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Top 100 film lines

The American Film Institute has released a list of what it considers the top 100 film lines of all time which of course means lines from U.S. films only. As usual, crappy 80s and 90s movie and older schlock like "Gone with the Wind" are over represented while great lines from earlier classics are absent . Also appearing are some lines from plays like A Street Car Named Desire that became films. Lines like "Snap out of it" from Moonstruck and anything from steaming piles of crap like Dirty Dancing, Dead Poets Society and Terminator 2 should have been thrown over the side for better lines like:

1. "I bet I can eat 50 eggs"

2."We're on a mission from God"

3."Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

4."Where do you want me to hold it?" - "between your knees!"

5."Saigon, shit, I'm still in Saigon"

6."We deal in lead, friend"

7."Goooooood Morning Vietnaaaaam!"

8."That's mighty big talk from a one-eyed fat man" "Fill your hand you son-of-a-bitch"

9."Peel me a grape, Beulah"

10."I'm out of order? You're out of order! The whole damn system is out of order"

11."Was you ever bit by a dead bee?"

13."Never get out of the boat"

14. "The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

15."Quick, close the doors, there's a traitor inside trying to escape"

16. "Who are those guys?"

17. "What are you rebelling against anyways?" "Whaddya got?"

18. "I love children, could never eat a whole one, but I love the little tykes"

19. "The new phone book's here! the new phone book's here!"

20. "I crap bigger than you"


A virtual cigar to whoever can name all the actors speaking these line and which the movies they come from. No googling. I did it all off the top of my head after a 14 hour shift, so I take no responsibility nor do I make any claims of complete accuracy.

Blog of Note
A soldier's eye view of Iraq
A Soldier's Thoughts

Kudos to the Talent Show
Ross over at the Talent Show explains something to the intellectually disadvantaged that is pretty blatantly obvious to anyone with both a penis and more than a half dozen working braincells - that rape is evil, "no" means "no, goddamit keep your meathook to yourself" and there is no such thing as "asking for it"
Read it The Talent Show: I Am Not My Cock

'Meet me at Hachiko'
Legend of loyal dog grows with 2 English books
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Let's meet at Hachiko"--is there a Tokyoite who hasn't heard or uttered that phrase at least once? The life-size statue of the world's most famous Akita dog is also the capital's most famous meeting place.

On my first day in Tokyo, I met my landlord there, and years later arranged to meet my wife there on our first date.

The location of the statue in front of one of the busiest train stations in the world may have something to do with the popularity of the spot as a rendezvous, but the touching story of canine loyalty that inspired the bronze figure has achieved iconic status both at home and abroad.
===
Foreign friends
The tale of Hachiko has spawned countless books in Japan and even inspired the hit 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari scripted by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Seijiro Koyama. The publication of two children's books last year in the United States has spread the legend of the faithful canine overseas.

Hachiko, The True Story of a Loyal Dog (Houghton Mifflin), a picture book aimed at young children, was written by Pamela S. Turner and lavishly illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. The award-winning book is told from the point of view of an old man relating his boyhood memories of Hachiko to his grandchildren.

"It's a really touching story and it would be really easy to go over the top and make it really schmaltzy, so using an older narrator made the restraint logical," the author told The Daily Yomiuri between presentations to students at the American School in Japan during a visit to Tokyo this spring.

Turner, who lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1996, was looking for a writing project after her return to the United States and was surprised and delighted to find that at the time no one else had tackled the story in English. Authenticity was important to Turner and many of Nascimbene's watercolor illustrations are based on photos taken from an old book about Hachiko given to Turner by an official at Shibuya Station.

A Japanese translation of the book was released in the spring.

Coincidentally, another Hachiko book was released last autumn. Hachiko Waits (Henry Holt and Co.) written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Tokyo native Machiyo Kodaira, is aimed at slightly older readers, but uses the same literary device of a young boy who befriends Hachiko.
===
Immortalized in bronze
The current 91-centimeter bronze statue and its 127-centimeter stone plinth is the second monument to mark the spot the faithful canine maintained his daily vigil. The first, a much larger 162-centimeter statue on a 180-centimeter stone base, was created by celebrated sculptor Teru Ando.

According to the artist's eldest son, Takeshi Ando, 82, his father became interested in sculpting a typical Japanese dog sometime around 1930. An acquaintance suggested Hachiko, by then well known in the neighborhood (see sidebar). The dog was repeatedly brought to Ando's Yoyogi studio to model. When the dog's story hit the newspapers, Ando's efforts to sculpt him were mentioned, making him an obvious choice when the movement to honor Hachiko with a statue gained momentum. Ando also presented a replica of the work to Emperor Showa.

The statue was sacrificed to a wartime scrap metal drive in 1944 and Ando was killed in a massive U.S. bombing raid on May 25, 1945.

After the war, Shibuya was a bustling commercial area and a chaotic hub of wheeling and dealing black marketeers. Takeshi Ando told The Daily Yomiuri in a recent telephone interview that local merchants and Shibuya residents wanted something beautiful and moral to provide them with inspiration in the difficult years immediately after the war. A committee was formed in 1947 and Ando's eldest son was commissioned to re-create his father's work.

"I could have made the same sculpture with my eyes closed," he said. While his father had striven to create a statue of an ordinary Akita, Takeshi said he wanted the dog's faithfulness andloyalty to be evident in its eyes and bearing.

"I wanted to create something beautiful to help the country rise from the ashes," the war veteran-turned-artist said.

His creation was unveiled on Aug. 15, 1948. The statue is now nominally owned by the Shibuya Ward government, which took over ownership from Hachiko Dozo Iji-kai (Hachiko Statue Preservation Association) in 2002. The association, made up of local business owners and companies with offices in the neighborhood, is funded by donations from its members and contributes to the maintainence of the symbolic statue.

One of the current corporate members of the association, Tokyu Department Store Co., went into business the same year the current statue was erected. It has operated a small Hachiko-themed souvenir shop near Shibuya Station since 1992.

According to shop employee Hiromi Sugimoto, the store serves between 100 and 200 customers a day, with stuffed plush toy replicas of Hachiko and paw print-patterned hand towels being the biggest sellers. She says that visitors from out of town looking for a souvenir of Shibuya, especially children on school trips, are the main buyers of Hachiko goods.

By far the most common Hachiko souvenir is a photograph taken next to the statue. Spend any time at all around the statue and you can't help but notice the steady stream of people posing for snapshots in front of Shibuya's most famous denizen.

A similar statue erected in front of JR Odate Station in Akita Prefecture in 1935 was also sacrificed for the war effort, but was replaced by two statues. One is of a group of Akita pups called 'Young Hachiko and His Friends" erected in 1965, and the other is one similar to the Shibuya statue that was installed in 1987.

===
History of the breed
Genetic research performed at Tokyo University indicates that the Akita dog, along with the chow chow and Hokkaido breeds, came to Japan from the Asian continent before the archipelago was separated from the mainland by the Sea of Japan. Other common Japanese breeds such as the Shiba were brought later by settlers from China and Korea to the Hiroshima area.
Akitas were used as hunting dogs, especially in northern Japan, with mated pairs used to track large game such as deer and wild boar. The dogs were trained to hold the quarry at bay until hunters arrived. Later in the Edo period (1603-1868), the dogs were often pitted against each other in organized fights.

The lord of Odate Castle in what is now northern Akita Prefecture is known to have been a devotee of dog fighting and the demand for larger and more powerful dogs increased in the 1890s, leading to crossbreeding of Akitas with the bigger Tosa breed.
Concerned that the purity of the Akita breed was being lost, Odate Mayor Shigeie Izumi formed the Akita-Inu Preservation Society in 1927 and the Akita was officially recognized as a national monument in 1931.

Rabies epidemics in 1899 and 1924 nearly resulted in the extinction of the breed as many dogs were destroyed.

During World War II, the government confiscated most dogs to use their fur for military garments. Massive food shortages led to many dogs being killed for food or left to starve as anyone seen feeding a dog was considered a traitor. Barely a dozen Akitas survived the war and they were often crossbred with German shepherds in the late 1940s, when they became a popular pet for U.S. soldiers to take home.

The first Akitas to be introduced in North America belonged to blind and deaf American lecturer and activist Helen Keller, who requested and was given an Akita named Kamikaze-go after learning of Hachiko's story when she visited Japan in 1937.

The dog succumbed to distemper less than a year later and was replaced by Kenzan-go, one of Kamikaze-go's older brothers bred in Odate that became Keller's constant companion. She praised the breed for its contribution to peace when she visited Japan again in 1947.


Traditional canine values
Moving stories of loyal dogs abound, from the true story of Edinburgh's Greyfriars Bobby, the famous Skye terrier who stood by his master's grave for 14 years, to fictional canine heroes such as Old Yeller from Fred Gipson's novel of the same name, immortalized in the 1957 Disney film, and Buck from Jack London's The Call of the Wild.

While cynics may speculate that it was the regular handouts from yakitori vendors that kept Hachiko coming back--a number of wooden skewers were found in the dog's stomach after he died--it is the element of unyielding loyalty that has earned Hachiko his place in the nation's cultural pantheon.

"The story of Hachiko is particularly appealing to the Japanese because of the high value Japanese culture traditionally places on fealty to the group, boss or master--even if the master is absent in death," said Jesse Glass, a professor in the Foreign Language Department at Meikai University in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.

History bears out Glass' analysis. In 1936, the story was included in moral education textbooks for primary schools as an illustration of loyalty to one's master, intended to encourage patriotic fealty to Emperor Showa.

Turner agrees. "I think the story of Hachiko strikes a chord with Japanese because of the value Japanese culture puts on the faithful retainer. The most famous story in Japan is the story of the 47 ronin, who are celebrated not for winning a battle or for their bravery, but for being faithful to their master, even after his death and even when it meant their lives...Hachiko embodies these great traditional Japanese values of loyalty and faithfulness," she said.

Ando denies the statues were ever conceived as symbols of loyalty to the Emperor or embodiments of fealty, but says they were meant as iconic representations of the universally appealing values of unconditional love and devotion.

Yasuo Maruyama, deputy stationmaster at JR Shibuya Station, explains Hachiko's appeal this way: "The story tells of a sense of duty and for people today, that kind of morality is being lost. That's why the story inspires people."

He said the busier people become and the more they miss this sort of loyalty and sense of duty in their daily lives, the more the story of Hachiko means to them.

A dog's life

The male Akita later named Hachiko was born in Odate in northern Akita Prefecture in November 1923 and given to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at the School of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University) by a former student who knew of the professor's affection for the big, strong dogs traditionally bred in the town.

Hachi, so named because he was the eighth dog Ueno had owned, would accompany his master from home to nearby Shibuya Station each morning and then come back each afternoon to await his master's return on the 3 p.m. train. On May 21, 1925, Ueno suffered a fatal stroke at work. Despite a few initial efforts to send the dog to be adopted by new owners, Hachiko continued to go to the station every day to wait for Ueno and would spend his nights sleeping on the porch of the late professor's house in Shibuya.

Cared for by Ueno's gardener Nenokichi Takahashi and the stationmaster, the big cream-colored dog became a fixture at the station, often begging food from the numerous street vendors in the neighborhood.

Despite becoming nearly lame from arthritis in his last years, Hachiko continued to show up at the station like clockwork just before 3 p.m. each day, waiting until dark to return home.
His fame spread beyond the district in 1932, when he was the focus of a series of newspaper articles. Contributions poured in from across the country and even from overseas, and a statue was unveiled at the faithful dog's regular waiting spot on April 21, 1934, bearing the words "Chuken Hachiko" (Loyal Dog Hachiko), using an affectionate diminutive form of the name Hachi.

On the evening of March 7 the following year, the dog was found collapsed at his post in front of the station and died early the next morning.

The story headlined newspapers across the country and a day of mourning was declared.
Hachiko was stuffed and mounted and can still be seen at the National Science Museum near Ueno Station in Tokyo, but his bones are interred with those of his master in Aoyama cemetery.
Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun

How Canada is different from the United States
example #436, 202

What the heck, it worked for the Spartans, eh?


Military has first gay wedding in N.S.
Canadian Press
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

HALIFAX -- The Canadian military is marking its first gay wedding.

Two men, who do not want to be identified, exchanged vows in a small ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in western Nova Scotia.

It was the first time the military presided over a same-sex union after introducing guidelines in 2003 dealing with the contentious issue.

The two men, one a sergeant, the other a warrant officer, were married last month by a United Church minister because the base chaplain is Anglican and couldn't officiate.

see the whole story at here

or here

And a snappy salute to Sgt. Canuck over at Jesus General for the recon work, well done soldier!

Goon squad tactics
Today's Japan Times has an interesting piece that is illustrative of what Americans probably have to look forward to. A group of native Taiwanese whose ancestors were conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army want their relatives names taken off the list of souls enshrined at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine - home to the souls of Japan's war dead, ">specifically all class A, B and C war criminals. The right in Japan are increasing trying to remilitarize the country and get rid of the pesky pacifist constitution. Scroll down the text on the Yasukuni link for an explanation of why Japan's brutal invasion of most of South-East Asia and attack on the United States was NOT a war of aggression, and note that the essay was not written by some half-bright nutjob, but someone considered a leading scholar at a top university. My own employer regularly runs editorials - which I often reproduce for the edification of the dozen or so of you who read this stuff - explaining historical "facts" such as the non-existance of comfort women, the fabrication of the Nanjiing Massacre and how the post-war tribunal on war crimes was fixed

But I digress


About 50 of the Taiwanese went to the shrine to protest and were greeted by about 100 right wing militants and 150 cops. They decided to cancel their protest rather than get beaten senseless. For those who are not familiar with Japan that assume the police were there to protect the protestors, think again.

Right wing militants in Japan serve a useful function in the power structure. They are answerable to no one but covertly controlled by both the Yakuza, who use them to launder money and make campaign donations (read bribes) to politicians, and right wing politicians, who use them to intimidate the press and political opponents.

There are numerous right wing groups. Many are made up of professional goons, working by day for mob-owned or organization-owned "security firms" and drawing a regular paycheque for their activities.

In the past, they have assasinated cabinet members and journalists and regularly roll around town in huge black buses blaring martial music and slogans urging people to "expel the barbarians (foreigners) and revere the emperor". They regularly surround the Chinese and Korean embassies and blast noise at earshattering levels. During the spate of antiJapanese demonstrations earlier this year, they fired bullets at several Chinese travel offices and firebombed the Bank of China branch in Tokyo.

Since the police and Yakuza have a sort of understanding not to get in each other's way and many in the police ranks sympathize with the rightist, arrests are rare. As with the Yakuza, if there is a death or a sensational crime the cops can't ignore, a patsy is usually surrendered.

Now imagine this sort of situation in the United States: Imagine a better organized group of Minutemen and Free Republic types with a few white power types thrown in for flavor, a budget provided by Richard Mellon Scaife and lots of sympathizers in government and the police.

Imagine the effect a group of only a couple of hundred professional activist thugs would have in a large city like Chicago or Detroit. Imagine the chilling effect on the media and judiciary. Imagine the fear they could inspire amoung the immigrant population. Imagine them breaking up demonstrations and routinely harrassing anyone seen as insufficiently supportive of the president.

The scary part is it doesn't really take very much imagination at all. I suggest my American friends start stocking up on canned goods and ammunition now, while they can still leave their homes without having to wear a big yellow star.

Canada's natural ruling party

Once again the polls indicate the Tory-Reform Alliance of reactionary dimwits could not find their collective backside with both hands, a roadmap and a search party. Of course, since the party can't even maintain the loyalty of former leadership candidates who were dating party bigwigs, I suppose keeping the loyalty of their base of the cranky elderly, young fogies, and psuedo-republican jesus freaks is a bit much to be expected.

Cough up some cash for the Rude Pundit

The always inflammatory, always hilarious Rude Pundit (see links) is fundraising for a live show at the New York Fringe Festival this summer. I don't know how much stage experience his Rudeness has, and I don't really care. He could come on stage and read his stuff in a stilted monotone and it would still be funnier than anything Jeff Foxworthy or Bob Saget has ever said in their lives.

He has set up a special site to fundraise (blow up dolls and Dick Cheney masks don't come cheap) and Ta Da! The Woodshed, by dint of our $5 contribution, has become the first sponsoring blog to be blogrolled - leading to many hits that satisfy the sitemeter monkey on my back. What with the traffic generated by His Glorious Ruditity and my mother reading the blog, The Woodshed ought to break the 2000 barrier in a matter of days, if not hours.

$5 is a small price to pay for the consistently entertaining Rude One to go berserk on stage. Hopefully there will be DVDs for those of us outside the New York area. So go toss him some change and watch him gambol, caper and fling feces at the powerful.

It's official - Americans really are crazy

Scientists finally confirm what we all knew all along. Given the results of the last election in the U.S. this percentage sounds about right.

I hope he made it to the airport
Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief Rod Nordland came home this week and jotted down a few final thoughts on Messopotamia

"Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers—to Americans and Iraqis alike."

Book of globetrotting stories a pleasant trip with criminals



Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance

By Matthew Kneale
Picador, 278 pp, 12.99 pounds

London native Matthew Kneale takes readers on a vicarious trip around the world with his volume of short stories Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance.

The crimes and criminals range from a suicide bombing by a Palestinian with second thoughts in "White" to the theft of a handful of candied chestnuts by the Eastern European housemaid of a British aristocrat in "Taste." Each of the 12 stories here is concerned with a crime, be it real or imagined, or at least with someone being wronged in some way.

That's not to say Kneale has written a collection of criminal capers--he is far more concerned with the internal lives of his varied protagonists than with their deeds. "Stone" shows the reader the destructive effect a perceived theft has on a family of British tourists in China. In "Powder" a drudge of a lawyer is tempted into the fast lane and a life of crime when he finds a satchel full of cocaine. A peasant family of dispossessed Colombian coca farmers are saved by larceny in "Leaves." The four young Welshmen in the coming-of-age tale "Seasons" bond over case of petty vandalism.

The crimes are often the result of jealousy, impulse or weakness. In "Sunlight," when constantly undermined Malcolm finally finds fulfillment as writer thanks to his wealthy wife's largesse, she does her best to wound him for his refusal to be kept as a pet and in the end makes him pay for his success. In "Weight," an overweight American oil worker is smitten by a local beauty in remote China and brings her back to Dallas, where his jealous insecurity drives her to desperation. In "Metal," a British businessman rescues his taxi driver from the police during a riot in Cairo and is inspired to turn over a new leaf before caving in to convention and returning to his role as part of the problem.

It would be a mistake to get the impression that Small Crimes is a dark, depressing ride. Kneale leavens the mix of the seven deadly sins with black humor such as the paranoid misunderstanding that is the basis of "Sound."

Amid the subtle meditations on people's need for a home instead of a house, how families fall apart, and the immorality of the arms industry, Kneale skillfully uses simple language to paint portraits of complex people. While the physical descriptions are minimal, the dialogue and passing thoughts of the characters reveal volumes.

When is a war crime not a war crime
when it's inconvienient for it to be a war crime, or when it undermines your arguement or when someone else accuses you of it, that's when. The Daily Yomiuri still doesn't archive its materials anywhere anyone can see them so I'm reproducing the whole thing here. Ten million people subscribe to the parent paper in Japanese.....

Govt must expedite new war memorial
The Yomiuri Shimbun
With what view of history has Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine in the past?
Koizumi said Thursday at the House of Representatives that he understood the Class-A war criminals--those found guilty at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Tribunal--were war criminals.
The prime minister was speaking in response to a question asked by Katsuya Okada, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, at a session of the lower house's Budget Committee.
If this is the case, then Koizumi should not visit Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals along with other war dead.
===
Criminality disputed
Critics both at home and abroad have cast doubts as to whether the Tokyo Tribunal, held on the basis of a court regulation stipulated by the Occupation authorities' GHQ, was justifiable in light of international law.
The case in point is the "Pal ruling," whereby Judge Radhabinod Pal, who represented India at the tribunal, acquitted all the defendants, saying that given the history of their own imperialistic adventures, the United States and European countries were not entitled to try Japan.
Moreover, following the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, the death of Class-A war criminals by public execution has been treated as "death in the course of public duty."
Mamoru Shigemitsu, who was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment as a Class-A war criminal, became a deputy prime minister and foreign minister under the administration of then Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama in 1954.
Okinori Kaya, who was given a life term as a Class-A war criminal, served as justice minister under the administration of Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda.
As a result, a "criminal" became a guardian of the law.
Yet there were no particular objections made by other countries when these former "Class-A war criminals" had their lost honor restored by becoming cabinet members.
From such a historical context, many have argued strongly that the so-called Class-A war criminals are not "criminals," although they have to shoulder the guilt of recklessly dragging their country into a war.
It was in 1978 when these Class-A war criminals were enshrined, together with the war dead, at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.
Although the enshrinement became public knowledge in 1979, then Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira and Zenko Suzuki, Ohira's successor, visited the shrine as their predecessors did.
Ohira said, "I think that the judgment on Class-A war criminals or on the Greater East Asia War will be made by history," thus declining to express his own opinion on whether they were criminals.
In response to Okada's question Thursday, Koizumi also said, "I'm not visiting the shrine as a duty of prime minister. I'm visiting due to my own beliefs," making clear that he is visiting the shrine as a private individual.
If his visits to the shrine are made as a private citizen, he should think of a better way to worship there. It is questionable for him to step into the holiest Shinto shrine and enter his name with his title of "prime minister" when making a private visit.
The issue of distinguishing between a visit to the shrine in a private or official capacity gained public attention after then Prime Minister Takeo Miki, on his visit to the shrine in 1975, said he went there as a "private individual."
Yet succeeding prime ministers visited the shrine without specifying whether their visits were in an official or private capacity.
Suzuki followed a policy of not answering questions as to whether his visit was in a private or official capacity.
Yet it is a different story when a prime minister clearly distinguishes his visit to the shrine, as when Koizumi says he is not visiting the shrine as part of his duties as prime minister.
===
Constitutional hurdles
One solution proposed to the problem of the prime minister's visits is to have the Class-A war criminals disenshrined and enshrined elsewhere.
But Yasukuni Shrine is a religious organization. If political leaders pressure the shrine to enshrine Class-A war criminals separately, they would be violating the principle of the separation of state and religion under the Constitution.
It is up to the shrine as a religious entity to interpret the contents of its rites, including whether it should enshrine the war criminals separately.
As there are various religions and sects in Japan, there are also many who oppose the prime minister's visits to the shrine due to religious reasons.
If it is difficult for Yasukuni Shrine to enshrine Class-A war criminals separately in light of Shinto doctrine, the only way to solve the problem lies in building a national memorial that is nonreligious.
In 2001, when the Koizumi Cabinet was inaugurated, a private panel to then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda discussed ways to mourn the war dead. It came up with a proposal the following year that a nonreligious national facility be built to commemorate the war dead and pray for peace.
The report lacked concrete ideas as to what sort of facility should be built or how to mourn the war dead. The government should put the finishing touches to the proposal as soon as possible and start building a new memorial facility.
At Arlington National Cemetery in the United States, there are tombstones for unknown soldiers as a central memorial, at which visiting heads of foreign states often lay a wreath of flowers.
A new national memorial can be built as an outdoor facility. One idea raised is for a monument to be established at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in central Tokyo. This is worth discussing.
The government-sponsored memorial service for the war dead, held every Aug. 15, could still be held at Nippon Budokan hall in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo.
===
China ties unlikely to improve
Yet even if Koizumi stops his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, it will not necessarily improve Japan's bilateral relations with China anytime soon.
Even after the fact that Class-A war criminals were enshrined at the shrine was made known, China did not protest publicly when prime ministers Ohira and Suzuki made successive visits to the shrine.
It was after then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made an official visit to the shrine in 1985 that China began lodging protests to such visits.
In yielding to Beijing's protest, Nakasone discontinued his visits to the shrine in the following year. The action handed China a diplomatic bargaining chip that it has continued to exploit.
In later years, China, alarmed by the declining power of the Chinese Communist Party regime after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, intensified its policy of "educating people with patriotism and anti-Japanese sentiment," fostering a vast population with anti-Japanese sentiment year after year.
The slogans seen during the wave of anti-Japanese protests in April focused on the issue of Japan's campaign for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and on Taiwan.
When pondering future bilateral relations with China, the government must keep a close eye on the domestic situation there.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 4)

Come home Winston Smith, all is forgiven

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
George W. Bush
Doubleplus good leader of Oceania

And in other news, U.S. government scientists have announced that their research has revealed black to actually be white and up to be down.

And speaking of smoking guns...
The secret Downing Street memo - Sunday Times - Times Online

Meals with militants reveal human face

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Dining With Terrorists
By Phil Rees
MacMillan, 395 pp, 18.99 pounds


While he has yet to lunch with Osama bin Laden, British journalist Phil Rees has sipped and supped with a lot of people whose names figure on the watch or wanted lists of security services around the world.

Dining With Terrorists is a record of Rees' work covering insurgents, jihadists, guerrillas, militants and mujahideen from Ireland to Afghanistan, but it is much more than a simple chronicle of a reporter's brushes with bad guys. Rees uses his extensive firsthand experience of dealing with armed militants to examine the use, misuse and various interpretations of the term "terrorist."

BBC correspondent Rees has covered conflicts hot and cold all over the globe for the past 20 years. While Dining With Terrorists has its share of war stories and detailed frontline observations, Rees' real focus is examining the root causes of militant movements and trying to accurately portray the opposing sides in the world's many asymmetric conflicts.

The notion that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter comes through clearly as Rees records the motivations and justifications given by Egyptian and Algerian Islamists fighting repressive regimes, Basque nationalists seeking their own state and Afghan mujahideen battling first the Soviet Union and later the Taliban and the United States.

Along the way, Rees shares rum with Colombian Marxist guerrillas, tea and cakes with Hamas jihadists and fruit brandy with Kosovar and Serb nationalists in Kosovo.

Rees illustrates how the heavy-handed "war on terror" and the Manichean pronouncements of the White House have been used by oppressive regimes to crush legitimate dissent, driving the marginalized and repressed to take up arms. Most importantly, Rees reminds us that those who take up the gun are not the faceless, raving maniacs that mainstream media and government propagandists often portray them as, but human beings with thoughts, feelings, memories and desires. To paraphrase cartoonist Walt Kelly, Rees has met the enemy, and he is us.





Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun

"Do you like Kipling?" the bishop asked.
"I don't know, I've never kipled." answered the actress
Dang, them moonbats over at Eschaton is a literate bunch! Have a look at the Memorial Day poem posting and then check out the primo selection of war poetry in the comments - Sigfried Frickin' Sassoon and Rudyard Frickin' Kipling may be old, old school, but great googlymoogly could they frickin' write. And so can this guy:

There is no poem that will stop this war
This is not the one.
There is none.
There is nothing to be done.
We are not anything but the Hun
the fierce images in old textbooks
the Mongol horsemen rape and pillage
villages burning and the laughter of old men.

The radio and television prepare us
for the Super Bowl. But already in Ohio
we are number one. All of us better
than all of the rest of the world. Admit it
it was the perfect game. Allah praise Ohio State.
And admit this all who listen to NPR
the president is smarter than you.
He is riding the armored car of history
while you look for a refuge
some safe place for your children.

But there is no place to hide. We are the virus.
Everything that cannot be bought and sold
for a profit falls before us.
He knows this even if you believe he is a fool.
He lives and breathes Karl Marx
while you hold up a sign that says
Peace is Patriotic. The laughter of old men.

There is no image to stop the war.
No child with burned blacked skin like barbecued chicken.
The children waste away from bad plumbing and no medicine.
We pass along to each other the chips and organic carrots.
Bottled water.
There is no poem as good as government ensured bonds.
We are wounded with so little interest.
There is no poem that will pay us ten percent
and stop this war.
The Germans marched prematurely through history
never understanding the power of the dollar
never having heard of Lexus and SUV
never knowing anything about baseball
never knowing that the Yankees only lose enough
to make the game seem fair.
Vietnam is empty in the memory.
Cambodia fills with Wal-Mart and Burger King.
Bombs from 20,000 feet.


The first dictate of battle is to make sure
the enemy has no weapons to harm you.
Disable their best batter. Tonya Harding their best runner.
Then attack and wait for the parade.
But dont wait for the poem that will stop this war.
There is none.
The history of the empire has just begun.

Joe Napora

Happy Memorial Day America!


My son is about this age.
If I were to die he would have his family around him and live in a country with schools and governments, technology, money and enough to eat.
I feel very bad for this poor kid whose daddy isn't coming home. His dad was brave enough to join the U.S. military for whatever reason -maybe he wanted to save the world, maybe he wanted to shoot some of "them Eyeracki rhagheids whut flew them planes inta 9/11"- It doesn't much matter why now. What matters is that this poor kid is growing up without daddy, because daddy isn't coming home. I feel sick and very, very sad about this.




As bad as I feel for the poor kid in the USA who lost his dad, I feel a whole lot worse for this little girl who is wearing a significant amount of her parents' bodies, because of a "smart" bomb.

Smart bombs are only as good as the guy that aims them where he is told to, and he is only as good as the information given to him by the "security contractor" who interrogated that 17 year old after the kid had been awake and without water or clothing for 75 hours. As the staff of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade know, the guy deciding where to drop the bombs may not have the best information.

"What's that you say? The house the insurgents spent the night in was on the other side of the street? Whoops! Better luck next time!"

She's growing up in a hellhole where bullets are flying and bombs are going off every day. Even if she lives long enough and the orphanage can afford it, she probably won't ever go to school, because even if western democracy takes hold in Iraq tomorrow, it's still gonna be a few years before there's money enough for schools to be built, staffed and ready to teach little girls without burkhas in a democracy dominated by strict Shiite Islamicists. She probably doesn't have clean water or enough food or adequate shelter, nevermind a school or parents. Oh, but at least she's "free" now.

It's unlikely she will ever forgive America, nor will her fifty'leven brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbours. Nor will the families and friends of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been wounded or imprisoned without cause.


Yes, it is tragic that 1844 coalition soldiers have died and more than 12,000 (mostly) young Americans have been wounded, but almost 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the invasion and occupation of their country and the ensuing civil war going on now. But I bet that little girl isn't eating hot dogs at a barbecue after watching the veterans' parade. She's probably going to be watching a different kind of fireworks this Memorial Day.

Print these two pictures.

Carry them around in your pocket and look at them from time to time.

And the next time some right-wing cement-head who thinks the sun shines out of George Walker Bush's ass and posted pictures of smiling young marines blowing shit up on his blog for Memorial Day tells you freedom is on the march , show him these pictures and see what he has to say.

And if he doesn't look at least a little sorry and won't admit that the whole thing has been a horrible, horrible mistake or says something smug about breaking a few eggs to make an omlette, punch the douchebag right in the mouth.

Twice.

Torture? What Torture?

Meet Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, the Woodshed's "wanker of the week."

Top general defends guards at Guantanamo
By LOS ANGELES TIMES
.
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday strongly defended the military’s treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, calling the prison, which has been harshly criticized by human-rights organizations and others, a “model facility.”


Yeah, a model facility the Red Cross has expressed a few concerns about:

"International Committee of Red Cross charges in confidential reports to United States government that American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion 'tantamount to torture' on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...Red Cross has been conducting visits to Guantanamo since Jan 2002; this is first time it has asserted in such strong terms that treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounts to torture; report says methods used on prisoners in latest visit are 'more refined and repressive' than those seen on previous visits; cites as examples 'humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions';'"
New York Times abstract of its November 30th, 2004 article on detainee abuse at Guantanmo

and this from Reuters quoting the NYT story

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the Times quoted the report as saying."

Amnesty International had a few minor quibbles with the Gitmo resort as well:

Amnesty Takes Aim at 'Gulag' in Guantanamo
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 25, 7:15 PM ET
LONDON - Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" in the human rights group's harshest rebuke yet of American detention policies.


So in short, Gen. Myers is either a lying bastard who is intentionally trying to cover up torture or an incompetant fool who has no idea what is going on at Gitmo. Either way, while he may be an air force general, he's a major wanker