Yet Another Post

In case everyone forgot, Israel is not China which sends back North Koreans, nor is it Pakistan (emphasis mine):

Pro-Palestinian activists vowed yesterday to break the Gaza blockade and said another ship was already on its way.

"This disaster with the Israeli commandos has just made us more determined to reach Gaza," said Audrey Bomse, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza Movement, one of the organizers of a fatal flotilla this week that ended with nine deaths when Israeli soldiers launched a pre-dawn raid on a ship.

She said the *MV Rachel Corrie should be near Gaza by the end of the week.

But Israel was adamant it would not let any ships through. "We will not let any ships reach Gaza and supply what has become a terrorist base threatening the heart of Israel," deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai told public radio.

Early on Monday, Israel stopped a flotilla of six ships bound for Gaza. But when Israeli commandos boarded the lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, violence erupted, ending with the death of at least nine activists....

Israel insists the boarding would have been peaceful if the commandos had not been attacked by dozens of club-wielding activists on the Marmara, which carried most of the passengers.

As Israel and those behind the aid flotilla continued to trade blame, the UN Security Council condemned the storming of the fleet....

The United States raised objections during the Security Council talks to tougher language sought by Turkey, the Palestinians and Arab nations, including a call for an international investigation into the incident....

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for Israel to be punished for its "bloody massacre" and urged international sanctions against its "lawlessness."

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Israel "did not have the right" to raid the fleet in international waters, Cuba denounced the "criminal attack" and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez condemned the "brutal massacre."

Nicaragua suspended diplomatic ties with Israel in protest, President Daniel Ortega's office said.

Where were Castro, Chavez and Ortega when North Koreans were shot at by the Chinese?

Oh wait...


(*Note: the ship was named after some American idiot who was hardly Tiananmen tank-guy.)


Living in ethnic enclaves leaves immigrants who come to Canada as adults feeling a weaker sense of belonging to this country, new research suggests.


Well, duh!


What an indictment of Trudeauian multiculturalism. All cultures are equal in Canada, a land where official bilingualism is enforced and paid for by tax dollars. Canadians feel a sense of pride when hearing that they represent successful multiculturalism. They can finally let go of that white guilt publicly-funded activists drone on about. However, "feeling" multicultural isn't the same as "being" multicultural. If one thinks they are cosmopolitan and politically aware, especially if they aren't, they don't have to engage newcomers to Canada. And if all cultures are equal in stature and form, where is the onus on a newcomer to adopt a common language or take part in long standing national traditions? What we've practiced is illusory and isolationist. We feel great because we eat Thai food once a week and never encourage an allophone to speak English or take part in Canadian life, isolating both him and us at the same time. We can't learn about his culture if we never speak or look at him, can we?


Further:

Canadians are almost evenly split on whether residents of the country share a "common culture," says a new national survey exploring perceptions of social cohesion in Canada.

But respondents' doubts about our national sense of togetherness don't translate into a strong belief that Canada's distinctiveness is being destroyed by the U.S. cultural juggernaut.

Barely one-third of the 1,500 people polled for the Montrealbased Association for Canadian Studies expressed the view that Canada and the United States now share a common culture.

Instead, "globalization" was seen as a bigger impediment to creating a unified, pan-Canadian identity, with about 40% of respondents seeing the international phenomenon as a key obstacle to creating a common national culture.

The survey shows about 70% of French-Canadian respondents felt Canada does not have a single, shared culture.

More surprising, perhaps, is that about 50% of English Canadians and allophones felt the same way.

Maybe if we focussed on what made Canada unique rather than worry about what the Americans or multiculturalists think, we could sort it out. We've been a country since 1867. We have to get our act together some time.

And even further:

The Toronto Police Service is revamping its communications policy to ensure the use of "appropriate human rights themed language," and hopes to have guidelines for officers ready by the fall.

That's good because Chinese parents looking for their Chinese child don't need anyone *ragging on them for their Asian ancestry.

(*Note: it is custom in many Asian countries for women to keep their family or maiden name. This custom in multicultural Canada was something of a mystery, hence, some hurtful reports.)


This is why political correctness is a moral evil. It interferes with common sense. Of course it is counter-productive and wicked to use racial slurs but it is not wicked or counter-productive to identify a dangerous person or a missing child.

Just my thoughts.