Joseph Farah's

Slow perception

My very first image on "stealth Jihad"
where I tried to show a time bomb in
the shape of a mosque.

I like reading Joseph Farah's articles at World Net Daily. He has a loud, rather aggressive style. And he always seems to have the answers. And, he writes a full column, every day! That must take quite a bit of time.

Anyway, I went there today to see what he had written, and it was a review (or actually, heaps of praise) for Robert Spencer's new book. I found the title of this book unfortunate: "How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs". Spencer cannot get himself to discard that word "radical", but that is for another blog.

What caught my attention is Farah's statement:

I've been studying radical Islam since 1979. I've been writing about it since the early 1980s. I'm considered an authoritative expert on the subject by many. I've lectured all over the world on the topic in the last 10 years.

Yet, I have to tell you, Spencer's new book has been an eye-opener even for me.

Well, there's that word "radical" again, but it's Farah's eye-opening experience that surprised me.

I understood this phenomenon and first blogged about half-way through 2007. And the phenomenon became so overwhelming, that I wrote an article about it in July 2008 (I wonder if this is around the time that Spencer started writing his book?), and soon after transferred all my blogged material from Camera Lucida to a new blog Our Changing Landscape, which continues to follow this stealthy incursion. I take a more cultural and artistic position, but the observation is nonetheless the same.

How is it that this bypassed the editor of a huge online magazine so much so that he has to say this information was an eye-opener for him. Especially since he admits that he has been studying "radical" Islam since 1979?

Could it be that he focused so much on the radical element that he couldn't see that ordinary Muslims were waging their own kind of war?

It is really time to eradicate this word "radical" in association with Islam. It is false and misleading. It blinds people to the reality that there are no radical Muslims. All Muslims are doing their part to change our lands and societies into Islamic countries. And this non-violent, stealthy method is actually more efficient and far-reaching, because no one is expecting it, and thus no one is noticing it! Just look at Farah's confession.

Condoleezza Rice on The View

Talks of privileged childhood



I remember saying a while ago that segregation couldn't have been that bad if Condoleezza Rice grew up skating and playing the piano. Well, Barbara Walters asks Rice a "personal question", which made Rice a little nervous for a while. But for once, Waters was on target asking her "How did you make the climb from segregation to Secretary [of State]?"

Rice says immediately: "Parents."

This brought several thoughts to mind. Firstly, it shows the importance of a cohesive family. In Rice's case, she had two dedicated parents, working as a family, to make their child's life productive. Imagine what this says about the single mother disaster. Ann Coulter, on the same show some weeks earlier, says single motherhood is the underlying problem for the destructive ways of children born in such circumstances, many of whom are black. This cult of the single mother, which is really about anti-male and anti-family positions by liberals and leftists, is especially destroying young blacks around America.

The second thing this brought to mind is how Rice never acknowledges that the American society, despite its segregation laws, still gave her so many opportunities, including such good enough education that allowed her to reach this pinnacle in her career. What if she and her parents had been in Jamaica, which gained independence around the time segregation was abolished in the States? How would she have fared there?

You can watch Barbara Walter's question, and Rice's answer starting around the 3:00 minute point in the Youtube video.

Oatmeal and Winter

How culture is getting lost


I got a card from Starbucks in my mailbox for a free oatmeal snack at participating stores. It was a nice surprise, because it is really cold and mushy out there, and warm oatmeal is a welcome respite. I had also received a free coffee stub from Second Cup. Coffee houses are losing business these days, so they have to find ways to get us to buy their products. But why don't they just lower their prices, and reduce the (expensive) concoctions - latte this and cappuccino that? All I ever ask for at Starbucks is a dark tall coffee (medium in normal language) - reasonably priced.

Anyway, I found a Starbucks for my oatmeal break, and showed the girl my card. Her first words were a slightly derogatory "Oatmeal..."

Now, I could have read too much into this, but as I ate my deliciously warm oatmeal with raisins and dried cranberries, I wondered why oatmeal would bring such a reaction. The girl was Asian (I think she looks like she's from the Philippines - I hate the generic "Asian" label). I thought that this is what it must be like when people with non-European background encounter something they are not used to. Oatmeal doesn't look that attractive, it is a little gooey and coarse, who would want to eat that! But, any child growing up in traditional Canada would have had oatmeal growing up (I grew up mostly in England, and it was certainly a welcomed dietary fare there.) I am sure a Caucasian Canadian server would have understood my desire to have oatmeal, and handed it over to me matter-of-fact.

This is the problem with so many kinds of people here. We lose our common likes and dislikes. Our conversations change, our focus is different.

For example, the other day, while crossing the street, a very dark (I think he's Sudanese) man walking with a white companion was telling him how he wishes the winter were over, that there were no such thing as winter. The white man was obliged to agree with him, and didn't give, I'm sure out of politeness, a rebuttal to this forceful dislike. I would have just said that winter is great, you just have to dress up for it. Walking in the cold winter air is refreshing, snow is beautiful, winter holidays are wonderful (Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day), and on and on.

There are many examples like this, and things are getting knocked off the cultural shelf just because we have to accommodate people who don't like them, or don't understand them.

Our Changing Landscape Revision

On Ingrid Mattson

Please note that I have revised my post "Ingrid Mattson's Strange Journey" considerably, including adding more material on her biography and her real-life "journeys".

Evolution or Art?

Or how we all crave for the same landscape

USA's most wanted landscape, from
the survey by Komar and Melamid

A new book, "The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution" by Denis Dutton, is getting raves reviews. It talks about, well, the evolutionary explanation for art.

One intriguing study made by a couple of artists, that the author says supports his thesis , asks people from ten countries what kind of landscapes they preferred. The majority said "a landscape with trees and open areas, water, human figures and animals" [1], which had savanna-like qualities.

Dutton attributes this to people reminiscing about their ancient, pre-historic landscapes from which they evolved.

Now, this seems to me to be a far-fetched idea. How do thousands of people in a survey have some remote part of their brain store a landscape in which they have never lived, but in which their ancestors apparently did?

What about those landscapes as being compositionally good, or even superior, in the minds of these thousands of ordinary folk? I remember looking at the "abstract" painting of an especially talented 5 year-old, and was surprised at her great sense of composition and color. Perhaps there is something intrinsic in humans that recognizes a well-composed piece. Perhaps there is an "art" gene. Some can produce it, others (the majority) can recognize it. That seems more likely than reminiscing about the "paradise lost" of our past.

[1]Art, Landscape, and Pleistocene Life, Denis Dutton

Modern Australia

Still as paternalistic as ever

The Wall Street Journal has an article entitled "Tough Love in the Outback" about how Australia's previous conservative government, in an attempt to reverse the dramatic decline of Aborigines society in the last couple of decades, introduced stringent rules in those societies. Some of these policies included alcoholic and pornography bans and restrictions on how the Aborigines can spend their welfare money.

I wonder how Baz Luhrman took this? Of course, he would cry "racism". But the reality is that these policies are showing positive results. The interesting article is here.

Obamajazz

Not Obamarap

In my recent post about the different takes on Obama, I direct readers to Pat Buchanan's website and his post describing Obama's speech as Reagan-like. There is a commenter there (Andrea Freiboden) who vehemently disagrees, but more interesting is her comparison of Obama's style to jazz music. I didn't know what to cut out, so I have left most of her comment as it is. The writer has her own rhythm, which makes this long piece much shorter than its actual length suggests, and it even has poetic and, ironically, jazz-like qualities:

Obama is a total liar and actor. I suppose it’s Reaganesque in that Obama is a good performer. But, Reagan stood for firm principles, expounded them, and stood by them. Obama is a rather jazzy character and will say anything to anyone to win plaudits and approval. In this sense, it’s more Clintonite than Reaganite. Reagan was not a panderer. Reagan wanted unity, but he said I’m for this-and-this and the country should unite around me. Obama’s spiel is just more of “I feel your pain with bit more lofty rhetoric.”

[...]

He’s into ‘play with the white boy’ mode. In his book, he talks about ‘how not to make sudden moves’. In Jazz music, there is the art of sneakery, syncopation, hipster slipperiness, elusiveness, cool catness, etc.

Though Obama acts like a spiritual leader, he’s a jiveass Kool Kat mofo on the inside. Indeed, he won the presidency by playing with the white boy(and especially girls).

Smart blacks always understood what the game was about. They knew that white folks were drawn to blackness cuz it be so sexy, dazzling, cool, hip, and slickity slack as opposed to bland, slow, drab, flabbyass whiteness. White girls be swooning over the tough, manly, slick, cook negro stud. And, white boys try to emulate the negro and try to act cool and tough and badass and etc. But, there was also a fear element among whites, especially white males who felt threatened by black masculinity and superior cool. This is the difference between Jazz and Rap. Rap loudly and brashly establishes the badass superiority of the negro. Rap tells the white boy, ‘if you wanna join the rap culture, submit to black power’. So, white boys who are into hiphop and rap culture are a bunch of pathetic clods.

But, jazz has been different. It too was about how ‘we blacks be faster, cooler, sexier, and slick than you white boys’, but it had an air of class, sophistication, friendliness, and subtlety. White boys and girls would feel both intimidated and charmed by Jazz music. On the one hand, the white boy would think, ‘woah, this is too cool and fast and slick for my white ass’, but then the music would slow down, become a bit sweeter and mellow… so that the white boy could feel, ‘heck, maybe I’ll stick around because it sounds awful friendly and nice’ and then the music would pick up and blast again. The white boy would be dazzled and frazzled, frightened and lightened, and etc and etc by Jazz music. Was it pornographic or was it art? Was it street music or was it serious music? Was it for strip joints or was it for fancy clubs? Jazz was very subversive and very tricky, and its rule was always to ‘play with the white boy’.

There is an aspect of ‘pulling the punch’ in Jazz music. It’s more like shadow-boxing, amply featuring black superiority in sexuality and coolness but not pounding the white boy in the face and frightening him away. Jazz developed during a time when most of America was still segregated, when most whites were still very distrustful, when it was still risque for most blacks to shout out loud, ‘hey honkey, I can whup your ass and steal your girl!’ With Jazz, blacks could suggest and intimate all these emotions but with a degree of subtlety so that the whites may be fooled that, gee, this music was a valentine to white folks.

Jazz, unlike rap, makes the white boy thinks he’s safe when he’s being hustled and spiritually pickpocketed in a 1000 ways. (Sure, it’s great and brilliant music, but I’m talking the political nature of Jazz).

More Writers on Obama

Satire from Bad Eagle

President Abraham Lincoln,
February 9, 1864
Photo by Matthew Brady.

I just came across David Yeagley's risque post over at Bad Eagle. I wish I could have included it in my previous post on Obama's Many Writers.

It is satire at its best. The lines I like most are:

Lampooning and cartooning is a grand western European tradition, starting probably with the late 15th century German wood cuts made to demonize ol’ Vlad “Tepes” (tsepesh), better known as Dracula. That was all “white,” too. The Caucasians are apparently culturally immune to their own rebuffs. It is a lavishly self-correcting race, at least up until now.

And

Ah, but things are indeed different now, since January 20, 2009. (Mabye since August 27, 2008.) Only beauty and dignity are allowed in the White House. Only loveliness and good will.

Very good.

Keeping The Viennese Waltz Alive

With young dancer Derek Hough's grace



It is hard these days to find truly talented dancers, who also find dances worthy of their talent. The great thing about the recent surge of ballroom dancing, along with shows like Dancing with the Stars, is that they're reviving this tradition, and also giving great dance repertoires to aspiring dancers.

Derek Hough (of Dancing with the Stars fame) is one young dancer who, for now, is keeping this tradition alive.

The video above is not great quality, but it is his style and grace is clear.

One thing, though. They really have to work on the music. I think it affects the rhythm, and the beat, and where the dancers put the accents, which spoils the flow of the waltz. I've written about this before.

Our Changing Landscape

Ingrid Mattson's strange journey

I have a new post entitled "Ingrid Mattson's Strange Journey". I recount the conversion of Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America, from Catholic to Muslim, and I discuss why I think it happened.

Obama's Many Writers

Getting a picture of the President

Writers all over the internet are putting in their perspectives about Obama. At times, I go to the opinion-writers-replete WorldNetDaily.com to see what that online magazine's array of writers (there must be close to 50 of them) have written. It so happened that today, Obama's former rival for the Illinois Senate, Alan Keyes, is having his say, as is the right liberal (or was that libertarian, now it seems to have changed to paleo something) Ilana Mercer, as well as the inimitable Pat Buchanan.

I think Alan Keyes' article is the most pensive, and perhaps the most admonitory. He is tackling the difficult subject of calling Christians to their words. And, in a long, ponderous tone, which almost sounds like it's coming from a prophet's mouth (or script), he is saying that Obama is using God's words in vain.

He further says that Obama, in making America's great success as having originated just from the toils and hard work of men - which Keye's says is a wrong proposition anyway because some Americans toiled hard, others worked hard to avoid hard work - is putting man before God. "America's true greatness” writes Keyes, " was given, by God's Providence". Obama doesn't understand, or accept, this, says Keyes, and by using God's name in his speech, Obama is thus using God's name in vain. Keyes' heavy and thoughtful piece is worth reading.

Then there is Ilana Mercer's short, mixed eulogy to Obama (for or against? Not clear, given her strong "anti-statist" positions.) There are some writers whose source or principle I can never quite decipher, and one such is Mercer. I get the feeling that she is trying out various ideas, ideologies, and viewpoints to get at what she considers the truth. And does this with force and aggression. But, I ultimately always get a jumble of confused messages. The crux of her article is almost exactly the opposite of Keyes'.

Mercer writes that Obama's election was "If nothing else...proof positive of how fair-minded Americans are..." Yet why would a group of people vote "generously" for someone who: a) sits in a pew for 20 years with a pastor who hurls vitriol in their direction, b) abandons this pastor for political expediency, c) and publicly denounces his grandmother who brought him up in his adolescent years? This doesn't sound like generosity to me, but like something else which needs to be analyzed (and cured). I agree on the inherent generosity and kindness of Americans, though, and how much that has become abused and maligned throughout the world, but in eulogizing Obama, she continues the eulogy where it is not needed. This is the problem with Mercer. A certain irrationality, or even a tendency towards hysteria, behind a supposed "rational" outlook.

At the end of her article, she lazily associates Obama's calm and confidence, and his commitment to family, to his Kansas side. I know Kenyans who have the very temperament that Obama has. I think he is very Kenyan in this regard. And whoever said that Kenyans couldn't have commitment to family and community? If she doesn't know for sure, why extrapolate to "make a point..."?

Read the comments on her blog, by what I presume are mostly fellow-libertarians. They are usually full of high praise for Mercer's "great writing". Most of them politely differ with many of Mercer's basic points on her simplistic assumptions which have already been refuted many times over in previous months.

Pat Buchanan seems to find Reaganesque references throughout Obama's speech. Keyes outlines all the points in which Obama has practically told us he's not Reagan-like. But Buchanan prefers to be mesmerized by a speech - which again Keyes warned against, as do the commenters on Buchanan's website.

Finally, to get out of the WND enclave and to Townhall.com, for the sole reason of reading an Obama article by the astute and ever-accurate Diana West, who writes how Obama is exaggerating the problems facing the country. She quotes an article title from nothing less than the New York Times, "It's Bad, But 1982 Was Worse", and compares Reagan's inauguration speech in 1981 to Obama's gloom and doom projections. "But they will go away." says Reagan. "They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom."

I think this is the proper way to describe the American spirit, and to evoke Reagan's great presence. Reagan's faith in Americans rings truer than Obama's; he at least shows faith that Americans will get rid of these problems. And he really did put faith in hard work, since his message was primarily that Americans do their part and not lean on a bloated government. This dependency was what set off Keyes' prophetic writing about Obama's big-government. Obama's faith is on government, and hence Man - ruler of that government - as Savior. Reagan was much more modest, and advocated against this all-enveloping man-made entity. And this difference was what Buchanan failed to see.

Addendum:

Please note my January 24 post on David Yeagley's (from Bad Eagle) fine satire on Obama. I read it too late to include it in this post. But, it stands alone very well.

Birds of America

By John James Audubon

Blue Jay by John James Audubon
[Click on the image to view a larger version]

John James Audubon, the great American naturalist and painter, published his magnum opus Birds of America between 1826 and 1838.

His paintings often depicted the birds in some kind of action, or interaction, giving movement and interest to the work.

Here are some blue jays robbing a woodpecker's nest.

The Addiction That is Atheism

And how hard it is to shake it off


In a comment at View From the Right, I describe an observation where I find that declaring one’s atheism, boldy and confidently, is now becoming a trend. And increasing numbers of people are doing so.

But, in the middle of this comment I write:

I've always said that one cannot make a person into a Christian. It is a calling, and even a mystery how it happens.

Now, I should have been more specific.

I think that whole nations of people can be born as Christians. The truth of it is embedded in the country's rituals, celebrations, holidays, names, and in a myriad of other ways. So a young child growing in such an environment imbibes this true religion, and doesn't need to prove or disprove it. It becomes his natural way of life, from birth to death.

Atheists destroy or cloud the all-inclusive Christian environment that would have allowed children to develop into Christians, and such children then invariably grow up to be atheists or agnostics.

Just like a Christian environment produces Christians, an atheist, non-Christian environment produces atheists (just ask the children of atheists what they believe.)

So, if these atheists now wish to become Christian, their hardened, non-accepting heart has to somehow be transformed by some mystical intervention. Many times, it is some kind of unbearable hardship. Other times it is some inexplicable beauty. But, something strong (or elusively unpredictable) has to intervene for them to change.

Therefore, it is much harder to become a Christian once the faith has been abandoned, or the society no longer provides the all-encompassing environment to let Christianity thrive in people's lives.

That is why I think atheists are dangerous. They are the precursors to an atheist society. It isn't just their atheism that is at stake, but that of the whole society under which they live. And future societies too; their children, and their children's children. And not only are they precursors to it, they also make it much more difficult for their offspring and influences to turn, or return, to Christianity.

It looks like atheism is an addiction. Once down that road, it is infinitely hard to turn away from it. And this is what atheists are advocating! In some remote region of their soul, I always sense their envy, if not marvel, that people can be Christian; that Christians are relieved of this blight that they, the atheists, have somehow stumbled on, this addiction they cannot shake off.

The Immorality of Extramarital Affairs

As shown in two films


I realized upon reviewing my post Extramarital affairs: getting a negative pass that all I did was describe the films, and where I thought they divulged their disapproval of these affairs. I did a bit of why (one to do with the conservative actor Charleston Heston, and the other to do with the Russian Orthodox Church), but I didn't go much into that. So, here is a bit more explanation.

I think that Earthquake and Dr. Zhivago, by actually killing off their protagonists, were not just showing them as guilty but as sinful. These days, very few films look at such breaches of moral conduct as sin. There may be guilt involved, law suits, apologies, etc. So what was different about these two?

In Earthquake, I think that it was Charlton Heston’s background that contributed to Earthquake's conclusion. I think as a conservative, his agreement to participate in the film was related to its ending. I may be reading too much into this, but I have a thesis!

Dr. Zhivago gets more interesting. I thought perhaps it was the Russian Orthodox psyche that added the moralistic elements. But it was actually the writer’s. Pasternak fashioned Yuri’s mistress Lara after his own mistress. And presumably, he was Yuri. Was Yuri’s death his innermost expiation? In real life, nothing as dramatic happened to Pasternak, who continued to see his mistress throughout his life. Perhaps the book added a release to his darkened soul. Surely the Ten Commandments must have surfaced periodically in Pasternak’s psyche (who was Jewish). And as I always say, the truth comes out somewhere in art.

So, what’s the point? I think if true conservatives and truly religious people start making films, their conclusions will be very different from what we see these days. Morality will once again become an issue, rather than an aberration. And movies will not be just entertainment, but lessons in human life and conduct.

What struck me about these films, made at an age when Hollywood had already turned permissive and liberal, is that they had a kernel of this morality embedded in them. It is possible, therefore, that one can make the right kind of movies by following the above ingredients - conservatism and religion.

Our Changing Landscape

Here is a new post on Brigitte Gabriel - the Lebanese Christian who is the founder of ACT! for America - and her recent interview on Frontpagemag.com.

I call it: Brigitte Gabriel Has Another Interview At Frontpagemag.com And Says Even Less Than She Did In 2006

.

Extramarital Affairs

Getting a negative pass

The Russian "Dacha" from Dr. Zhivago

Two movies, Earthquake and Dr. Zhivago - the latter made in 1965 and the former in 1974 - don't glamorize extramarital affairs that is such a part of Hollywood these days. In fact, both these movies kill their protagonists at the end. No divorce, no remarriage, no alimony for the wife, no "First Wives' Club". Just death.

Earthquake, despite its action and gore-filled promise, is actually a story of the criss-crossing of people's lives which collide during that fateful day of the earthquake. Charlton Heston plays an executive who cheats on his wife. After the earthquake, he has to make a crucial decision to save her from a rush of water, and descends, along with her, to his fateful demise. All the while, the woman who would be his mistress is watching, hoping, that he abandon the obviously deathly mission. Her expression, at the end, is her realization that she had indeed expected too much.

Dr. Zhivago is about the bliss of a man's double life with a loving wife and another woman he is in love with. There was a telling moment at the very beginning, when Anna is conniving her hardest to get Yuri to marry her daughter Tonya. Anna's husband cautions her saying: "Marriages are made in heaven". Perhaps this was the little warning (or condoning) sign for the full-blown romance that develops between Yuri and Lara later on. Interference often leads to disaster.

After a separation brought about due to Lara's imminent danger from the Bolsheviks, Yuri and Lara never meet again. Except that Yuri sees her from a streetcar in a Moscow street, and rushes out to her. He dies from a heart attack only several feet from her, as she walks away unawares.

Of course everyone focuses on the romance of Dr. Zhivago. But when I first watched it, I was struck by the anti-romance of it all. How can the writer have his protagonist die feets away from his beloved?

The book, by Boris Pasternak, has a different ending. Yuri finds another woman (never marries) has two more children, and eventually dies of ill-health. Lara returns from her exile on the day of Yuri's funeral. Here, I suppose, is Pasternak's final poetic license.

I wonder if it the presence of the straight and solid Charlton Heston (the conservative in Hollywood) that drove that story to its (moral) ending? And if the ominous Russian Orthodox Church had any part in Pasternak's moral tale? Often, movies after the early '60s go out of their way to be permissive and open and to let their characters have all their freedom.

These two put a jolt to that.

Immigration Watch Canada Says "Just Slow Down"

In favour of a steady-state model

Condo constructions which dot the Toronto skyline.
Due to over-building, many are to remain unfinished,
others have lost contracts or funding. IWC says
"Slow down".

[I took the above photo about 8 months ago. The construction is at exactly
the same spot now.]

The writers at Immigration Watch Canada , who post "Weekly Bulletins", although I wish there was more frequent activity there, just put up a post which says: "McJobs won't pay for Canada's safety net." Here is what they write:

Too many Canadians...believe that Canada needs a "McJob" fix to prevent a labour shortage or supply the demographic base for an aging work-force that will need pension and medical support.

Part of the article discusses this fallacy.

[Canadians] seem willfully ignorant of studies that have examined unskilled workers, who comprise the vast portion of immigrants (legal or illegal) on both sides of the border. These studies conclude consistently that these workers are unable to pay enough income tax to even reimburse government coffers for the services they consume, never mind subsidize the needs of others.

In fact these immigrants have cost Canadian taxpayers $18.3 billion between 1990-2002. Let alone add money into the coffers!

IWC makes a clever proposal:

And if a skills shortage does indeed exist, uncorroborated as it is by any thorough and objective inventory, it is chronic in a growth economy that ultimately must be abandoned in favour of a steady-state model.

Exactly!

Of course, there is much more to it than just crunching numbers. From IWC:

[Mcdonald's] simply love the bottom line: cheap wages and low benefits. This is a business motive that is as old as the hills. But, in this era, that motive is dressed up as a quest for cultural diversity and liberal tolerance. And any opposition to it is depicted as nasty, nativist and bigoted.

My Article At American Thinker

I will gloat just a little

Here is a comment by reader D. M. Zuniga on my article Australia: Whose land is it anyway.

I'm sure I've never read a more trenchant discussion of the art, politics, and psychology of cinematography. Reading this thread, I was going to give a high-five to Parmenter, and John McMahon, and the original author of this piece, Kidist Paulos Asrat. Then I realised there's not an errant comment in the flock; every one thus far has been valuable to me.

I especially like the way American Thinker allows comments. It also helped me to have the commenters' inputs, some of whom were Australian. I am happy I was a conduit for the discussion that D. M. Zuniga found so valuable.

Alien Buildings

And alien cultures go hand in hand

The Turning Torso in Sweden's Malmö harbor

Gates of Vienna has been reporting various incidents in the Swedish city of Malmö for several months now. The problems there started when Muslim youth protested the closure of an Islamic center, and eventually escalated their protests with riots.

Apparently, this is not an unusual occurrence. In 2005, it was fires in two mosques that was attributed to arson. In mosques, mind you, not churches. This means that the town was retaliating against this Islamic presence. But, the city did nothing about it, and in fact allowed absurd policies like Arabic-only preschools to continue.

Fjordman at Jihadwatch relates that as far back as 2005, one of Malmö districts started Arabic only classes for preschool children. The rationale being that if young children know the language of their parents, then they would learn the "foreign" language faster. Surely there is a high correlation between such a tolerant policy towards the city's Muslim (and Arabic) population, and this population's tendency to also want all the other paraphernalia of its culture, including places of worship?

Fast forward to 2008, and as Gates of Vienna amply reports, that is just what happens. The closure of an Islamic center with a mosque, due to expiration of a lease, induced a group of young Muslims to occupy the basement for some 23 days demanding that they have access to the mosque. As the days progressed, the confrontations got worse with riots and burning cars, resembling the Paris banlieue riots of a few of years ago (which have of course become commonplace now.)

But, there is a particular reason why I'm blogging about Malmö.

Malmö is the site of a building designed by one of those "world class", global architects, who make a living out of constructing incongruous buildings around the world. These are architects who have no consideration for the geographical, cultural and even environmental realities of the place, and just use their whimsy and artistry to design their buildings.

Malmö's architect was the Spanish Santiago Calatrava who has designed buildings from Israel to Toronto, which all have that airy, unstable quality about them. He calls the building in Malmö The Turning Torso, based on sketches he made of a turning human body. I have written about it here.

Now, surely, any city which would let one of its most costly (and eventually most famous) buildings look as though it was about to collapse into a spiral heap doesn't really care too much about itself? And how about designing a building that has nothing to do with the historical or cultural context of the city (Malmö was built around the Oresund strait)? A building that towers over the flat harbor in such an ungainly manner?

Tellingly, the wikitravel information for Malmö says:

Malmö has a large part of its inhabitants born abroad, thus contributing to a rich cultural life and many exotic and fine food opportunities.

From exotic fine foods (which I seriously doubt) to Turning Torsos to rioting Muslim youths. There is a connection here, and as I showed above, if a city doesn't care about itself, its history and its culture, it will admit anything and anyone - from incongruous buildings to alien populations.

Paging (Any) Conservative

At least Ann Coulter gets the single mother issue

Hollywood starlets on celebrity magazines with their trophy out-of-wedlock children

I've posted a few times [1,2,3] about the conservatives' lack of understanding when it came to single mothers, and specifically Sarah Palin's daughter's (then) imminent birth of a child out-of-wedlock.

More specifically, I had noticed for the past couple of years how Hollywood was condoning single motherhood, and not only that, but doing extensive coverage of young movie stars who were getting pregnant out-of-wedlock.

It was getting so bizarre, that at every turn, there was some starlet getting pregnant - to prove her womanhood, it seemed. It was becoming one of those rites of passage. At one time, I was shocked (yes, I really was) that an American Idol winner, Fantasia, actually had a song in the charts exalting single motherhood called "Baby Mama".

Well, Ann Coulter was on The View today to talk about her new book 'Guilty", and specifically her chapter on single mothers, and that is exactly what she says. She puts a more historical and societal perspective to it by saying that this was the culmination of years of anti-nuclear family and anti-male propaganda, as in "sisters are doing it but for themselves". And Hollywood and celebrities are now using single motherhood a some kind of trophy up the celebrity ladder.

More grim news from the real world includes how the majority of societal ills, from murders to prison inmates to juvenile delinquents are attributable to the offspring of single mothers - and especially seems to affect blacks the most.

The token "conservative" on The View, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, instead of realizing the immensity of the problem as Coulter describes it, totally misses the point by saying - "why don't you come down hard on the fathers who weren't there rather than the women who actually raised their children?"

Actually, on second thoughts, I don't think Hasselbeck is missing the point. I think it is exactly the issue that will be the real deciding factor between conservative women and women who slide onto the liberal wing. This was so clearly on display, as I blogged previously, during the Bristol Palin debacle. A group of so-called conservative bloggers and pundits put out a video in support of single motherhood in solidarity with Palin's daughter. Many others publicly supported Bristol. Even Sarah Palin, Bristol's own mother, is a member of an organization called "Feminists for Life" obviously playing on the right to life issue, which has various programs for single mothers.

Now, Hasselbeck, without any consternation, talks about the fathers who abandoned these single mothers, when Coulter says that it is all a planned attack on the nuclear family ( and men) that culminated with this.

This could be the conservative issue of the century.

Our Changing Landscape

Downtown Toronto's first minaret

The nondescript buildings camouflaging mosques in downtown Toronto are no more. In the fall of 2009, a bold, minaret-supporting mosque is to be completed in a downtown residential area of Toronto. Read more at Our Changing Landscape.

"Australia"

Article on American Thinker and Chronwatch

Waltzing Matilda, Australia's other national anthem

My article "Australia: Whose land is it anyway?" has been printed on American Thinker and Chronwatch.

I enjoyed the film quite a bit. I think the actors were of high caliber, including Nicole Kidman who got a lot of flack for her role in the film (so what's new, there seems to be the "favorite actors and actresses who get a lot of flack" and Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise seem to fit the bill.) The little Aboriginal boy was especially enchanting. The scenery was beautiful, and as I wrote int he article, the director is talented.

But, of course, there is a but... Do read the article to find out what - although the title gives it away.

Also, in the American Thinker comments section, some Australians have generoulsy participated.

Here are some more things I could have added, on the many references Baz Luhrmann made in his film:

- The Bach music is most often associated with Drover. Does this mean that Luhrmann wants us to view Drover as the "worthy shepherd" and the "ruler well ruling", from the Bach aria I quote at the beginning?

Sheep may ever graze securely
Where a worthy shepherd wakes.
Where the rulers well are ruling,
May one rest and peace discover
And what nations blissful makes.

- The Aborigine King George is in the midst of the bombing mayhem of Darwin, once again supporting my thesis that according to Luhrmann, the Aborigines are the innocent party in all this white man's mayhem, watching as he destroys the world.

- And how could I forget Waltzing Matilda. You can listen to the lovely song above.

More Flowers

Redouté's roses

Pierre-Joseph Redouté roses, Rosa longifolia

Botanical Prints

Flowering Dogwood, from the Walcott North American Wild Flowers (1925)
(All these prints are for sale)

I just found a wonderful online site of botanical drawings and paintings from the 17th century to the early 20th century. The majority are of the 19th century, when botanical art (painting) really flourished, as all those adventurous Europeans went to the colonies and beyond to record all the exotic plants they found.

Click to this site, and look on the left side for Botanical Prints, and on the right side for Natural History Prints.

Mark Vs. Bernardo

Who has it right on this immigration perspective?

To continue with yesterday's theme from Westside Story: "What's the difference between Puerto Ricans and Poles?", here's a surprising summary of Mark Krikorian's latest book "The new case against immigration: Both legal and illegal":

[W]hat's different today is not the immigrants, but us. Today's immigrants are very similar to those of a century ago, but they are coming to a very different America -- one where changes in the economy, society, and government create fundamentally different incentives for newcomers. In other words, the America that our grandparents came to no longer exists. And this simple fact must become the new starting point for the explosive debate about immigration policy.

Strange, an immigration expert, who has done countless studies on the subject and who is most certainly more educated, and dare I say, more intellectually endowed, than Bernardo, fails to have that flash of insight of Bernardo's when Bernardo says that his Puerto Rican countrymen will always have troubling fitting in America unlike his Polish and Irish counterparts.

I will have to read the whole book to make an educated comment on this excerpt. Perhaps Krikorian is right, but this isn't the consensus of many other experts, which is that current immigrants are very different from those who would have come here during Krikorian's grandparents' days.

Still, there is still a lot to unravel in just this one excerpt. For example, Krikorian's changed, contemporary America is actually more of a reflection of these current immigrants than the American of yonder years (which I assume means pre-1960s). In other words, Indians are coming to an America with large numbers of Indians already here. The change has already been allowed to occur, starting in the 1960s. And yes, certainly, these current Indians would be no different in some respects (for example in aspiration - to get better jobs, to live peaceful lives, to earn more money, to escape war etc...) than any other immigrant.

But to categorically say that they are all the same as his grandparent's days damages his thesis.

What's the Difference Between Puerto Ricans and Poles?

Insights from Westside Story


It is always interesting to review old (and not so old) classics after a lapse of a few years to see if I notice anything different, or if I find a new message.

This happened recently after watching Westside Story. I still think the choreography is great, and I never tire of it, especially since there is nothing really comparable in contemporary musicals - the most recent I watched was a 2007 remake of Hairspray, and it doesn't compare.

There is that scene on the roof where the Puerto Rican youth are dancing and arguing (the men vs. the women). At one point, they talk about assimilating, and how they can never feel at home in Ame-ri-ca. But if they go back to Puerto Rico, they will find that everyone has come here, so they may as well stay on.

The part I never picked up on earlier is when Bernardo says that all the Irish and Polish, however awkward they may appear at the beginning, always end up fitting in (with the whites, he meant to say), and which the Puerto Ricans can never expect to do.

This was in 1961 - just about the cut-off date when I think movies started to deteriorate toward debilitating political correctness. Although Westside Story does show signs of these weaknesses, it was sufficiently early on for such statements made by Bernardo to make the cut, and to not cause mayhem.

On a related, but slightly tangential topic, Jennifer Lopez, the quintessential Hispanic star, knows this very well. All her moves, from her marriage to Latin pop star Marc Anthony (she broke off in a spectacularly nutty way an engagement to Ben Affleck before marrying Anthony in very short notice) to her albums which she records both in English and in Spanish, and her clear ties with Puerto Rico, show that she understands that she's dealing with two different cultures, if not races. She will benefit from the one (the white culture) but she will be loyal to the second - the Hispanic and more particularly the Puerto Rican one.

So, Bernardo's observation, almost fifty years ago, is playing out in reality. Jennifer Lopez is his prime example.

Krayola Kids

Our multi-colored notebooks



Diana West is continuing with her theme of our "Death of the Grown-up" culture where she posts about a school in Kent, England where red is no longer allowed to denote a poor performance. Such bold red marks could be traumatic for the poor students. Hundreds of other schools have done the same.

So, instead of leaving everything a neutral, say, blue, the school administrators at this school go full out and include a myriad of multi-colors to denote good work and "areas that could be improved". No one wants to highlight ba.. um an area that could be improved with a new ink color. Well that could be problematic, since then the chosen color (say, green) could be the new red. So now students would be traumatized by green! So the question is, how will the student realize that his work is ba..um an area that could be improved? Do various colors have varying degrees of good to areas that could be improved? No, we're still back at square one, or even worse - there could be more colors to traumatize over!

Oh, let the teachers just give all this grading thing up and color in things they just feel like, with nice comments and smilies to go with it.

In fact that is just what is happening in the design field - crayola colors and stick figures.

An informal survey I did of companies which stressed their diversity and multiculturalism showed these strange stick-figure logos, with an array of bright, primary colors. All is equal, and equally infantilized in this cheerful, colorful world. There is no better or worse, no gradations of superiority or inferiority. No right or wrong, no good or bad.

Well, there is bad. We are regressing, and many of us are just not realizing it. As Diana West says, multiculturalism has an infantilizing effect because it requires us to repress our logic. Designers, in their desire to include everyone, and insult no-one, have had to repress their designing logic and come-up with the the saving grace of the generic stick figure and the primary palate. Red is not really an Indian, as black isn't a, well, a real black person. I mean, has anyone ever seen a green person? So what we get is the diversity without the specificity.

But, wait, someone forgot this one. Don't these stick-figures discriminate against the fat-challenged? (Can I even say "fat" these days!).

Canadian Bloggers Packing It In

Another Canadian blogger packs it in, officially this time.

Gone is Blazing Cat Fur, whom I only recently started reading.

Gone from my list are also:

The immigration blogger, Dispatches from the Hogtown Front, who still has very good archives. Thankfully, though, the slack has been very well taken up by:

Canadian Immigration Reform Blog.

And the ever erudite, high caliber (quality) blogger The Ambler is still silent.

Our Changing Landscape

New post

The Prince of Mogadishu. How a convicted criminal Somali rap singer gets eulogized by Toronto Life.

Flurry of Posts

On Holiday time


I have had a chance to add many posts thanks to the holidays.

The People's Baby

Bristol Palin and her baby's photo will grace People Magazine

Jamie Lynn Spears (sister of Britney Spears),
an unwed mother starlet. She and Bristol Palin
are now becoming role models for young girls.

Bristol Palin's new baby will compete with any celebrity birth, and find his way on the covers of People Magazine - for a price. It is just like I predicted. Hollywood is interested in this new addition to its roster of young, famous, teenaged, unmarried mothers and their babies. This just adds more fuel to its industry, which has now been subsisting on the atrocious (I call them deeply sad) antics of its stars from teenagers to young adults.

Of course, my advice to the Palin family would have been to ignore the People offer (reportedly of $300,00) and to lie low and let the illegitimate baby get legitimized as soon as possible (if possible.) Sarah Palin did say on her website: "Isn’t it just like God to turn those circumstances into such an amazing, joyful blessing when you ask Him to help you through?"

I'm not sure what she means by this other than that, yes, a baby is a miraculous event. But, here's more of what she says:

Bristol and Levi are committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child. They are both hard workers, they’re very strong, and have faith they’ve made the right decision in setting aside their own interests to make this child their highest priority.

Setting aside their own interests to make this child their highest priority? Isn't that what having babies is all about? And does it bear mentioning, unless, of course, it wasn't their highest priority to begin with, or not a priority at all?

What a mess they have entered into. I just wish them all a quick recovery.

On another, but related, note here is one of Canada's fine "conservative" bloggers who mentions nothing about the strange lack of concern regarding the youth and singlehood of the baby's parents, and his illegitimacy. The post by Wendy Sullivan talks only of the strange name that the Palin family give their children. I'm sure Sullivan, who was also part of the "I am Sarah Palin" video, which outed a number of conservative women bloggers as, well, not conservative, would not approve of my take on this situation.

The Year (Or Three) In Review

How I'm keeping up


It's been now 31/2 years since I started blogging. I am very happy to say that I have absolutely kept to my original mandate. I never wanted this to be a "diary" blog, but one which tries to record social and cultural issues through a somewhat "artistic" lens. It was also meant as a record of my ideas, an evolution from the kernels of my first thoughts to their later developments. In fact, some of these ideas have generated into full-blown articles, which have been getting published online.

I started blogging because there was no way for me to develop some thoughts I had without appearing like a slightly wacky guest (or friend). I remember talking to a Jamaican woman about the Amhara, and inadvertently I said, "well, they're different from other Africans." This set off a sarcastic (as only Jamaicans can do it) comment, and she was actually being kind to me. Another time, a black friend said that his black (literally black colored) car was called Cleopatra. And of course I said "Cleopatra wasn't black!" At another moment, I tried to make a point that the Ethiopian religious art was successful because it tried to emulate Western art, which it borrowed from some few icons available, or through "ambassadorial" visits (which were coerced into years) of Italian painters at the Kings' courts. This was very badly taken by those around me.

And these were just "social" commentaries. Think of what I went through with the infinitely more difficult environment where I voiced my artistic viewpoints; difficult since it is "experts" who are always called upon, and anyone not voicing the current beliefs is no expert.

So, I was already developing a thesis of the particularity of culture, and the importance of preserving the Western culture, which was getting chipped from all sides - by blacks, whites, multiculturalists, liberals, you name it.

I tried to make the tone of this blog a moderate one. After all, those who advocate the superiority of their choices have a right to do so, and in some ways, it was understandable. So, I wasn't going to berate anyone. And in fact, I like and respect some of these people on many other levels. Plus, I didn't want to lose all my energy decrying them, when I needed all that I had to try and come up with solutions and exits to this horrible problem.

I think the arts are perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of our societies: our buildings, our literature, our paintings and fine arts, and of course our movies. Even the most atrocious of attempts can be model works, telling us not only the time-old preoccupations of mankind (life, death, love, happiness), but also the directions in which we are going. They become records and prophecies, all in one. So, I actually think there is a reason why we reached this strange impasse. And I don't necessarily think it was a malicious strategy, only a misdirected on. Certainly there are monsters - my favorite one is Daniel Libeskind, who designed the atrocious Royal Ontario Museum extension. But for the most part, people are led, down that proverbial cliff. And some of us have to guide them away from there.

So here are some of my three-year revelations, and modest guides to slowly extract us from our condition. I have linked each of the headings to the series of posts that come under that category in my blog.

Architecture
How architecture has become the final frontier in modernism. The Damien Hirst "art" atrocities in practice affect only the few fools who spend millions on that "art. But architecture is out there in the public sphere, the final vanity of the "artist". It is there for all to see, and to be affected by. Libeskind does more damage per square foot than Damien Hirst ever could per $1 Million.

Books , Multiculturalism
Post 1960s multicultural and ethnic literature , after generations of "assimilated" and even highly educated authors, still is full of alienation and lack of belonging. Second or third generation Indians, Chinese, Africans have not found their place in Canada and the US.

Islam - under the sister blog "Our Changing Landscape"
Islam, which seems like any other religion, is actually going through a stealthy, covert, cultural take-over of the West. Not only that, it is parasitically using Western traditions to make its headway.

Film
Post 1960s (again! Is there a trend here?) films are often a disappointment. Their overarching desire to please rather than to tell the truth (as all serious art should aspire to do), deflates their messages, makes bad actors out of their stars, and always leave us wanting more.

Multiculturalism, Immigration
Urban landscapes (and even suburban ones) are increasingly being defined by immigrants. This might be a good thing, but what if small stores are now brazenly emitting Arabic music (full of Allahs and Habibis?) Or Somali restaurants are being searched for illegal drugs such chat, a common herb in Somalia but illegal in Toronto? Or we have the "Summers of the Guns", where black Caribbean youth wreck havoc and death through gang-related gun fires? Or our TV shows are beginning to succumb to the bullying of special-interest immigrant groups?

Design
Design, the fundamental point of communication of cultures, is becoming obscured and illegible. The recent Olympics Team uniform was so convoluted - having a myriad of Chinese symbols (on Canadian athletes!) that I am sure it contributed to a psychical withdrawal of the athletes. The problem was actually very logical: the designers who took over the project were both of East Asian origin.

Music
I started a youtube music site, Cameramusica, where I upload some of my favorites, or music that has affected me one way or the other. They are mostly classical, although I will start putting up non-classical as well. Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, I think could be considered a classical piece. He certainly wrote it as an opera. Here is one realm, music, where I tried to be not too critical!

You can read full entries on these topics, and many more, by linking to the side-panel of "Topics". For articles, you can link directly to the online publications, also on the left panel.

So, what are my solutions? Well, one way is of course this blog.

The other way is to promote my work, my designs, as careful processes which take into consideration the culture, landscape, design and art traditions of my own environment. It is a difficult task I've given myself. But, the whimsical, abstracted, internalized, "ethnic" and remotely-referenced works wont part of my palate make. At times, yes, of course, and certainly. But, that will not be my modus operandi.

So, having given myself a lofty task, I think I have borne it reasonably well over these years, with some ups and downs, but always walking down the course.

What A Difference A Year Makes

New Year 2009!

New Year's Day 2008, under a powder of magical snow.
New Year's Day 2009, a crisp, clear winter's morning.

Perfect for a bowl of bright and shiny tangerines.


Happy New Year!