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).