What's in the News

Wow, 8.9. Nature is ruthless.

In a country that receives thousands of quakes per year and are prepared (as can be) you must use your imagination to trully understand how powerful this was. This is a place that has all the up to date equipment and technology to withstand as much as they can. 500 years ago, this could have wiped out villages and killed in the 100s of thousands.

God help them

According to CNN the quake moved the entire island and actually shifted the Earth on its axis Those poor, poor people.

just saw an update in the Toronto Star. State of emergency at 5 nuclear reactors at 2 power plants. All residents are being evacuated within a 10 KM radius of the 2 sites.

An explosion at a nuclear power station tore down the walls of one building Saturday as smoke poured out and Japanese officials said they feared the reactor could melt down following the failure of its cooling system in the wake of yesterday's powerful earthquake and tsunami.

According to CNN the quake moved the entire island and actually shifted the Earth on its axis Those poor, poor people.

The quake in NZ last year also moved it a few inches if I recall. I wonder if we could have one so strong that it will have an important impact like alter the rotation or orbit of the world. That could be catastrophic.

Amazingly, just like the Indian Ocean quake from a few years back, its the tsunami that's causing most of the damage

A couple of my Chinese friends seem to have forgotten that the war ended back in 1945.  They were lamenting that the Japanese death toll was so low.

I HOPE they were joking.

Sorry, but they weren't. Most Chinese are deeply programmed to hate Japanese.

The nuke plants may be the worst part in the end. It's feared one or both of the two known-damaged plants may be in meltdown. Both are releasing radioactive gases into the atmosphere.

A couple of my Chinese friends seem to have forgotten that the war ended back in 1945

It is not a matter of forgetting the end of a war and more to do with what happened during it.

My father served overseas 1939-1945. He said little about his war experiences but he did say that while he could forgive the people of Germany he would never forgive the Japanese.

It helps me to understand why the people of China are rather unforgiving in their attitude to Japan.

Most of us come from countries that have never been invaded, and find it easier to be charitable, but the Chinese have every reason to not like Japan.

That, however, does not mean that I, and most Chinese people, do not feel compassion for the victims of the earthquake in Japan at this time.
 

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A couple of my Chinese friends seem to have forgotten that the war ended back in 1945

It is not a matter of forgetting the end of a war and more to do with what happened during it.

My father served overseas 1939-1945. He said little about his war experiences but he did say that while he could forgive the people of Germany he would never forgive the Japanese.

It helps me to understand why the people of China are rather unforgiving in their attitude to Japan.

Most of us come from countries that have never been invaded, and find it easier to be charitable, but the Chinese have every reason to not like Japan.

That, however, does not mean that I, and most Chinese people, do not feel compassion for the victims of the earthquake in Japan at this time.
 

People seem much more forgiving of Americans despite our war atrocities. No Vietnamese or Japanese person has ever said anything against Americans in my presence.

Would that everyone would recognize that it's "one world, one people," and see through all the bogus nationalist and racist paradigms. What makes war atrocities possible is the underlying idea that those people over there are different, other, and alien, in which case it doesn't matter what happens to them.

It's all the Hatfields and the McCoys, brother against brother, except people believe their brother is the evil alien and don't recognize that they too possess the potential for exaggerated acts of evil.

Let me add that I can understand why people her on the mainland are angry at the Japanese. I've seen some of the horrific period footage and it made ME furious. And I also know I'm at the other end of the stick in terms of my country giving and getting beaten, invaded, bombed and whatnot, so it's easy for me to talk about recognizing the potential for evil in one's own people, but, I still think in the new millennium (which has been SUCH a disappointment), it would be great if we could all get past the superficial differences that keep us apart and recognize each others' humanity.

nuff said and probably too much.

1,200 CONFIRMED dead.  Add 9,500 people missing in just one "prefecture".  Then start adding the others.

Then consider they can't even calculate the others yet.  This is looking to be an astronomical catastrophy.

And Japan is one of the most prepared countries in the world  But there's not much you can do when your whole island moves 8 feet, and shifts the Earth's axis by nearly 4 inches

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A couple of my Chinese friends seem to have forgotten that the war ended back in 1945

It is not a matter of forgetting the end of a war and more to do with what happened during it.

My father served overseas 1939-1945. He said little about his war experiences but he did say that while he could forgive the people of Germany he would never forgive the Japanese.

It helps me to understand why the people of China are rather unforgiving in their attitude to Japan.

My 12 years old Grandson Jesse is being taught,at school, to forgive and forget as he is so fond of telling me. I spend quite a bit of my time speaking to an old WW11 stretcher bearer. His stories are horrific. My Dad didn't talk about his service in New Guinea and my Mum had very strong feelings given the disruptions and permanent changes to our lives. When my generation dies out,we will probably take with us these feelings against the Japanese. As I tell my Grandson, it is very easy to forgive and forget if you were not the one having your breasts sliced off or other things I won't go into here. If this terrible Tsunami had happened in Japan in say 1942, I don't even have to wonder what the genuine reactions would have been.

My father the Australian never forgave the Japanese to the day he died. He actually only fought against the Germans, who he considered gentleman opponents. He was deeply suspicious of the Chinese, mostly as far as I could tell because he couldn't tell the difference.

Luckily (if that's the word) he died before I married. Although she would probably have changed his mind.

But then he didn't trust Jews either.

Needless to say, my father and I got along like a house on fire:

Screaming, yelling, fear, anger and pain.

I too am more worried about the nuclear power stations. Two Chernobyls in one country would be a disaster for the entire area, spilling over into nearby countries. Luckily they have more things in place. This is going to be a test of how they deal with it.

My 12 years old Grandson Jesse is being taught,at school, to forgive and forget as he is so fond of telling me. I spend quite a bit of my time speaking to an old WW11 stretcher bearer. His stories are horrific. My Dad didn't talk about his service in New Guinea and my Mum had very strong feelings given the disruptions and permanent changes to our lives. When my generation dies out,we will probably take with us these feelings against the Japanese. As I tell my Grandson, it is very easy to forgive and forget if you were not the one having your breasts sliced off or other things I won't go into here.

This is true, of course. Maybe there are two problems. One is forgiveness, though I was more concerned about the other one, which is the perception of the other people as alien and different and somehow separable from one's own people or oneself. When I think about what the Japanese, or the Germans, or the Americans did, or what any of the people in South East Asia did to each other (the whole Thai, Burma, Cambodia region used to do unspeakable things to each other in wars of prior centuries), I just think it's people doing it people, with the same sorts of justifications for their actions, and the same sorts of feelings.

Maybe some groups have been a bit more vicious or perverse or wantonly cruel in wartime situations, but America has Abu Graib, and this reflects precious little on "Americans". Soldiers, in war, often behave quite badly, what with the daily job of killing. If your daily job involves embracing insanity (killing for some distance justification of the primacy of one economic system or another that will only ultimately strive to make the wealthy more wealthy and everyone else subservient wretches), acts of criminal, psychotic insanity require a shorter bridge to cross.

It was humans did it. Sometimes we did it to them, and they did it to us. The real enemy is not them, but the actions themselves whoever perpetrates them. And behind and underlying the actions is, among other things, the misconception that other people in other lands or observing other cultures are somehow essentially different, and therefore easier to abstract as non-human, mere numbers on a sheet calculating casualties.

Also, I gather, some people think those other people are capable of much worse atrocities and will stoop lower. I dunno. Some might think Hiroshima wasn't all that bad because, well, it wasn't up close and personal and it was just opening an airplane hatch and dropping some brilliant cargo. Some see what the "terrorists" do as the most heinous, lament 3,000 dead and don't care about 100,000 dead. If someone blows themselves up it's an abomination, but if a gun ship mows down civilians it's a civilized game of chess. The greed that brought about the economic crisis, and sometimes sanctions on countries that prevent them getting needed supplies to purify water (resulting in tens of thousands of innocent children dying) are as cynical and brutal in their effects, despite being caused by the smiling calculations or people sitting behind desks, wearing ties sipping coffee as are acts of physical violence done in person on the spot.


Just my opinion on that.

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A couple of my Chinese friends seem to have forgotten that the war ended back in 1945

It is not a matter of forgetting the end of a war and more to do with what happened during it.

My father served overseas 1939-1945. He said little about his war experiences but he did say that while he could forgive the people of Germany he would never forgive the Japanese.

It helps me to understand why the people of China are rather unforgiving in their attitude to Japan.

Most of us come from countries that have never been invaded, and find it easier to be charitable, but the Chinese have every reason to not like Japan.

There were atrocities, and some of the more recent policies to try to gloss over things in Japanese schoolbooks are unacceptable.  Still, my Jewish friends on average seem more forgiving of Germans than the Chinese are of the Japanese.