Our Changing Landscape

Lara Logan: Bomb Raider

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:19:00 +0000

Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

I was going to leave the Lara Logan story alone. After all, whatever happened to her, and not all writers are unanimous that she was actually raped, is still an assault and has left her incapacitated for now, and hospitalized. I'm pretty sure, though, that she will bounce back to resume her Lara Logan: Bomb Raider adventure out in the Orient (metaphorically, at least).

I became suspicious of her (actually, I would became suspicious of any female "war" correspondent, blond and pretty, who goes in the midst of war-mongering, sexually frustrated Muslim men) when I started hearing about her personal behavior right out there in the field. Here's what Wikipedia says about her:

Her husband [Joe Burkett] is a U.S. Federal Government defense contractor from Texas, whom she met in Iraq. They had a son in January 2009. Her previous husband, Jason Siemon, was a professional basketball player in the United Kingdom...Joe Burkett's former wife Kimberly Burkett, accused Lara Logan of breaking up their marriage. She was also said to have been courting Michael Ware, another reporter, at the same time as she became involved with Joe Burkett which was said to have resulted in a brawl between the two men.

While the suddenly prudish Wikipedia uses "courting" to describe whatever was going on between Ware and Logan, The New York Post throws out the word "fling" to describes more succinctly what they see. What she actually had was a fling within a fling. Michael Ware is subsequently (consequently?) divorced, as are both Logan and Burkett from their respective spouses in order to get married to each other. This sounds steamy and romantic, but is as sordid as it gets. I wonder how long this "fling" at (re)marriage will last?

And why wasn't Logan at home taking care of her vulnerable toddler, and instead running off to duck bombs? These points are important to consider. We have transferred tremendous responsibility to these people in times of war. We are depending on them to serve us well during difficult, chaotic times. If they cannot do that, then let them set up their own backdrops for dangerous romances. Casablanca might work, but even those protagonists eventually preferred the good guys to the bad ones.

Fake Conservatives

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:17:00 +0000

Ever since I deduced that libertarians are very much libertarians at heart (and not the conservatives some claim to be, albeit sporadically), I realized that their libertarian "audience" is so limited that they have to cleverly sell their ideas (and writings) to conservative journals, or subtly downplay their libertarian politics, in order to attract conservative readers. I'm not sure why they do this, except that it might even be a prestige thing (conservatives are better than liberals, is my biased view). And of course, it is one way to get their works read by a wider audience, which also translates in them getting their, possibly substantial, paychecks. Obscure (true to their ideals) libertarian journals would leave them wanting materially. So much for political loyalty. But to be fair, perhaps they are hoping to carefully persuade ambivalent conservatives to join their side, and they might even be successful in that regard, if that is indeed one of their endeavors.

Below are various posts I've written on a libertarians passing off as conservatives:

- Peter Brimelow of Vdare fame:
Vdare's Woes
- Ilana Mercer and her articles on conservative sites:
What exactly is Ilana Mercer?
- Various Canadian "conservatives" who slowly admit that they're libertarians
Where have all the conservatives gone?

There is an interesting discussion at View from the Right after my post "Where have all the conservatives gone", including a response by Canadian writer Kevin Michael Grace. Grace also sent me an email, and I responded. That was the extent of Grace's denials of his libertarian stance, which he never really disproved in his communications with me.

Here is the relevant email interaction:

Dear Ms. Asrat:

I don't know where you got the idea I am a libertarian, paleo or otherwise. See this. I may be a pessimist, but I am not a nihilist; the biggest influence on my political and social thinking is Hilaire Belloc. As for immigration to my country (Canada), my position is: end it. I see no need for Canada to take in more than, say, 5,000 immigrants a year for the foreseeable future. As for Muslim immigration, my position is: none, ever.

Cordially,

Kevin Michael Grace

Here is my challenge to his response that he is not a libertarian, to which he never responded:

I do apologize if I singled you out incorrectly, or unfairly, but this is how I see what's happening. After a prolonged absence, your first article - your comeback article, if I may say so - was on the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Commissions. I have written about your article in this post. Surprisingly, I found that your concern over the HRCs and the CHRA was not to disclose their positions on non-discrimination, but to talk about their attempts at censorship - or as you say "self-censorship."

[...]

So, rather than talk about these societal changes, and the historical reasons for the formation of the HRCs and the CHRA, and what fuels them these days which includes high immigration levels, it seems that you preferred to talk about self-censorship as the overriding factor. As I said before, this self-censorship came out of a specific historical and social context. It seems your concern relates to the narrow focus of individual freedoms (of speech, of expression etc.) that libertarians hold dear, rather than to the broader social issues that conservatives try to address, which certainly also includes free speech and expression as part of the whole picture.

The full article, to which Grace responded with his email is: Kevin Michael Grace's Inadequate Take On Section 13 of The Human Rights Commissions.

One of the reasons I took an interest in these writers is because they have a connection to Canada, so I thought they would give me some wise insight into this country. I was pretty much wrong on that, and I'm not even sure how much good they're doing America. (Grace occasionally has his articles published at Vdare, as do Shaidle and Mercer. Mercer is a regular columnist at World Net Daily. Grace has also published in American journals such as Chronicles and The American Spectator).

I have a couple of "letters to the editor" at Vdare (here and here), and I communicated with Mercer for a while, until her underhanded rude reply to one of my emails which centered around my disagreements on her libertarian politics.

Here is a recent post at VFR discussing Australian blogger Mark Richard's article on the American Right, where Lawrence Auster writes: "...many conservatives are in fact classical liberals or libertarians ." This has been my view for a while now.

Michelle Ma Belle - Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Michelle Obama at the State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao

[Cross-posted at Camera Lucida]

I had vowed not to do anymore fashion pieces on Michelle Obama. But this takes the cake. The dress she wore to the State Dinner for China's President Hu Jintao looks like some kind of modern tied-dye African costume, clumsily cut as though somewhat was "cut happy" with the scissors, and with parts which look like they were assembled together with safety pins. There is that odd asymmetrical, off-the-shoulder look that Obama seems to like so much. And she's holding some kind of miniature shawl (scroll down to the second image) which has no relation, either in design or in proportion, to the rest of the dress. Bloggers (and Drudge) are calling this her tribute to "China Red", but I don't see that, especially with all the black "tie-dye" criss-crossing pattern.

It always surprises me when Obama comes out with her dresses. I can find no way to relate to them, and their strangeness strikes me each time. Perhaps this really is her, unique, sense of dress. But, I will go further, as I have before, that she has nowhere to pull from that will give her good judgment on her choices. She might be the most visual (yet thoroughly ignored) manifestation of the Obama government. A government which bows down, literally, to foreign leaders, channeling something that is not at all an American tradition. In fact, it is so strangely alien, that it could be why people (journalists, bloggers) are stunned into silence by this behavior.

Just like Michelle's odd, culturally unrecognizable, dresses.

The dress was designed by Alexander McQueen's replacement, and long-time design partner, Sarah Burton. McQueen, a flamboyant homosexual, committed suicide in 2010. Burton designs these amorphous gowns with unrecognizable patterns It looks like she takes some rough shape and simply replicates it through mirroring and repeats

Burton was recently featured in January 2011's Vogue (US). The image below is a spread in the magazine. At first glance, the gowns looks impressive, dramatic even. But, fashion magazine buyers (like me, at least) look at details from shoes to buttons. Add to that my experience with textile design, and all I could say was 'This is fluff."

Look at this dress (it easier to work with) from the Paris Fashion Week (via the Los Angeles Times):

There is no discernible pattern, other than dramatic strokes (which look like flames, or a giant flower, but we're still not clear what it is). And I've added a red line in the middle where the image has clearly been mirrored on to the other side.

Such design techniques are rudimentary and basic. This is one of the first things I did when I started my studies. Just quickly draw rough brush strokes, and mirror-copy them with the "mirror" angled at ninety, forty-five, etc. degrees.

Burton also seems to channel some kind of ethnic or multicultural sources. Here is a fashion blog Styling Delux who has posted some of Burton's designs. Two of them look like kimono-type gowns, and there is the dress Michelle wore which looks like an elaborate African-style gown. But, even African fashion is more sophisticated than that.

Burns is British. I seem to want to associate her with that British faux-artiste Damien Hirst, and his famous Butterfly Series, which he did with real live (dead) butterflies, which he also elaborated using mirror-imaging techniques. Burns also has a butterfly dress, replete with 3-D butterflies, which I hope are not real.

More Sino-Muscle Flexing

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:39:00 +0000

Nobody is writing about this, so my modest blog may as well tackle the taboo topics.

I've recently been repeatedly struck by aggressive Chinese behavior - whether it is subtly carried out like the narrowing in on white males by Chinese women (immigrant or ethnic), by harsh Chinese mothering techniques by Chinese living in the West (I'm not interested in what Chinese do behind their own borders), and of course the Chinese going where they've never been before, siphoning off water from poor countries, for example, to alleviate their own disastrous policies. I won't even grace Obama's latest bow to Hu Jintao, in Washington, no less.

One of the effects of this wonderful cultural intrusion is that the pagan and heathen superstitions from (Chinese) factory manufactured strips in "fortune" cookies are now spoken to us in their fuller versions by Chinese sages.

The Chinese don't like death, they don't like funeral parlors, and certainly not hospices. Residents of a Vancouver building are loudly protesting plans to build a hospice near their "million dollar" high rise apartments. They're appealing to (their) cultural taboos to abort this plan.

Here are some quotes from The Province (a British Columbia publication):

- "We cannot have dying people in our backyard," said rally organizer Janet Fan, Wednesday "It’s a cultural taboo to us and we cannot be close to so many dying people. It’s like you open your door and step into a graveyard."

- One resident says: "We believe that people dying outside will bring us bad luck," she added. "I’m very angry and upset. If I had known it was going to be a hospice, I wouldn’t buy it for half the price."

- Another, clutching her toddler son adds: "It’s very disturbing,”"she said. "My kids and I are going to feel so frightened and angry just to think there are dying people so close to us."

- And the this, in a letter addressed to the University Neighborhood Association:

"'Death is the Yin and 'Live' is the Yang,” it read. "If the Yin and Yang are near to each other, 'Death' will bring bad luck, meaning sickness and even death . . . The ghosts of the dead will invade and harass the living."

- The letter said Asians believe that living next to "death" would "lead to failure of business, the loss of money, the break of marriage and family, and the healthy growing up of children will be affected."

The paper compares this "opposition" to the building with other protesters. Namely, a group of University of British Columbia students who didn't want to tone down their rowdy drunken parties.

Joe Stott, director of Campus and Community Planning, says: "[T]here’s no evidence that a hospice reduces property values.”

This could be a funny Saturday Night Live skit. But it's not that humorous. In the West, dignity is given even at death. Hospices are a dignified way for families to come to terms with a dying relative, and to have him spend the last days of his life in as much comfort (and dignity) as possible. I keep using the work "dignity" but it is not for lack of other words. I've written about the usurpation of dignity that Chinese seem to practice. Of course critics will say that I don't have enough evidence, but we do get Chinese women writing quite explicitly about their lives, most recently Amy Chua's memoir, and in the various semi-autobiographical books that Amy Tan has written, showing u s the ways that Chinese mothers humiliate their children (daughters, mostly, it seems).

So, I am not surprised that base desires and superstitious beliefs induce these Chinese (notice how all those interviewed in the Vancouver paper, or at least providing their opinion, are women) Vancouver residents to act out inhumanely (this is what I wrote about Chua's treatment of her daughters) towards the dying.

Mercer is at it again

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:57:00 +0000

Here are the definitive first two paragraphs of Ilana Mercer's post on Jared Lee Loughner:

… Jared Lee Loughner was both fixated on his representative’s imagined failings, and preoccupied with language and its misuse. These elements combined and then combusted in his head.

As a writer who really loves the English language, I am intrigued by the intrusive, persistent thoughts about grammar and illiteracy to have plagued Loughner.

This is what she writes about a mass-murderer, compare him with her love of (which translates later on in the long-winded article, her expertise on) words. Besides the weird analogy, this is a typically smug Mercer statement.

I've already discussed Mercer's uninteresting writing style (see references below). So, perhaps she is authentic when comparing her style with Loughner's ramblings. After all, one admires what one aspires to.

Here's another, where she ties in her libertarian, anti-government ideology with the inner-genius of Loughner:

Perhaps, then, it was not speech per se that inflamed Loughner's febrile passions, but, rather, Orwellian speech; lies that belie reality.

And finally:

"Crazies" know right from wrong.

Brilliant, even by Mercer's standards.

----------------------------------------------
Here are more blog posts on Mercer:
- Round-up of the Blogs and Misconceptions About Islam
- Idiot Libertarians - No Scare Quotes This Time
- "Idiot" Libertarians
- Where Have All the Conservatives Gone?
- Mercer as the Nihilistic Usual (Ultimate) Suspect

A Sino-Draconian Mission

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:07:00 +0000

This unflattering portrayal of author Amy Chua
is posted in the the British leftist newspaper the Guardian

The paper labels the image with a quote from Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

"The solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child"

Incriminating imagery of a Western-culture denouncing non-white in a leftist newspaper? Chua is too much even for the Guardian.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Cross-posted at Camera Lucida]

I've noticed (and noted) a strange sinophilism going around these days. It doesn't matter if it is a left-wing or a right-wing commentator, the consensus seems to be that the Chinese (culture, at least) has got it right. One of these manifestations is the white male/Chinese female coupling I see all around me, which I've discussed here. In another post I discuss how Janice Stein, a University of Toronto academic who often appears on news shows as a political expert, excuses China's draconian measures towards its own work force by saying "that's the only way things can get done." Such behavior apparently translates down to family interactions, where Amy Chau, a Yale University law professor discloses her harsh intimidation methods to get her daughters to achieve "perfection" in her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

I skimmed through a book review of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in the January 2011 issue of Elle Magazine, but lost interest (or more like rolled my eyes), and stopped reading after the introductory paragraph:

A hyperachieving law prof and author from a cosmopolitan Chinese clan lays out a fearsome child-rearing philosophy.

Another Amy Tan type of book glorifying abusive Chinese mothers, I though.

Steve Sailer, from the anti-immigration website Vdare, which purports to eschew Western values, has posted a blog praising Amy Chau, and her draconian mothering and child-rearing techniques.

Sailer quotes from the New York Times review of Chua's memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

"In retrospect, these coaching suggestions seem a bit extreme," [Chua] writes in the book after describing how she once threatened to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she did not play a piano composition perfectly. "On the other hand, they were highly effective."

In interviews, she comes off as unresolved. "I think I pulled back at the right time," she said. "I do not think there was anything abusive in my house." Yet, she added, "I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think there’s a lot of questions about how you instill true self-esteem."

Sailer adds a one-line comment:

One thing you can say for Ms. Chua is that she’s got guts.

Guts to bully and intimidate her children into becoming classical pianists?

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is getting complementary reviews in many other venues.

- The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from Chua's book in early January. And allowed her to rebut the many negative comments she got from readers. Rather than write their own review, the editorial group at WSJ simply left the floor open to Chua. This is not a book review, but an underhanded way of giving a book a "pass".

- The reviewer from Macleans magazine from Canada, a spineless Joan Latmer writes, "I can’t think of a better rehab warden than Chua. The smart money’s on Tiger Mother."

- The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente goes all out and praises non-white, non-Western parenting techniques which border on child abuse. Here's what she says about Andre Agassi's Iranian father's training techniques:

Mike Agassi, a first-generation immigrant from Iran, taped Ping-Pong paddles to his son’s hands when he was just a toddler. At 6, Andre was practicing four or five hours a day.

Agassi later confessed that he’s always hated tennis "with a dark and secret passion."

Wente writes about Chua:

Instead of false praise, [Chua] believes in high standards and criticism. She once rejected a hastily scrawled birthday card that one of her daughters had made for her. "This is garbage," she said. "You can do better."

The snarky Wente continues:

Cruel? Maybe. But her older daughter, Sophia, has already played at Carnegie Hall. Your children probably haven’t.

Yes, anything to glorify the glorious non-West, and demonize the West, for these leftist Globe and Mail writers.

Chua relaxed her draconian methods and let her younger daughter give up piano for tennis. But, it's not necessarily generosity (or motherly love) that made her cede, but simply that she couldn't squeeze enough talent out of her unobliging daughter. Instead, she seems to have focused her classical-pianist-for-a-daughter needs on the eldest daughter.

But so far, Chua's "prodigy" has only played once at Carnegie Hall, and she's already eighteen. She's placed high in a couple of parochial competitions: second in a piano competition in the Greater Bridgeport Symphony competition for young musicians in 2010, and first at the Music Teachers National Association piano competition in 2006. She is no child prodigy, and might turn out to be a competent pianist, and end up in her mother's alma mater as the next best thing to a performer - a music teacher.

Part of the joy of perfecting something is because one loves it, or is encouraged to love it. Grueling practice sessions, time away from friends and play, and overcoming jittery nerves before performances are then usually worth the effort. I would wager that artists are willing to spend years of financial and social insecurity because they love their craft, and are willing to sacrifice other comforts to express that love. They could not function with a stick waving above their head.

When I was started to study ballet at a young age, I was so scared of my teacher (a Bulgarian communist who would tap my knee with a stick, "your k-nee, Kidist, your k-nee,") that I failed miserably and was further humiliated at being removed from a school pageant. Yet later on, while a slightly older girl in the British school system, my teachers commended my grace (I also won a third-place prize at a local, regional competition). Later still, I joined many other dance groups, including a Mexican folk dance group often as a partner to the dance instructor/leader, an American modern dance ensemble where audience members would search for me to give me compliments, and even a belly dance group (I quit that one finding little art in it). I even organized and choreographed small groups for dance performances in college.

I never became a dancer, since I didn't have enough talent, and who knows what other social reasons excluded me from this art (including an emphasis on academics rather than the arts in my family), but I was never that incompetent young girl doing plies at the mercy of a teacher's stick. And many generous teachers instilled in me a love of dance which effaced the memory of the stick, and allowed me to continue to be thrilled by it all my life. I decided to enter an art-related field, and sometimes use music and dance (pattern) analogies to "compose" my work. Relying on that stick would have killed all of that.

Chua's unobliging daughter chose tennis for her second chance at doing something well. It is interesting that the similarity between her choice of music and sport is not that the fields are related, but that they have a psychological connection. Competition seems to be the overriding factor for her in both: to "play" and and to win. Perhaps it was in her nature to be athletically competitive, and piano playing couldn't give her that. But, perhaps her mother's draconian (evil) methods that art is associated with pain, and even hate, simply clinched her decision.

"Youth, Change the World!"

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:02:00 +0000

Liberal/Fascist/Elitist Race-baiter Spike Lee

[Cross-posted at Camera Lucida]

I posted recently on Spike Lee's and his wife's foray into children's books with their newly released Giant Steps to Change the World. "Youth" figure high in liberal and fascists ideology, and Lee is no exception. But Lee, like all black elites, is rife with hypocrisy. Liberal elites, like Lee, don't really want for themselves what they pitch to the masses. Their talk about equality is a blatant lie.

Here is what I wrote about liberal elites at Our Changing Landscape:

[Jim] Kalb writes:

[Facism]'s a nice clear system, and it's got some logic behind it, but it doesn't work very well. It was tried and it lost. For that reason, the liberal solution won out.

That solution is a bit more complicated. It starts by noting that all our purposes are equally purposes, and infers that everybody's purposes equally confer value. Each of us is equally able to make things good or bad just by thinking of them as good or bad. That makes each of us in a sense divine. Our will creates moral reality. Instead of the wonder-working leader of fascism you get the divine me of liberalism. It's every man his own Jesus.
So how do liberal leaders get all these equally stationed demi-gods to follow them? It is still sheer will, I would think, of maintaining a semblance of liberal equality, but working with (and secretly ruling with) brute fascistic superiority, through a lot of lying and deceiving.

My post on Lee's children's books discusses his very white-looking "black" wife, yet all of his career and politics is about the evils done to blacks by whites. The book Giant Steps to Change the World is reviewed by its (liberal) publisher as "an inspirational picture book about activism and taking the big steps to set things right." Setting things right really means getting back at whites who've oppressed blacks for so long. And Lee starts the indoctrination of his brigade at pre-school age.

Lee doesn't seem to have done too badly under white oppression, racking in millions from his white oppressors for books (and films) like this, and marrying what really is his (and blacks') epitome of success - a white woman (or the less painfully hypocritical substitute, a white-looking black woman).

From my previous post on Spike Lee:

[J]ust like Hitler's youth brigade, "youth" is a recurring and important category that liberals love to use, as though they are benign, protective adults. Instead, what they are doing is systematically, through schools and various media including children's books, building their army of fascist children, who are trained to be foaming at the mouth, and to destroy then rebuild society according to the gospel of their liberal/fascist parents.

How a Focus on Culture Might Get at Imperceptible Societal Changes Quicker than Focusing Only on Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:16:00 +0000

[Cross-posted at my culture blog Camera Lucida]

Politically-oriented magazines like Frontpage Magazine and American Thinker won't accept my "cultural" articles like The Structure of a Perfume: 5th Avenue by Elizabeth Arden, which I posted yesterday, unless I explicitly focus on politics.

I've tried to write purely political pieces since I understand we have an emergency in our hands:

- Muslim numbers in the West are increasing by the day
- Their actions are getting bolder, where they interject, with impunity, their social, legal, cultural and political structures into our Western societies
- Our streets are changing by the minute
- We have Chinese inundating our neighborhoods, arrogantly and loudly proclaiming their presence in their languages
- They are cleverly allowing their women to marry white men (the strange converse is not Chinese men with white women, but I'm seeing more and more of them with dark, black women).
- Chinese/white and Chinese/black will ultimately side against whites, and Western civilization. The reasons are complex, but I've observed this for many years now.
- All other non-white cultural groups will ultimately fight against Western civilization, however much they give a semblance of alliance for now. They realize the risks they're taking, running dry their water source. But they're willing to take the risk.
-Immigration is one of the reasons for this demographic and social change. And even second and third generation non-white immigrants have refused to adapt to the West. They take what they need, pay lip service where necessary, but continue with their determined (often unrecognized, even by them) task of changing the society to fit them.

But, I think the manifestation of these changes creeps into culture and society in imperceptible ways, at least to the layman. I think that such changes precede political articulations and manifestations. That is why I spend so much of my time assessing our culture and society with seemingly frivolous topics like fashion, design, Hollywood films, television, and so on. They show me that standards are being lowered. Hundreds of years of Western culture is being dismantled in the name of equality and multiculturalism. And no-one is immune. Spending thousands of dollars for what one would consider an authentic Christian Dior is really paying designers to play out their destructive fantasies - just look at John Galliano. And finally we have the real thing, Vera Wang, a Chinese-American designer.

Hitler didn't try to change Germany simply with political manipulations. He dug into the German culture, to destroy it. Then Germans became too weak to defend their civilization. We are getting at such a serious juncture in our era with Islam and Muslims specifically, and immigration in general.

We have now become simply numb to Islam's and Immigration's Transformation of our Society and Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:13:00 +0000

A Muslim couple was caught in the biggest tax and immigration fraud in Toronto (Mississauga) and Montreal. Through this, around 300 people were given citizenship of permanent residency. All of these fraudulent immigrants are from Egypt. None of the newspapers or news stations dare say that this couple is Muslim, and that the "immigrants" are coming from Muslim countries. This despite the woman clearly dressed in a hijab, as seen on Canada's national news station, CTV. The couple both having Arabic names.

Even Jason Kenney, our infamous Immigration and Citizenship minister, refuses to use the dreaded "M" word, and instead calls them simply "foreign nationals." Here is an excerpt of what he said:

On January 6, 2011, an investigation by the Immigration and Passport and Commercial Crime sections of the RCMP resulted in criminal charges against three individuals who created the appearance that hundreds of individuals living overseas had met the residence obligation required to retain permanent resident status or to obtain Canadian citizenship...

In this investigation alone, 260 files were implicated and five people have obtained Canadian citizenship.

What is much more accurate than fraudulent immigration in describing this pattern is invasion. This is convenient until a critical mass is reached through this "immigration" and violent eradication of non-Muslims could become another strategy. We are now reaching that critical mass where Muslims can start to enforce their system through violent means if necessary, unless the country capitulates "voluntarily" to Islam. I'm still not sure which way the West will go. Jason Kenney's and other officials' statements indicate that our leaders have not understood this strategy. But, liberals hate religion as much as they love multiculturalism, so it is a toss-up if they will cave in and accept Islam "ideologically" (and become targets if they don't convert), or if they will start to eradicate it in order to promote their organized religion-free society. Still, pockets of violence will be eternally inevitable, since Muslims have to eradicate any dissension.

This invasion through immigration (or Al-Hijra), as originally mandated and practiced by Mohammed, is discussed in Islamic scholar Sam Solomon's latest book Modern Day Trojan Horse: Al-Hijra, The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration, Accepting Freedom or Imposing Islam?

Round-up of the Blogs and Misconceptions About Islam

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:55:00 +0000

"La Femme Loire", posted on
Gallia Watche's blog

1. GalliaWatch has posted on a gargantuan sculpture that is to be placed behind the Marmoutier Abbey in France. It is the usual modern fare of the louder, bigger, kitchier, the better. There is no art in the piece.

Yet, why shouldn't this horrendous sculpture be placed there? France touts itself as a secular nation, and this abbey hasn't been functioning as a Christian center for generations. If people cannot even respect, let alone allow to function, their Christian institutions, then anything else is free to come and replace, or destroy, it.

Isn't that one of the successful strategies of Islam?

Here's what Wikipedia says about the Marmoutier Abbey:

The abbey was disestablished in 1799 during the French Revolution, and within a few decades the bulk of its buildings had been demolished. Today its grounds contain a private school, and of its former structures only a few ruins remain.

2. Ilana Mercer keeps repeating (and linking to) a mantra, "We are Doomed" interspersed in her blog posts. But like many things Mercer writes, it isn't even her original idea or thought. She borrowed it from a nihilistic book title by John Derbyshire, which Mercer is actively publicizing on her blog. Derbyshire's full title is: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. Isn't conservatism about optimism? We are confident that what we have is worth keeping, that it is positive and good. Of course, we base this on many things, one of which is our Christianity. And Christians and Conservatives Derbyshire and Mercer are not.

That really is the fundamental difference, isn't it, between pessimists and optimists. Pessimist believe in nothing, they are nihilists to the core. Their great system is to believe in doom, in nothing.

Mercer and Derbyshire do have their belief systems, but they lead directly to nihilism. Mercer's Libertarianism is her religion that excludes everything but the sacrosanct individual. The empty narcissist. No wonder this leads her to doom, and enter the "higher" realm of Derbyshire's belief system via his pathological liberalism, which is nihilism.

It is also a little infantile to just keep repeating "We are Doomed" scattered "liberally" in articles supposedly meant for sophisticated reading. But, I have never been impressed with Mercer's writing style either.

Although self-anointed intellectuals like Mercer and Derbyshire will never acknowledge this, their doom (and emptiness) is precisely the kind of emptiness that Islam (and evil) looks for, to fill up and influence that emptiness with something.

3. The bloggers at Gates of Vienna have posted an article on Sam Solomon. The writer of the article, Henrik R. Clausen, describes Solomon's background as a "retired Islamic scholar." Solomon, whom I describe as a "Muslim scholar and sharia law expert" never retired from Islamic scholarship. He simply stopped becoming a Muslim, and converted to Christianity. He is therefore an apostate. And because of the death threat hanging over his head, he has to go into hiding. Solomon hasn't shown any indication of retirement, and continues to write books on Islam while in hiding. His latest book, released in February 2010, is titled: Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews.

Voluntary retirement and forced withdrawal from public life due to a death threat hanging over one's head are two very different things. This is not a small error. The writers at Gates of Vienna should have called Clausen out on this. Many counter-Jihad movements like Gates of Vienna work on some wishful thinking premise that Islam can be reformed, and that those death threats are made, and followed through, by a tiny minority of Muslim fanatics. The reality is simply that apostates are required, by the Koran, to be purged and killed. All good Muslims believe this, and that means the majority of Muslims. Sam Solomon left Islam when he abdicated from his role as an Islamic scholar and sharia law expert and later converted to Christianity, and therefore he is considered an apostate. He will forever live in fear of being murdered.

Coventry Carol

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:48:00 +0000

The Coventry Carol, sung by Charlotte Church

I think Charlotte Church's voice is perfect for this piece. Often, it is sung by women or boy sopranos. I think neither capture the lament of the young Mary, and when Charlotte sang this, in her more popular days, she was also barely a teenager. She released the track album "Dream a Dream", an album of Christmas carols in 2000 when she was just fourteen. Here are the lyrics.

I remember reading somewhere that the nativity story anticipates the crucifixion. The young innocent Jesus faces death, even at birth. And this cloud follows him to his actual death at Easter, still and always innocent.

We should just be thankful we had him for those few years, when in a flurry of responsibility, he disseminated so much of his message to us and his disciples.

A Place To Eat for Every (and Any) Culture on Yonge Street

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:07:00 +0000

"Paramount Middle Eastern Cuisine and Bakery"
The women in white are wearing hijabs. There were
altogether four "hijabed" women sitting together.
(To see larger versions, click on the images)

Walking down Yonge Street, the longest street in Toronto (it goes even further north than the city itself), one sees the multicultural smorgasbord that the city has become. In fact, many people will now proudly proclaim that "Toronto is the most diverse city in the world." What that means is that Toronto is now a city of many cultures, many of them incompatible with each other, and with the main, white Canadian culture. The streets are filled with foreign sounds.

Even Tim Hortons, the coffee house named after a Canadian hockey legend, is filled with gibberish tongues. Yesterday, I was standing waiting for a cup of coffee, and I ended up in front of a table of five or six women, talking loudly in Filipino, oblivious to their surroundings. They could have been in Manila for all they knew.

The photos below are of restaurants along the Yonge Street stretch. As far as restaurants go, there is nothing really unusual about them. We are now used to eating food from around the world. (Some say that the idea of multiculturalism was sold to the Canadian public through their stomachs - imagine all those savory foods we can now eat!).

What popped out of these images is that the restaurants were not catering for the general Canadian public after all! They have become eateries for the very same ethnic group from which the foods originate! Why not come to Canada. We can even find our food on the most famous street in the country.

"Asian Bowl: Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai Cuisine"
An "oriental" woman is at the window seat.
(Click on the image to see a larger version)

These days, second generation Korean, Chinese, Filipino and even Thai seem to be willing to mix together as a Pan Asian group. This is an impromptu movement (not strategically planned) to solidify their strength against other "ethnics" and the most powerful "ethnic" of them all, the whites.

"Korean Grill House"
Bulgogi was meant to be for Koreans!

This Caribbean place was empty. But a black man had walked out just as
I was taking the picture.

(Photos by KPA)

'Grinch' Steals Packages Off Doorsteps, Signs For Deliveries

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:49:00 +0000

'Grinch' Steals Packages Off Doorsteps,
Signs For Deliveries...

Drudge is on a roll today. Under a heading of CHRISTMAS CRIMES, here is what the ubiquitous (and often gossipy) editor has to report:

- Drive-By Purse Snatcher Terrorizing Women In NJ...

- Burglar steals family's gifts -- and its dog!

- Grave robbers steal 400 urns from cemetery...

- 'Grinch' Steals Packages Off Doorsteps, Signs For Deliveries...

- Home Invaders Tie Up 12-Year-Old Boy, Take Video Games...

- 90-Year-Old Man Put In Choke-Hold, Robbed Of $370...

- Bus driver quits after being videotaped running over snowman...

- Armed Motorcycle Bandit Nabs $1.5 Million in Casino Heist...

Erosion of Civility

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:23:00 +0000

Photo from Toronto Star article
"A city of unmatched diversity"

A couple of days ago, I was in line at my local pharmacy to buy a breath freshener, and the wait was longer than what my purchase warranted, so I was mischievously looking to pass the time with a nice looking lady behind me whom I recognized as an Ethiopian - more precisely as an Amhara. I said "Selam" to her in Amharic. Her response would tell me all I would need to know. If she replies in Amharic, then I know she would converse in Amharic. She replied in Amharic.

The pleasant-looking Ethiopian woman turned sour when I said to her: "Don't you think we're being inundated with Chinese these days?" as I pointed to a Chinese customer at the cashier, and remarked that every other person that passes by me in the downtown area is Chinese. As we conversed, I also said that the Chinese are now in Ethiopia, building bridges and dams at the invitation of the anti-West, anti-Amhara regime of the Tigray people, bringing their own people to do so. At the same time, they are siphoning away precious material, including water!

Of course, in this multi-culti city, language is up for grabs. This woman doesn't have to respond in Amharic, and I reply in English when people I don't know talk to me in Amharic. My firm position is that everyone should speak in English, including Quebeckers. But, knowing a second language (and culture) can give one many insights.

Her response was interesting. It was a combination of instinctive political correctness (Toronto trains its citizens well), a reprimand, and arrogant superiority. I understood the third implication much later on as I thought about our interaction - this is what I mean that language often provides an uncanny insight into people's thoughts.

She replied, a little aggressively: "Let them work" - "Yisru."

As though work is an undisputed right for everyone, irrespective of his qualifications, merits or motives. I think she takes this perceptive from the multi-culti equality indoctrination she has been subjected to in Toronto. And work becomes a human right, and absent of working, one still gets a substitute "salary" through various government handouts.

I believe that her second (and perhaps true) meaning is more subtle, where she meant: let them do the work. At some deep visceral level, she is still an Ethiopian, and she will still have more attachment, and feel more protection, towards Ethiopians than the Chinese. Let them work for Ethiopia, is probably part of her reasoning. Her response is also the vestiges of the ruling Amhara mentality, who were accustomed to subordination. "Let the Chinese build whatever we need."Such is the contradictions of liberalism. Elitism - necessary and human - is everywhere, even in liberal milieus, and ideologies cannot eradicate it. People feel closer to their own; people discriminate; hierarchies are everywhere. So much for the multicultural paradise.

I asked, what is wrong with having Ethiopians build their own country? And why import workers from so far away? And why not pay Ethiopians, rather than foreigners, to do a good day's work? If I had more time, and if I thought she would have understood me, I would have continued: Why cannot a government think in terms of its own people? And why are the Chinese there, who have no good record of helping other countries? We had it with the communist Russians. And now it is the Maoist Chinese. What do they really want from Ethiopia?

When it was my turn to go to the cashier I said "Melkam Genna" - "Merry Christmas" - to the Ethiopian woman, with the customary half bow (she looked older) and left.

There are many more stories I could tell where I have confronted my multi-culti fellow "citizens", one of which was to tell burqa (whole body covering!) clad women that we were watching them! Another to ask two Chinese women behind me on an escalator talking loudly and irritatingly in Chinese if they can speak English. And finally, to tell a Chinese woman in my supermarket who was letting her son run amok, shouting in Chinese, why she doesn't restrain his behavior. She asked why I don't restrain my behavior by shutting up. I replied: "Then I wouldn't be able to tell people like you when you're disturbing our peace." The kid later on went into a screaming fit. A few Canadian men looked at me sympathetically (one a little bemused). After all, this is a country where politeness reigns supreme, and my behavior was an impolite way of reasserting politeness.

Library Closed due to Police Investigation

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:14:00 +0000

In my previous post on a crossbow shooting and killing that took place in front of mothers and children in a community library in downtown Toronto, I wrote that the library planned to continue with its scheduled events.

There is a notice up at the top of the library's website which states that:

As of Thursday, Dec. 2, the Main Street branch is closed until further notice due to a police investigation.

It is sad to see the Christmas activities that were planned for December, and that are still up on the website's side panel, including a musical event for young children on December 6, canceled.

Festering beneath the Calm of these Chinese Immigrants

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:33:00 +0000

The pleasant Main/Gerrard community library
in the eastern section of Toronto where Zhou Fang
killed his father Si Cheng with a crossbow.

Despite last Thursday's horrific murder, the library
plans to continue with its planned events, including
one taking place on December 6, advertised as:

Snow! Snow! Snow! A Children's
Musical Morning with Mark Battenberg.

Join musician Mark Battenberg as we
celebrate the winter season with story
and song. Plus stay for a short craft!
For children 5 years old and under and
their caregivers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The associated press, in its article "Canadian uses crossbow to kill another man" reports:

A Canadian man was charged with first-degree murder Friday [December 3, 2010] for fatally shooting his father in the back with a crossbow in a Toronto library as shocked mothers and children watched.

Then the very next paragraph elucidates:

Zhou Fang, 24, appeared in court to face the murder charge a day after Si Cheng, 52, was killed in the library about an hour after a nearby school let out for the day. The judge ordered that Fang be held without bail.

Canadian journalists and news reporters are using "Canadian" to mean anyone who resides in Canada. They don't even bother to qualify the word with "an immigrant to Canada." It is clear as we read further that these were Chinese men, and possibly first generation immigrants.

Commentators at the article realize there is more to the story than a "Canadian" with a crossbow. One writes:

Canadian hockey players try to kill each other every night--and they do it with sticks.

Another writes:

Typical Canadians...

A few jokes:

Killerbee says: Can't blame him. He though it was a moose. :D

Roberta quips: At least Fang was considerate enough to the other library patrons to use a weapon that didn't make any noise. Just imagine how upset the Canadian police would be if there had been a loud bang in a library.

This comment gets closer to the truth:

Zhou Fang in the library, with a cross-bow.

Sam writes:

My guess is that he is actually a crazy Chinese guy and not a REAL Canadian.

Chris can't use "Chinese" and opts for the generic "Asian":

Canada really needs to start screening their immigrants better. First an asian dude decapitates a guy on a bus and eats his head, now this asian guy shoots his dad in the back with a crossbow in a library and kills him. What's next?

Lee Vinning suggests a solution:

Another argument for immigration control and reform.

But Pig Mohammed had the right idea, much earlier in the comments (at #20 out of 166). His train of thought was captured sporadically, but never caught on.

Does Zhou Fang and Si Cheng sound Canadian to you? Get real, liberal lamestream media. Nobody is buying your lefty crap anymore. These were two third world rats settling a score like they do back home in whatever toilet country they crawled out of.. NOTHING Canadian about it.

In the AP article, a witness says about Zhou Fang,

He looked very calm and was holding something in his hand...I noticed him but it’s not like he was acting strange or anything.

This is the second, bizarre and ultra-violent incident involving Chinese immigrants in Canada. The first involved Chinese Muslim Vincent Li, the Greyhound bus decapitator of two years ago who cut off the head of the traveler sleeping next to him. Li also had a calm demeanor, unfitting for the violent crime he had just committed.

These murderers are using knives and cross-bows, primitive weapons, to wreak havoc. Even Rosie DiManno, the ultra-liberal Toronto Star's ultra liberal columnist writes,

The crossbow is a weapon of medieval war.

DiManno continues:

The bolt struck Cheng in the back, causing massive trauma. He was pronounced dead at the scene, that ghastly image forever imprinted on the minds of witnesses mulling about the book stacks, including children and their moms.

Chinese immigrants are touted as model immigrants, with high education levels, living peaceful and prosperous lives, and quickly assimilating into the Canadian society.

But, I wrote recently of my four-year interaction with Chinese immigrants as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher. I reached my peak after three years, and quit the post at my fourth year. I wrote about leaving my position:

I left (abruptly to my supervisors) after some months of reflection. My main reason (which I of course didn't disclose) was that I didn't find any sense of commitment to Canada by these Chinese immigrants (or Chinese newcomers, as the ESL crowd called them). In fact, I thought I was giving them too much information with which they can continue their Chinese alliances (and affinities) while seeing what they can claim from Canada. I got this impression from discussions during the class. In one class I got the students to sing the Canadian national anthem, partly as a reaction to their anti-Canadianism during a discussion, standing up. Some refused to sing, others made a fuss about getting up. That's when I knew my days were numbered.

I found there had no real commitment to Canadian and Western history, culture or even society. I found this even with second and third generation Chinese. This aspect became clear during my art school years, where every single Chinese-Canadian student would go out of his way to incorporate Chinese elements into his work. And there I was foolishly channeling the German-American Josef Albers, or the English Arts and Crafts mogul William Morris.

St. Joseph and the Infant Christ

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 18:05:00 +0000

[Cross-posted at Camera Lucida].

As we near Christmas, and we hear the lovely stories of Jesus's birth and his young mother Mary, I always feel that we keep his earthly father, Joseph, a little on the side-lines.

I am re-posting a segment I did on St. Joseph, and on the artists who painted him. These are purely subjective choices. I don't know if the paintings are masterpieces, or if some of the painters are even recognized in the roster of the Western canon. But, in many of the paintings, I found the gentleness with which Joseph interacted with his young infant touching.

Here is the website where I found most of these images.

[I've removed some works where Christ is already a young man in my original blog post. To view the complete post, you can go here.]

Jesus's Earthly Father
Saturday, November 27, 2010

Left: St. Joseph. By Rudolph Blattler, Switzerland, 1899
Right: St. Joseph with the Christ Child.
By Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Italy, 1600s

Left: St. Joseph and Child. By Enrico Reffo, Italy, 1800s
Right: Saint Joseph and Jesus. By Enrico Manfrini, Italy, 2000

Left: St. Joseph, The Holy Child.
By Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Spain, 1600s
Right: Holding Heaven. By Ron DiCianni, USA, 2004

Left: Saint Joseph with Child. By Brother Simeon, USA, 1900s
Right:Joseph with Infant Christ. By Bartolome Esteban Murillo,
Spain, 1655-56

Idiot Libertarians - No Scare Quotes This Time

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 14:05:00 +0000

Jordan Chandler

My previous post ""Idiot" Libertarians" (I shouldn't have put "idiot" around scare quotes, because I will now put down my feet firm on the ground and call libertarians idiots) discussed Ilana Mercer's defense of Michael Jackson, who maintained a "friendship" with a twelve-year-old boy, including letting him sleep overnight in his bed. I genuinely asked her, in my long email which she reduced to ridicule and insults, why she was defending Michael Jackson.

Of course, I found the answer within my own words. According to libertarians, individualism trumps everything. Group norms are to be shunned unless doing so harms someone. So the individual can do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't harm anyone - and by harm libertarians mean anything physical or visible (although psychological harm is harder to detect unless the "victim" goes certifiably mad or something).

So, what harm did Michael Jackson cause? All he did was to bring the twelve-year-old Jordan Chandler into his bedroom. Surely, kids are sexual beings, and this one may have even enjoyed his romantic (sex)scapade sleeping in the the adult mega-pop star's bed. Mercer contends that "nothing" may have happened. A twelve-year-old boy sleeping overnight in the bed of a forty-something weirdo is not "nothing."

I believe that for libertarians, there should be no age limit for sexual interactions as sanctioned by Big Bad Government. So, setting protective criteria for young children in the face of untoward sexual experiences doesn't even enter their limited mental capacity.

I wonder if the truth will hit home when it becomes personal? Would Mercer have allowed her child at twelve to "sleep over" in an adult friend's bed - even a close and trusted friend? I think not. Odd how such a scenario becomes repulsive when personal relations are involved.

Happy Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:17:00 +0000

George Washington
The Athenaeum Portrait, 1796.
By Stuart Gilbert.
[Click here to view a larger version]

Happy Thanksgiving

"Idiot" Libertarians

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 03:44:00 +0000

There is inspiring and highly informative discussion going on at the View from the Right on libertarianism [1, 2, 3, 4]. I linked to the resident online ex-Canadian libertarian Ilana Mercer, to see her input in this discussion. Her board is silent on this topic.

A few years ago, I exchanged civil emails with Mercer. After a while, I questioned Mercer's nationalism, or more precisely, her volatile views on nationalism, and that her libertarian stance doesn't adequately answer questions of nationalism. It was a serious concern, and one that I presented in good faith.

Here is her answer. A few impersonal lines with carefully camouflaged insults:

The other laughable issue is the accusation that I lack a healthy nationalism.

Again, bloggers proudly display their absolute ignorance--they
have no qualms about never studying the object of their expansive, idiot, smug comments. What's this if not an argument for authentic nationhood? [Here, Mercer provides a link to an article she wrote on nationalism]. Nation, State, Mass Immigration. There are stacks more in my immigration archive but one wouldn't expect anything but empty assertions from this corner.

This is my long answer:

Firstly, the internet is an impersonal venue, and criticism of other bloggers and sites is in fair order. But rudeness is not my trait nor my character.

Secondly, I do not have the time to cull through all the essays that you have written, believing that the important information should come from the WND posts I read at times, and your blog I visit, also at times. I am not here to discuss philosophical and political-philosophical issues. I am neither a politician nor philospher. But, I have a great interest in nationhood.

During my brief visits, these are the things that caught my attention: (I do not have the time to find the links.)

1. On a comment about collective feelings of grief, you made that sound like an impossibility, since only “individuals” feel grief. Yes, nations grieve, nations rejoice. This is not a communist thing. Of course it is composed of individuals, and of course each individual grieves idiosyncratically. But, a collective grief does occur. I was struck by your inability to see this.

2. Your defence of [Canadian] Conrad Black, who has been cavorting from one country to another as long as his business and personal gains are met, surprised me. This is what I meant that at times your “legality” of issues sometimes trumps the “morality”. Why spend so much time defending him?

3. I’ve never seen you write, except briefly at the very end of this essay identifying “nation” and “state”, about your American way of life. Perhaps that is your style. Perhaps it is all too new. As a new immigrant, for example, do you think you could love America? Have you ever loved Canada, South Africa, Israel? Is America now a convenient place? Anyone can write your quaint description of a small town USA, but still have no nationalistic feelings.

Since you have already quoted Lawrence Auster in your article about immigration, did you come to America because you were like: “…those immigrants were not just anyone who wanted to come; they were people who loved America and were becoming fully a part of it”, as he describes Reagan’s letters on his blog, albeit with apprehension?

4. Your defence of Michael Jackson, which I heard on a radio station a while back, was worthwhile, and interesting. I of course esteem and honor the rule of law system that the Western system has put together. But, I also believe it came from a deeper, moral source. A non-Judeo Christian West could never have come up with these specific kinds of laws to protect people. I understand someone has to keep reminding us. But there is something strange defending (unless one is a defence lawyer, and hats off to them) such a strange man. What example is he to children, what regular "little" sins does he commit? Anyway, yes the law can absolve him, but look at him now.

So, your insinuation of my simplistic mind reminds me of my field of expertise, which is art and design. Many times, the most insightful and succinct observations, and usually the most honest, come from the non-experts. If I listen to them, my work usually becomes all the better (peppered with my expertise, of course). I believe daily life is the same, as the Minute Men keep showing everybody - pundits, politicians and journalists alike.

KPA

No more "smug comments" coming from her blog at the moment.

Forces of Nature

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:26:00 +0000

George Washington
(The Athenaeum Portrait), 1796.
Oil on canvas. By Stuart Gilbert.
Jointly owned by the National
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[Click here to view a larger version]

(This article is cross-posted at Camera Lucida.)

I posted a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington at Our Changing Landscape several weeks ago. I titled the post "The State of Affairs of our Modern World." It is actually a post on Geert Wilders's efforts to save his country from destruction by encroaching Islamization. His efforts are now slowly being recognized around the world. I saw a similarity between Wilders's hairstyle, which was being pettily attacked by some "writer" and George Washington's. My point, though, was bigger than superficial appearances. We need men like Wilders and Washington who can detect what a country needs to survive, and thrive, and who can articulate that vision and make it a reality.

The portrait I've posted above is one of three references that Stuart used to paint his hundreds of portraits of Washington. This particular one is called the Athenaeum Portrait after the Boston Athenaeum which originally bought it.

Here is what the National Gallery of Art says about the portraits developed from the Athenaeum:

Stuart began what would become his most reproduced image, a depiction of Washington facing left (to his right), now called the Athenaeum portrait for the Boston library that acquired it after Stuart’s death. Although he never finished the original itself, he used it throughout his career to make approximately seventy-five replicas, and the image––carefully built up with contrasting flesh tones––is one of Stuart’s most accomplished portraits.

Here is what the Metrepolitan Museum of Art says about Stuart's technique for the Athenaeum portrait:

The strikingly fresh aspect of this life portrait of Washington comes from Stuart's application of subtly varied skin tones in separate, unblended touches of the brush. His technique is visible even in the shaded areas under the chin, where Stuart alternated darker and lighter flesh tones to indicate shadow and reflected light. The president's white-powdered hair and blue eyes stand out in contrast.

The other originals which Stuart used as references are the Vaughan Portrait (Washington facing to his left),and the Lansdowne Portrait (Washington in full-length). The names are the owners of these originals. In the Athenaeum, Washington is facing to his right.

I wonder what prevented Stuart from finishing the Athenaeum? Apparently Washington was irritable when it came to having his portrait painted and didn't like the small talk (or the long sittings). But Stuart found his method, and engaged him with conversations on his favorite topic of horses. Still, Washington's portraits all exude a calm and steady temperament. Perhaps he felt that portrait-painting took too much time away from his important responsibilities. We should thank Stuart that he persevered, and that he painted these masterpieces. Pictures don't lie, at least I don't think they do. And they often succinctly tell us truths which can easily be camouflaged by clever words.

The Athenaeum is especially intriguing because it was unfinished. Perhaps Stuart was aiming for something bigger than he could handle. It is as though he was trying to emerge Washington out of some primordial matter, a force entering our world. But Stuart was trying to capture this with mere paint and canvas. If he erred with his approach, I don't think he erred with the subject he chose to attempt his idea with. This reminds me of another artist, sculptor Rodin, who says he chose the stones to sculpt from because he could already see the forms within the stones.

The Return of the Antichrist

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 03:58:00 +0000

Jim Kalb's most recent article on his web page is a transcript of his speech from the annual H.L. Mencken Club conference. It is titled: "PC, the Cultural Antichrist."

As I was reading through the material, I came across this paragraph, for which I should have been prepared:

If you try to get rid of religion, you aren't going to get rid of religion. Instead, you'll get some scheme of attitude and belief that functions like a religion but pretends to be something else and will probably go off in strange directions because nobody's allowed to think about what it really is. In short, you'll get something rather like the Antichrist.

I lazily read ahead of the very last sentence, substituting liberalism for "the Antichrist." I laughed out loud as I finished reading the sentence. Yes, we have to call things by their name. Kalb is making a case for the evil, or perhaps to be less fanatic, the inhuman nature of liberalism.

It gets better. I've been trying to get fascists and liberals together in my mind for a while now. Kalb writes this, as though in answer to my (silent) quest.

There are two basic solutions to those problems within modernity, the fascist one and the liberal one. The fascist solution is to say that purposes are objectively binding and therefore provide a standard of what's right if you get beaten up when you don't go along with them. On that view the purposes that count are the purposes of whoever's in a position to do the beating--that is, whoever is the top guy on the top team. So the basic principles of government are "we're number one" and "the will of the leader is the highest law."

It sounds like Triumph of the Will, the film produced by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's visual and artistic spokesman/handmaiden. The film, which every film student watches because it really is a feat in cinematography, begins with Hitler descending the heavens down to Nurenmberg, a divine creature (god himself) come to save the decadent Germans. Little did these common folk know that his project was their annihilation, and to raise something better from their ashes. The great Götterdämmerung. It almost worked, the annihilation part, anyway.

But as Kalb writes, fascism, whether in governments or in day-to-day interactions, loses because how much beating (metaphoric or literal) are people going to take? It seems that liberals are the high I.Q.ers of fascists, and are careful where and how they land their punches.

Kalb writes:

[Facism]'s a nice clear system, and it's got some logic behind it, but it doesn't work very well. It was tried and it lost. For that reason, the liberal solution won out.

That solution is a bit more complicated. It starts by noting that all our purposes are equally purposes, and infers that everybody's purposes equally confer value. Each of us is equally able to make things good or bad just by thinking of them as good or bad. That makes each of us in a sense divine. Our will creates moral reality. Instead of the wonder-working leader of fascism you get the divine me of liberalism. It's every man his own Jesus.

So how do liberal leaders get all these equally stationed demi-gods to follow them? It is still sheer will, I would think, of maintaining a semblance of liberal equality, but working with (and secretly ruling with) brute fascistic superiority, through a lot of lying and deceiving.

Below is a video of the opening scenes of Triumph of the Will, with a synopsis.

Day 1: The film opens with shots of the clouds above the city, and then moves through the clouds to float above the assembling masses below, with the intention of portraying beauty and majesty of the scene. The cruciform shadow of Hitler's plane is visible as it passes over the tiny figures marching below, accompanied by music from Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which slowly turns into the Horst-Wessel-Lied. Upon arriving at the Nuremberg airport, Hitler emerges from his plane to thunderous applause and a cheering crowd. He is then driven into Nuremberg, through equally enthusiastic people, to his hotel where a night rally is later held.

Article: "Zhang Yimou: Spokesman for China"

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:59:00 +0000

Chinese women's gymnastics team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
There persisted accusations of underage women (girls ?) Chinese gymnasts
throughout the Olympics.

Below is an article published in ChroWatch.com in September 2008: Zhang Yimou: Spokesman for China. The article is long - 881 words. But, I was trying to approach the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies from a visual perspective. Quite a bit of the article is descriptive, although I do go into analysis (including political) of the choices the head "designer" and filmmaker Zhang Yimou made to explain his motives, including his admiration for the North Korea.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zhang Yimou: Spokesman for China
ChronWatch.com, September 13, 2008
Kidist P. Asrat

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was directed by the world-famous Oscar-nominated Chinese film director, Zhang Yimou. His exquisitely shot films show young brides, concubines, and peasant women consumed by the monolithic forces that these women (and it is often women) find themselves in.

The storylines of his films are often bewildering to Western viewers. Are we to sympathize with the characters, is Yimou agreeing with the forces of authority, and is he so fatalistic that he cannot see any other story? We are led to believe that the unique beauties--of the young girls, of the surrounding scenery, or in the case of Ju Dou, the lusciously dyed textiles--will overcome anything. But they don’t, and these young women, once distinctive in their charms and their quests, can never escape their culture’s expectations, and are forced to sacrifice their individuality and singularity to the collective fabric of their communities in sad and tragic ways. Some go insane, others simply get old, and yet others bitterly, or blithely, try to forget.

Throughout China’s history, there seems to have been an overpowering preference for the individual’s submergence into the collective. Confucius lays out the ground rules for this coexistence, and Communism was the harshest, most inhumane, example of that history. Yimou is simply recording this cultural reality. He further demonstrates this with his direction of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. The spectacular ceremony consisted of thousands (15,000 in total) of Chinese performers shifting in huge carpets of precise and united movement.

The world of Chinese human coordination is brought to light when Yimou compares Chinese performers to those of North Korea. He says: “Other than North Koreans, there’s not one other country in the world that can achieve such a high quality of performance.” Yimou didn’t compare his 15,000 synchronized human bodies to American or European artistry, but to an enclosed, isolated extreme dictatorial state like North Korea.

While discussing his experience in working with Western actors, Yimou says: “[They] were so troublesome [because] in the middle of rehearsals they take two coffee breaks…[T]here can’t be any discomfort, because of human rights…[T]hey have all kinds [of] organizations and labor union structures. We’re not like that. We work hard; we tolerate bitter exertion.”[1] Like the suffering his heroines endure, Yimou confesses that he sees nothing wrong with exerting pressure and discipline on his performers to have them conform to his giant designs.

How different is he and the Chinese, then, from the isolated, dictatorial North Koreans, whose mass parades have garnered his respect? In the name of human collectivity, Yimou acknowledges that Chinese performers are, and should be, willing to tolerate abuses on their bodies, give up their basic human rights, and work under extreme conditions. Yimou’s comparison of neo-Communist, modern Chinese performers with North Koreans is depressingly retrograde. Despite glowing references by the world community, China is still stuck in its past.

Still, one cannot deny the importance of culture and history on a country’s artistic formation. Yimou’s artistic style, both in film and in his latest contribution to the opening ceremonies, is part of Chinese art and artistry, where harmony and cohesion trumps individuality and innovation. This is evident in Chinese watercolor paintings where composition--a concerted effort at harmony--supersedes individual artistic expression. As Yimou’s films themselves show, while his characters go through tremendous suffering and even tragedy, often the best he can come up with is an ambiguous acceptance of the status quo. Yimou’s outright nihilism or rage would be more understandable, instead of deferment to the collective which in many cases can only be achieved if the individual is sacrificed, like Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern, who goes insane rather than live through her atrocious life.

Olympics which took place in Westernized countries--the United States, Australia, and Greece to name a few--emphasized more individualized performances and content-rich opening ceremonies, rather than the mastery of synchronized masses. The human presence in these Western performances were a means to a narrative, where one idea leads to another in space and time to tell a story or to reach a point. Most of the Western programs had also a limited in number of performers, since their intention was to use them as actors in a story and not as bodies in giant designs.

Yimou’s primary purpose was to use his human subjects as anonymous forms to make stadium-sized patterns. There was no emphasis on time or space, and the performers were enclosed within their own tightly limited areas. The Western performers, on the other hand, both individuals and groups, often moved from one end of a stadium to another for a particular purpose--to reach a destination, to enter into a building, or as in the young boy in the boat from the Athens show, to reach shore.

Yimou’s shore has now come and gone. The Chinese had their chance to show the world what they were made of. Astute observers will notice that nothing much has really changed in modern China, as exemplified by even their most free commentator, an artist, who confesses admiration for the artistic endeavors of one of the harshest regime in the world, and admits that he emulates its style.

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[1] "Zhang Yimou’s 20,000-Word Interview Reveals Secrets of Opening Ceremony," Nanfang Zhoumou (Guangzhou), August 14, 2008

Reference:
China's New Cultural Scene: A Handbook of Changes. Claire Huot. Duke University Press, 2000

References to post "Precedents to China Rising"

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:18:00 +0000

I've compiled the references to my previous post: Precedents to China Rising below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES:

A. Below is the list of articles I have compiled, mostly in the early 2000s, probably as a reaction to 9/11. Oh yes, around this time, and a few years later, there were heated discussion in my classes where the Chinese students were condoning the Muslim hijackers with the cliché that "America got what it deserved."

1. BC Report - Cover Story - Article link no longer works
2. Canada Wide Open for Terrorists, Charles R. Smith, July 10, 2002, World Net Daily
3. China Reform Monitor No. 312, June 12, 2000 - Article link no longer works
4. Chinese Dreams, American Dreams, Sacha Matuszak, November 22, 2004, Antiwar.com
5. China targets Caribbean trade - Feb 19, 2005, CNN.Com. The link appears non-functioning at CNN, but here is a synopsis of the article still available at CNN:

China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.

6. Finding the Real Source of Sept. 11, Dr. Aleksandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, October 17, 2001, NewsMax.Com

Here are the first paragraphs of the Nemets/Torda article:

A month has passed since the Sept. 11 strikes. The world's focus has been on Osama bin Laden and his network -- but the connections to Russia and China exist and need more investigation.

A Chinese military handbook advised the use of civilian airline jets as "flying bombs" -- and evidence has surfaced about Russian "mafia" ties to bin Laden

7. CIA issues warning on China’s military efforts, February 16, 2005. FT.Com
8. Chinese Spies. Although I couldn't retrieve this article from the National Post, here is a list of google references when I typed in "Chinese Spies Canada"
9. The Fate of the Immigrant Ships, 2003. Pacific Rim Magazine
10. Tycoon to create $1.2B charity to Canada, The Star.com [Article link no longer works].
11. China lays the 'Bush Doctrine' ahead of U.S. poll. Originally from Reuters, November 2004.

B. On a much more current note, a few weeks ago, the news channels were filled with reports of China's saber waving in the south seas:

China stages live-fire war games in South China Sea amid slow-burning territorial disputes

C. Below are recent blog posts at Our Changing Landscape on China's current relations with Canada, and with the world:
China Rising
China Rising [Cont.]
Land Grab from the Poor to the Poor

D. These are the news program "The Agenda" videos of recent, full-hour episodes on China, on which I based some of my blog posts:

Fear and Facts about China
China's Economic Worries
Political Change in China?
Reinventing China's Economy
China's Undervalued Renminbi

Precedents to China Rising

noreply@blogger.com (Camera Lucida) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:06:00 +0000

China's rising confidence is becoming more apparent. Here is a Drudge heading (from the Financial Post): China rebuffs US offer on disputed islands, where China appears to be going beyond normal territorial claims and may be antagonizing the U.S. as well as a number of other Asian and non-Asian countries.

Recently, I've written several posts on China's saber waving, and even actually entering a foreign land to acquire precious materials (references are at the end of this posting).

But I've been collecting files on China and the Chinese (whether in Asia or here in Canada and the U.S.) since about 2004. I don't know what triggered off the initial search, but I think it was a vague unease at the green light we have been giving Chinese to enter and do as they will in Western society, and also clearly a kind of off-shore colonization they're performing in African countries.

Part of my awareness of these issues is due to my teaching post as an English as a Second Language instructor, where I taught for four years at a Chinese community center. I asked to be placed there because I thought there would be better students, and I wouldn't have to go through mind-numbing elementary material.

Well, I was relatively impressed with the students' progress; I was able to enter discussions (with pronunciation and vocabulary exercises) dealing with politics, culture, Canada - of course, the United States - it was always interesting to watch how much these students would malign America which I countered forcefully and often with winning arguments, and a whole myriad of things.

Finally, I left (abruptly to my supervisors) after some months of reflection. My main reason (which I of course didn't disclose) was that I didn't find any sense of commitment to Canada by these Chinese immigrants (or Chinese newcomers, as the ESL crowd called them). In fact, I thought I was giving them too much information with which they can continue their Chinese alliances (and affinities) while seeing what they can claim from Canada. I got this impression from discussions during the class. In one class I got the students to sing the Canadian national anthem, partly as a reaction to their anti-Canadianism during a discussion, standing up. Some refused to sing, others made a fuss about getting up. That's when I knew my days were numbered.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES:

A. Below is the list of articles I have compiled, mostly in the early 2000s, probably as a reaction to 9/11. Oh yes, around this time, and a few years later, there were heated discussion in my classes where the Chinese students were condoning the Muslim hijackers with the cliché that "America got what it deserved."
1. BC Report - Cover Story - Article link no longer works
2. Canada Wide Open for Terrorists, Charles R. Smith, July 10, 2002, World Net Daily
3. China Reform Monitor No. 312, June 12, 2000 - Article link no longer works
4. Chinese Dreams, American Dreams, Sacha Matuszak, November 22, 2004, Antiwar.com
5. China targets Caribbean trade - Feb 19, 2005, CNN.Com. The link appears non-functioning at CNN, but here is a synopsis of the article still available at CNN:

China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.

6. Finding the Real Source of Sept. 11, Dr. Aleksandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, October 17, 2001, NewsMax.Com

Here are the first paragraphs of the Nemets/Torda article:

A month has passed since the Sept. 11 strikes. The world's focus has been on Osama bin Laden and his network -- but the connections to Russia and China exist and need more investigation.

A Chinese military handbook advised the use of civilian airline jets as "flying bombs" -- and evidence has surfaced about Russian "mafia" ties to bin Laden

7. CIA issues warning on China’s military efforts, February 16, 2005. FT.Com
8. Chinese Spies. Although I couldn't retrieve this article from the National Post, here is a list of google references when I typed in "Chinese Spies Canada"
9. The Fate of the Immigrant Ships, 2003. Pacific Rim Magazine
10. Tycoon to create $1.2B charity to Canada, The Star.com [Article link no longer works].
11. China lays the 'Bush Doctrine' ahead of U.S. poll. Originally from Reuters, November 2004.

B. On a much more current note, a few weeks ago, the news channels were filled with reports of China's saber waving in the south seas:
China stages live-fire war games in South China Sea amid slow-burning territorial disputes

C. Below are recent blog posts at Our Changing Landscape on China's current relations with Canada, and with the world:
China Rising
China Rising [Cont.]
Land Grab from the Poor to the Poor

D. These are the news program "The Agenda" videos of recent, full-hour episodes on China, on which I based some of my blog posts:
Fear and Facts about China
China's Economic Worries
Political Change in China?
Reinventing China's Economy
China's Undervalued Renminbi