationality that the Japanese were seriously worried about the USSR’s attitude toward the Emperor.

A special note to all “peace” activists, especially those heading to Iraq to lend a helping hand: please teach your Iraqi friends the English phrase “We Surrender Unconditionally”, and explain to them in the most culturally sensitive way possible what it means. This way, when the bombs keep falling when they don’t utter this phrase, their will be no confusion as to why it’s happening.

BC Monkey’s back (without his spelling checker, but who am I to complain?)

Two interesting articles by Kevin Grace about the state of Canadian rights and/or freedoms. Simple summary: things aren’t looking good. I agree almost entirely with this one and disagree with many points in this one. In particular, if “sexual orientation” is considered a peer right to “gender”, “race”, etc., then I think the BC decision is the correct one. I don’t think that the Court has said that if you come by your value system via religion, your opinion doesn’t have a place in the public sphere. There is always a conflict between our various rights — my fist swinging rights end at your face placement rights. Reading Asha’s Moms or Johnny Sure Has a Lot of Uncles is not going to cause any immediate or lasting harm to children, which surely must be factored into a decision weighing our fundamental freedom of religion vs. the obligation of the government not to have it’s agents not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation (or whatever).
I’ve written about what I’ve thought about “reading-in rights” in the past (starting here and and here) so I won’t go into it now.

Here’s a prediction for you: within 10 years, it will become illegal to do amniocentesis because it can (rather, is) used to detect Down’s Syndrome. Why? Because…

And Section 15 (1) of the Charter…

It doesn’t take much imagination to connect the dots. Activists and “Ethicists” are already on the case. Too far fetched? In BC, doctors won’t tell you the gender of your baby, because despite the vaunted west coast tolerance and respect for diversity, everyone from Asia becomes an “inscrutable chinee” if they disagree with the progressive’s world view. Abortion is legal only if it’s not coupled with thought crime on the part of the parents.

Man, this coal just burns and burns and burns. Did anyone else get any?

So far:

• 3 glasses eggnog
• 1/4 orange chocolate thingy
• 1 teacup broken
• 1 cup coffee
• 4 slices bacon
• 1 egg
• 1/2 slice toast [to 9 am]
• 2 more cups of coffee
• 1/4 more orange chocolate thingy
• many pieces of turkey, white meat only
• one power outage (!)
• 1 glass wine (white)
• potato
• carrots
• dressing (made with savoury, you heathen)
• 2 pieces of fruit cake, dark, rum soaked and flamed
• one outline of 30001000 piece jigsaw puzzle done (behind sister’s back) [to 2 pm]
• cherry cake
• blueberry pie
• more turkey
• some sort of popcorn/carmel mixture from a can
• 1/4 more orange chocolate thingy
• 1 complete jigsaw puzzle
• 5 tasks put off, incuding packing
• N rum & coke, where N is probably a two digit number [to 1:30 am]

Another excellent write up on punk. Punk music was, and is, marginal (though not in it’s influence, which could best be described as massive). And that’s the problem I have the Strummer obits: the writers are fans who have bizarrely projected their appreciation of the genre to be something universal. Does that sound too effete? “appreciation of the genre”? It’s not: I doubt many or any of these writers were punks, except in the Avril Lavigne-type of way: they just liked to pretend they had attitude, maybe to explain why they had no friends as teenagers.

(I’m trying to include a link to the National Post obit, but their search function is dead. Doesn’t their IT department work on Christmas Day?)

Santa Claus was here!

Wow. This is the best context piece I’ve read about Punk Rock (not that I’ve read a lot, but you get the idea).

Welcome Tim Blair readers — Merry Christmas. Small but shameless plug for myself: check this blog reading tool out.

The first ever spontaneous Newfie Blogger Bash at The Duke in St. John’s was a total success last night, with both of us having a good time (speaking for myself anyway!). Next year we’ll have to convince Damian to leave his car at home! And maybe by then The New Guy will have added an e-mail contact to his blog.

The sourpusses in Vancouver’s city council are upset at the Molson Indy because of too many curves — unfortunately, of the good sort.

Of course, Ms. Poops has never been to an Indy, but she sure is concerned:

Here’s Ms. Koeppe…

And for reference purposes only, here’s Ms. Poaps, wearing her favorite Stalinist Drabs:

Welcome Damian Penny readers. I’m a real Newfoundland for the next couple of days, as I’m here in the basement of my parent’s house in sunny St. John’s. I had a good authentic home experience yesterday at Marie’s Mini Mart while buying “the triple” — the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Telegram. The lady in front of me was purchasing (1) a bucket of salt beef, (2) smokes (Du Maurier Lights), and (3) lottery tickets. It’s good to be home.

A small plug: want to find more blogs by geographical location? Then check this out.

“Novel interpretation”, in Monty Python-speak, is “making it up as you go along”.

Kevin Grace of The Ambler, and also of Victoria (not “Vancover”, I’ve been informed) has acquired an on- and off-line stalker. Is this a slow motion car crash in action? I’ll have to admit, once the general topic of “coming over with a gun” comes into a conversation, that’s when I go to the cops. I’m not sure if Mr. Grace’s cage rattling is the wisest of actions, but it’s kinda interesting to watch. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Via Joanne Jacobs.

… or at least seriously threaten to do so. To paraphrase the man in the movie, this country needs an enema, and I can’t think of anything that would shake things up more than a serious western separatist movement. It’s playing with fire but I’m so depressed by the situation, anything is worth a go these days. The main problem with western separatism? 40% of Quebecers are separatist, but every Albertan is 40% separatist (or so I’m lead to believe). That one last straw, whatever that may be, will have a massively disproportionate impact to what it actually is.

If it’s not Kyoto implementation, I’m betting it will be the gun confiscation program in a few years time.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, read the comments by the charming David Ahenakew, former chief the Assembly of First Nations.
Also notice the lukewarm non-condemnations of Ahenakew by other native leaders in Canada.
I’d like to say I’m surprised, but since I hold the (very unpopular opinion in Canada) that there’s little behind the concept of “First Nations” at all but rehashed racism. Of course, I’m one of those nutbars that thinks that assigning rights to individuals based on the group they are classified into is inherently wrong, but what do I know?

Via DP.

I was also going to write that CBC isn’t covering the story, but I guess it’s got a little too big now. It is boggling that little Jaggi’s predicament is the TOPSTORY, but in the CBC context it makes sense: Jaggi’s been on CBC (Counterspin) a few times, therefore he’s obviously important. As a friend said to me in the late eighties: “If the Martians are monitoring this station, they must think the most important issue on Earth is CBC cutbacks”. In a similar vein of though, why does Ralph Benmergui get airtime still? Or for that matter, Evan “I’ll give you hummer if you appear on my show” Solomon?

Enough ranting for the day…

Check out the headline on this Toronto Star article. How does an anarchist who has, as far as I’ve ever seen, expressed nothing but hatred and contempt for the society he lives in and the people living within it, get labeled a “Peace activist”?

It’d be amusing that Jaggi’s has also been refused entry into the United States, except for the fact that it’s looking more and more like we’re stuck with him. I expect we’ll see a big write up about this in Monday or Tuesday’s Rabble. As a side note, the reason I didn’t write about the latest flap at Concordia was that I was waiting (with baited breath, as you may imagine) for Rabble to rise up and speak out for the oppressed. Certainly if banning a MP from speaking at a University on any particular day is an grievous offense beyond reason, the banning of a student group should have had the Rabble Rousers marching in the streets. Alas, asymmetrical rights remains a hallmark of the deep left.

Ah, I just noticed that everyone else is writing about this also.

… to end up with the worst of the lot, the one so brutal that no one else, not even a European would take him.

I’m off to St. John’s this afternoon. Light posting, as per usual, will resume tomorrow. Janes’ Blogosphere has a nifty new feature which I think you’ll all find very useful called Custom Blogrolls: read about it here.

Matthew Good’s new album, Army of Darkness, will be out 18 February 2003.
So if you like MGB, or The Odds, or Copyright, I’ll see you down at HMV that morning.

Two stories about education in New Brunswick. Changing everything every two years sounds a lot like some companies I’ve worked for: Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, ISO 9000? It’s the Solution of the Month^TM.

and …

Here’s something you don’t see every day.