Update 2: Michelle Malkin is linking the Cotillion!

Update: The Party has started. Dance with us at the Cotillion.



You're all invited.

Six employees of a KFC restaurant were killed yesterday after the building was torched by a mob angry over a deadly suicide attack at a Shi'ite mosque in Karachi.

Doesn't that statement look as if it came from one of those random generators? First thing to pop into my head "Oh no, they've started serving pork!" But alas, there is no logical sense to the above statement. Just like there is no logical sense in much of what goes on in the Middle East.

The restaurant was targeted after three militants, a policeman and a worshipper were killed in a shootout and a suicide bombing during evening prayers at the Madinat-ul-Ilm mosque in Gulshan, a busy neighbourhood in Pakistan's violence-prone largest city.

And the inevitable round-up:

Sunni Muslim extremists were suspected in the mosque attack, and it was unclear why the KFC restaurant was targeted in retaliatory rioting, along with arson attacks on vehicles, shops, three bank branches and three petrol stations.

The restaurant is heavily associated with the US and rioters in Pakistan typically attack symbols of Washington while on a rampage.

Anti-US feeling grew in Pakistan after President Pervez Musharraf allied the country with Washington in the war on terror after September 11, 2001.

It is america's fault, of course, that Muslims are killing other Muslims, and therefore, rage must be directed at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Is it possible, after all these years in the scorching deserts of the Middle East, that these people are completely sun-addled?

I'm not going to comment or fisk this article in any way. It speaks entirely for itself.

Bride gang-raped with groom's consent
Published: Tuesday, 31 May, 2005, 11:54 AM Doha Time

ISLAMABAD: A bride was gang-raped by her groom's friends on the first night of their marriage with her in-laws' consent in the southern part of Pakistan's Punjab province, a news report said yesterday.

The Daily Times said Mujahid Hussain and his family allowed the bride, Kaneez Kubra, to be dishounored in revenge for her brother's crime of having sexual relations with their daughter.

The bride's father, Ghulam Hussain, said four persons sexually assaulted his daughter in front of his son-in-law in his house in Punjab.

But her ordeal did not end there. Ghulam Hussain said that on the following day she was taken to the residence of another friend and assaulted again.

"They are cruel. Hussain's grandfather and mother plainly told my daughter that the wedding was just an excuse to (inflict) revenge on your brother for having sexual relations with our girl," he said.

Kubra was married to Mujahid last month on the directives of Panchayat (local jury) after it found her brother guilty of having illicit relations with Mujahid's sister.

In Pakistan's tribal and rural Punjab, women are married without their consent in compensation for the crime committed by their male family members to settle the dispute under 'Swara' and 'Vani' customs.

Human rights activists and Muslim scholars have opposed these customs and asked the government to take action against them.

"Islam provides for pardon, killing for killing or blood money as three options to settle murder," said Anis Ahmed, a scholar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, adding that "there is no other way and swara or any other such practice has no basis in Islam."

In 2002, eight young women, including two sisters aged two and four, escaped vani marriages near the Punjab city of Mianwali after the Supreme Court of Pakistan said the practice violated the law and norms of civilised society. - DPA

Emphasis mine.

For all you Catholics and other Christian denominations out there, I'm sure you've heard about rabble.ca's cartoon showing the Pope giving a "Heil Mary" Nazi salute. I'm sure you're thrilled about it, too. After all, it is another reminder that we must be kind to our Muslim neighbors, must always act to protect our Jewish friend, but that as Christians we have no right to the same respect.

The Meatriarchy has proposed a bit of activism, especially because it seems that rabble.ca is feeding from the public tit. He asks us to email One World, of which rabble is a member. Here is the email I just sent:

I am concerned that the One World website puts limits on partnership based on the following:

organizations advocating intolerance on the grounds of ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation or religion; and

Yet rabble.ca can get away with a cartoon that equates the Catholic Church and the Pope to Hitler with a "Heil Mary". Will rabble continue to be a member of One World, or is it okay to bash Christains but not other faiths? Can we look forward to cartoons of evil Muslims, penny-pinching Jews, or even secular athiests portrayed as the great unwashed? Or is it only Christians - specifically Catholics - that are free game to One World?

Wendy

--
RightGirl
http://www.girlontheright.com
For Girls With Pearls

You can email One World at canada@oneworld.net

Common Sense Runs Wild celebrates six busy months today. It seems as if Janette has been around forever. I hope she sticks with it.

I only give special gifts for one year or more, Janette, so today you'll have to make do with a trackback.

All the best!

In the Metro Newspaper this morning, I read a full page ad taken out by the infamous Blue Man Group. I have been unable to find a soft version of the ad.

Basically, what it comes down to is Blue Man trying to defend itself against critics who are complaining that the group is anti-union.

For our Toronto production, we have hired Canadian actors and musicians, a Canadian crew, as well as Canadian management and support staff. Some of these individuals are members of unions, and some are not. We respect their decisions either way. We are an equal opportunity emplyer and have always been open to all qualified personnel. It is an employee's choice to join a union - not an employer's place to require it.

Bravo. But the Globe & Mail's Kate Taylor on May 7th basically told the Group that they were in the wrong for not conforming to Canada's socialist ideals:

Blue Man Group is the New York-based theatrical company whose popular shows feature three speechless, blue-faced characters playing plastic plumbing, splattering paint on canvases and spewing balls from orifices both real and invented. This weird amalgam of clown, mime and performance art was started in 1991 as a small off-Broadway show created by Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink, but today, with companies also playing in Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and Berlin, it's a 500-employee phenomenon.

In all those years, the company has not signed union contracts with its performers in the United States and believed it could operate the same way in Toronto with plans for an open-ended run at the newly renovated Panasonic Theatre (which used to be known as the New Yorker) on Yonge Street .

snip

That's wrong, because Toronto's commercial theatre scene has been built by the members of these associations and if Blue Man Group doesn't work with them it's freeloading off that history. However you may weigh the advantages and disadvantages of unions, the fact is workers aren't going to make steel or cars for free, but people will act and play music for free. Such is the lure of the stage, you may even get somebody to set the lights for free. It is these associations that have, over the years, insisted the work be decently paid and safely executed. By establishing a permanent, professional work force, they have helped build both the commercial theatre scene in Toronto, and a non-profit scene locally and nationally.

Without these workers, the landscape would look much as did before the Second World War, with amateur theatres performing locally alongside the occasional touring company from the United States or Britain. And those who have built a theatre scene have also built the audiences: without this foundation, Blue Man might be able to drop into town for a week or two, but it could never possibly renovate a theatre and stay indefinitely.

snip

In Canada, the situation is clearer: in almost all instances, you aren't a professional stage show unless your actors belong to Canadian Actors' Equity Association (which is not technically a union but rather a professional association).

Why is that? She doesn't say.

For example, this newspaper, never known for being particularly pro-union in its editorial stands, generally has a policy that it doesn't review non-Equity performances [ED: Because the Globe & Mail are commie sympathizers - RG]. Exceptions are occasionally made -- and no doubt one will be made when Blue Man opens -- but that has been the yardstick used for years to determine the difference between the professional and the amateur because it reflects the reality of the theatre scene.

Can audiences tell the difference? Sure they can. Again, there are exceptions, but most of the time if you want to see work that you'll feel was worthy of your $50 or $75 ticket, it is work performed by members of Equity with members of the Toronto Musicians' Association in the pit and members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees behind the scenes, because those are the people for whom this work is a career, not a hobby or a part-time job. With their cheap sets and painfully young performers, the non-union touring shows that do occasionally cross the border and stop in town for a week look like high-school performances, falling well shy of the standard routinely maintained by Toronto companies.

Ms Taylor goes on and on about how the unions have built up Toronto's theatre scene, but she doesn't actually get around to outlining how the Blue Man Group's lack of interest in union labour will cause the earth to shatter and the heavens to rain down fire upon us. She just waxes poetic about the fact that everybody else uses unions... and personally, contrary to her opinion, I can't tell the difference between a union and non-union production, so long as it's done by qualified professionals. Oh, wait. Yes I can - it's cheaper, because we're not paying union fees along with ticket price!

What Ms Taylor does find the opportunity to do is blame America and bash Blue Man Group for being part of the Evil Empire:

Goldman of Blue Man has said his motto is not "When in Rome . . ." but rather "Vive la différence." Trouble is it's his difference that he wants to impose here. He says this is no bus-and-truck show breezing into town for a few days, but a high-quality venture that means to be part of the scene for months to come. Yet, apparently, he's just another of those ignorant U.S. producers who fail to notice they crossed a border at Buffalo.

...into a socialist utopia.

A worldwide campaign begun in 1988 to eradicate the polio infection was on the verge of success when, early in 2003, a conspiracy theory took hold of the Muslim population in northern Nigeria. That conspiracy theory has single-handedly returned polio to epidemic proportions.

The theory's source seems to be a physician and the president of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Shari'a Law, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 68. Dr. Ahmed, an Islamist, accuses Americans of lacing the vaccine with an anti-fertility agent that sterilizes children (or, in an alternate theory, it infects them with AIDS) and considers them, according to John Murphy of the Baltimore Sun, "the worst criminals on Earth … Even Hitler was not as evil as that."

[snip]

The Baltimore Sun offers the example of a young Nigerian mother who rejected the polio vaccine for her child. The child contracted polio, and the mother was asked if she regretted her decision. Unhesitatingly, she replied, "No, I would do the same." Villagers saw the vaccination program as a threat and on occasion "chased, threatened and assaulted vaccinators. Frustrated, some vaccination teams dumped thousands of doses of the vaccine rather than face angry villagers."

Does anyone other than the WHO and the UN see a problem here? I mean, you and I had our vaccinations when we were little, and our children have had them, but the Holy Warriors who would very much like to see us and our children dead are leaving themselves open to this crippling and deadly disease. Oh well. Remind me to shed a tear sometime for them.

In other news, perhaps you would like to burn an American flag on Independence Day this year. Personally, I will be ripping individual pages from a Koran and wiping my ass with them before flushing them down the toilet. Now we know why corn on the cob is served for Fourth of July!

...they just seem to keep forgetting about it.

From Right Thinking Girl:

Let's be honest: Conservatives are winning the battles but not the war. The Conservatives in office are acting like the minority party insead of doing the job that Americans sent them to office to do, which is to beat the everliving hell out of Democrats and their stupid ideas are so that they are left paralyzed and bleeding on the bar room floor for decades to come.

She has some suggestions:

1. When it comes time for the President to choose his judicial nominees, step off, leftist pinko. It's the President's right (and obligation) to see his ideals put into action in the judicial system. You don't like it, you can find a constitutional way to defeat the nominee, but you do not have the right to filibuster judicial nominees, and you sure as heck don't have the right to a court that is stacked with pinko moosefuckers like yourselves. Tip for the right: remind your leftist friends that this is not Burger King, you don't get it your way when the other party is in office. We sat through Clinton and Reno; it's payback time.

2. Do not allow the school system to teach your children sex ed. They will teach the girls how to give blowjobs (yet oddly enough, they do not have pussy eating class. Feminists should be outraged.) Instead of having little Nancy become the school slut because she's been sucking cock since the age of seven thanks to the public school system, opt your children out of the classes, and then talk to them about sex and its consequences at home. Tell them about birth control if you feel it's necessary. Be forwarned: allowing your child to be taught sex ed in public schools will teach them that cocksucking is as natural as breathing yet not really "sex" and abortion is a "birth control method."

Read it all. Heh. Moosefucker. That's going into my lexicon immediately. It's so Canadian. I wonder if she meant it that way?

I have a hangover. I'm tired. I can't stop swearing, and have a potty mouth like a sailor on shore leave. What could possibly be the reason for all this? Is it simply Belinda's defection that has me in such a state?

Nope. This is what life was like when I lived in Glasgow. Three-hundred days of rain every year - all you could do to stay sane was have a drink at the pub. And now, my bestest Glasgow friend is here, in Toronto, being a bad, bad influence. Which I am loving, but Oh, my head!!

Shopping, drinking, touring, drinking, eating, drinking... People think I've dropped off the face of the earth - at this point I wish I had! I'm back at work for a break today, to rehydrate myself, while she is off tasting icewine in the Niagara wine district. Her stamina leaves me in awe.

Do you think the boss would mind if I had a blody mary for breakfast? I could use a little hair of the dog.

152 No to 153 Yes.

Fuckin' Belinda.

I wanted to post this last night, but I didn't get a chance.

I was on my way home from work, and had just stepped off the subway near my home. On the corner of the nearby large intersection, there was a table set up - lemonade stand style - and two of the great unwashed were manning it. As I passed it, I noticed the hand-made placard taped to the front of the table "Stop the War in Iraq!", just as one of the hippies held out a newspaper called Militant to me and said "Support the unions?"

Me: The unions? Can't help you - I work for a living. (I really didn't expect a response, and I turned to walk away from him)

Him: What's that supposed to mean?

Me: It means I work, and I enjoy doing so. Union members do as little as possible, and at the end of the day, instead of job satisfaction, they walk away with the feeling that they are doing too much for too little. Unions replaced job satisfaction for the lazy among us. And what, by the way, do the unions have to do with the war in Iraq??

Him: They don't support war. War is wrong. This war is for oil!

Me: All the unions feel this way? Including the ones at SNC Lavalin in Montreal and Lockheed Martin in Colorado who are manufacturing munitions for the war? Or the technicians who work on oil platforms and in oil fields around the globe? You must mean the auto workers union. Wait, no, they would be manufacturing the Jeeps an Humvee's for the troops. Which unions do you mean?

Him: Fuckin Nazi.

Me: No sir, Nazi's were socialist - just like you. Good evening.

Yet another illustration of how the left doesn't have a clue as to what they're arguing for or against. They do it by rote, because someone more influential, like the Michael Moore's of the world, filled their heads with the pat phrases, without the benefit of educating them on the actual issue.

But my conversation with this man made me think about unions, and how the NDP is in support of them. How can the NDP support Kyoto and environmentalism-at-all-costs when that would have a direct impact on steelworkers, autoworkers, oil & gas technicians... And more importantly - under those circumstances, how can the unions support the NDP in return?

It's spring, and with spring comes the boy racers: seventeen year old brats with souped up Honda's, driving too fast, drinking, killing themselves and others on highways all across the country, the continent, the world. I have just one thing to say to them: Thanks. Thanks, because one of these little twats (or the person he may have killed) signed a donor card. Thanks, because my friend's husband just got an eighteen year old heart on Saturday.

Everyone has their place in this world. Even joy riders.

Rick McGinnis has an article on Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. The famously irreverent duo point out the obvious: The left has no sense of humor.

There's even a term - South Park Republicans - to describe the show-s avid, right-leaning fans, often former leftists who lost their patience with the humourless, hectoring tone of the left.

That would be me...

"We don't do our stuff from a political standpoint," said Stone last week, "but it is amazing, if you rip on the left one time, you're South Park Republicans. Which is fine, because South Park's one of the only shows in the United States that will rip on the extremists on that side of the equation, and it's weird that we're the only show that does it."

"That's the amazing thing," adds Parker. "When Team America came out, the reactions seemed to be that about 80 per cent of the people really liked it, and there was no middle ground - 20 per cent of the people were furious. And those 20 per cent were all people on the far left. Nobody on the right - it was all people on the far left who were basically like 'How dare you?!' Especially when the election was two weeks away - 'You could get George Bush out of office! What are you thinking?' And maybe we don't want George Bush out of office. They're like, 'What?!!!' Or maybe we do ..."

"Or maybe we'd like to have our puppet movie be about America and not the elections," says Stone, "and that's why we didn't include any of that specific stuff. They were so offended - the joke being on them they just didn't like."

Ladies & Gentlemen,

May I present to you... Bug.



Yesterday was the anniversary of my mother's death. As of yesterday, she has been out of my life for exactly as long as she was in it. As of next year's anniversary, she will have been dead to me longer than she was alive. So that's why I felt yesterday was an appropriate day to explore my own maternal instincts by bringing Bug into my life. It kept my mind off the significance of the day, and allowed me to reclaim the date as something positive. And it only took 14 years.

There will be a rally here in the Toronto neighborhood of High Park on Monday May 16th for our local Conservative candidate, Jurij Klufas. I will be there. So if you live in the area, and you'd like to say hello, please stop by - with your chequebook in hand. I want to see a flurry of cheques being written.

May 16th at 7.30 pm at 1709 Bloor St West.

1. I'm walking down the street. A man grabs me from behind, drags me into an alley. He's going to rape or kill me. Some pedestrian hears he commotion, grabs a piece of wood or some other heavey object, and cracks my attacker on the back of the head. He kills him. Should cops arrest the pedestrian who might have saved my life? After all, he killed a man. He must be a bad guy.

2. You work in the accounting department of a large corporation. You are a nobody, but one day you discover something terrible. The CEO has embezzled more than half a million dollars from company coffers in less than two years. You blow the whistle. You get fired for meddling above your rank. After all, you brought shame and bad press on to the corporation. You must be a bad guy.

3. An evil dictator is oppressing an entire nation of people, and has been for decades. There are mass graves dotting the country; people who dissented against his brand of governance. The leader of the free world, who has some interest in the dictator's country, decides to free the people. He takes out the dictator, and puts a new government in place. During the process, innocent people are killed and injured, mostly by supporters of the dictator. Do we arrest the leader of the free world, because he inadvertantly caused the deaths of all those innocents?

4. A politician steals your tax money. At least, we think he has. He's running the government, and is refusing to give up power, even though it looks like he's been caught. Another politician (we'll call him Stephen for the sake of giving him a name) refuses to work with the corrupt leader. By refusing to work with him, Parliament effectively shuts down. Do we blame the leader for being corrupt, or "Stephen" for calling him on it and refusing to do business with him?

Cross posted to The Shotgun

One of the ladies I work with is doing the overnight relay race for Canadian Cancer Society. I pledged her some money, but I also bought luminaries, basically votives, in the name of each of my parents.

I also bought two in the name of one of my (and possibly your) readers.

Many of us who blog to the right have a reader by the name of Zumkopf. He's smart, antagonistic as hell, and a very nice man. If you remember this post from Right Thinking Girl that I led you to a couple of weeks ago, you will know that Kumkopf is also very ill.

If he has commented on your blog, or if you have lost a family member to cancer as I have (odds are you have or you will), please go buy a luminary for $5 here.

If you think he'll talk, kill him. Isn't that what the KGB used to do in the Cold War days? Well, welcome back to the Cold War.

State Duma Deputy Sergei Abeltsev, a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), has suggested that former Russian atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov, detained in Switzerland earlier this month, should be abducted from a detention center or killed.

If Russian authorities are unable to force Bern to release Adamov, he should be killed so that he does not reveal Russia’s state secrets, Abeltsev was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying at a Duma session.

From the Liberal Songbook:

Liberano
To the tune of Desperado:


Liberano, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' senseless for so long now.
Oh, you're a shady one,
But I know that you've got your reasons.
These things that are teasin' you,
Can hurt you somehow.

Don't you draw the queen of auditors, boy,
She'll beat you if she's able.
Know the queen GG is always your best bet.
Now it seems to me, some fine things,
Have been laid upon your table.
But you only want the things that scandal can get.


Liberano, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your lies and your plunder, they're drivin' us home.
And freedom, oh freedom,
Well, that's just some conservatives talkin'
Their prison is call'in,
call'in you home.

And don't your friends get bold at election time?
The TV won't show, no the press won't shine
It's hard to tell who to hold and who to pay
You're loosin' all your highs their go'n away
Ain't it funny how the feeling,
Just ain't the same?

Liberano, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' senseless for so long now.
You may be fail'n, but there's a Corporation above you,
You better let somebody bribe you,
You better let somebody pay you,
You better let somebody entice you,
Before it's too late.

The clock is ticking on Parliament Hill today. The opposition desperately want the Libranos out of power (as do the rest of us), and the House Speaker, Peter Milliken, doesn't seem to think the request is so far fetched. So today, sometime around 6pm, they will vote. Technically it is not a confidence vote, but a rose by any other name...

According to Opposition MPs, should Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals lose the vote, they could no longer claim the confidence of Parliament and therefore the right to govern.

The Liberals, however, don't share that view.

"There are procedural and constitutional experts that have clearly indicated that procedural motions cannot be confidence motions, and this is an example of exactly that," Liberal House Leader Tony Valeri told reporters on Parliament Hill.

Conservative House leader Jay Hill concedes the move is unconventional, but says his party has been left no choice.

"Although it's a procedural initiative, that's all that was left to us," he told CTV's Canada AM early Tuesday, adding that the Liberals are "clinging to power and simply won't allow the opposition to express a bona fide non-confidence motion."

Regardless, the Liberal government may continue to cling to power, ignoring any and all calls for their resignation. Which, in my opinion, is more of an admission of guilt than anything. By ignoring the will of the house (and the will of Canadians), they are saying that they alone are above the law, above the rules, and are not answerable to the electorate.

Angry has his opinion on how it will play out. I would just like to see the people we've hired to run the country actually run the country! Enough already. Get to work. All this talk and so little work; they're not criminals - they're unions!!

You can see how frustrated the Bloc must be...

Even if the government dismisses opposition non-confidence motions on technicalities, Duceppe said he would press the matter with Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.

To have the French seperatist leader resort to using the Queen's representative to get rid of the Liberals... A last ditch effort to clean house, or an act of hypocrisy? I really don't care, as long as it works!

Cross posted to The Shotgun

I went to see Crash over the weekend. Highly recommended. Everyone was comparing it to Magnolia, which I really didn't like, but I thought I would give this one a chance. I'm so glad I did. Every racial cow was slaughtered, from the "blake lights" (brake lights) of Chinese "engrish" speech, to Latinos parking their cars on their lawns, to blacks hating whitey and being pissed off that they're always looked at as criminals (this from two car jackers). These are all stereotypes we've seen before, and perhaps we've become immune to them. It was nothing to me, or the black man sitting next to me, to laugh out loud at the absurdities between our races. I laughed at the black theives; he laughed at country music.

But there is now a common enemy. The Iranian shopkeeper who speaks no english. He becomes frustrated and violent because he does not communicate well enough to live in America. He buys a gun. He aims. There's a little girl. The shot is fired. The entire movie theatre screams out in horror and rage. And you see him standing there, gun in hand, in front of an American flag. Black, white, grey, yellow, Christian, Jew - there were tears from all of us, and rage. Pure rage.

Perhaps we can laugh together at our foibles because we now stand together. United against the one who seeks to kill us all.

I always hate to see a good blogger get discouraged and leave the 'sphere. If you've never read Italics Mine, now would be a good time to start - but hurry. Blair Hansen is getting frustrated posting for the few readers he has (myself included). I know how he feels. For the first year I was lucky to get 30 hits a day. Now a good day is still only about 150, not counting the mess of te earlier publication ban via Captain's Quarters.

Anyway, go have a look at Italics Mine. He's a good thinker, and his thoughts shouldn't be allowed to disappear from our little world.

Some thoughts on this sunny Friday...

Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
my mind goes sleepwalking
while I'm putting the world to right
called careers information
have you got yourself an occupation

CHORUS:
Oliver's army is here to stay
oliver's army are on their way
and I would rather be anywhere else
but here today

There was a checkpoint charlie
he didn't crack a smile
but it's no laughing party
when you've been on the murder mile
only takes one itchy trigger
one more widow, one less white nigger

CHORUS
Hong kong is up for grabs
london is full of arabs
we could be in palestine
overrun by a chinese line
with the boys from the mersey and the thames and the tyne
but there's no danger
it's a professional career
though it could be arranged
with just a word in mr. Churchill's ear
if you're out of luck you're out of work
we could send you to johannesburg

Oliver's army is here to stay
oliver's army are on their way
and I would rather be anywhere else
but here today
and I would rather be anywhere else
but here today
and I would rather be anywhere else
but here today

Oliver's Army
by Elvis Costello
Emphasis mine - RG

...but this pisses me off too much for me to keep my mouth shut.

PROMINENTLY displayed in the new Canadian War Museum, which opens to the public next week, is a 10-foot painting of a Canadian soldier choking a young and bloodied Somali prisoner with a baton.

Done by Toronto artist Gertrude Kearns, it is copied from a photograph taken by Trooper Kyle Brown of Master Cpl. Clayton Matchee of the Canadian Airborne Regiment torturing Shidane Arone to death.

Why is this painting in the War Museum?

While the purpose of the new War Museum is not to glorify war, surely its intent isn't to belittle and depict Canadian soldiers as murderers?

The Somalia incident wasn't war, and Matchee wasn't typical of Canadian soldiers.

No soldier, serving or retired, condones such acts --which, inadvertently or not, the War Museum implies are common.

Twice in one week our veterans are spit upon by our government. Now would be an excelent time for us conservatives to stage a coup - the military would be more than happy to imprison our leaders...

I think I need a week away from the blog. I'm calling other bloggers by each other's names, forgetting what article belongs to whom - if I carry on like this, CBS will be calling with offers. My heart may be in it, but my brain is obviously not. So have a good week, wander through the blogrolls.

Oh, and I got surveyed by SES Research last night. It took about 10 minutes. Multiple choice questions, mostly, and not really biased one way or another. Not that I noticed, anyway. There was only one question that allowed for a full answer. I was asked about my choice of party to lead Canada, and why. For the why, I answered that the Conservatives have had more than 12 years to clean house, and that the Liberals need some time off to do the same. The Conservatives are a brand new party. They're clean.

Having said that, though, the morning Metro has a blurb about previous government scandals in Canada, but it lists only Tory governments. Typical TorStar. They tell only half the story - the half that is most favorable to their own politics.

Anyway, I'll catch you later.

Currently reading: While Canada Slept

Sorry folks - work has been a bit nutty lately, so I've been MIA in the blogosphere. But I've still been reading. Check out The Cannuckistan Chronicles for a classic fable about the haves and the have-nots.

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBC, CTV, and Global show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

Canada is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Gabereau with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green".

Go read the whole thing. It'll bring a tear to a glass eye.