Thursday, December 30, 2010

Round-up of the Blogs and Misconceptions About Islam

"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.

Round-up of the Blogs

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


- GalliaWatch has posted on a gargantuan sculpture to be placed behind an abbey in France. It is the usual modern fare of louder, bigger, kitchier is 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 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.
- 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. And that we have to fight for this good. Of course, we base this on many things, the least 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. Pessimists believe in nothing, they are nihilists to the core. Their great system is to believe in doom, in nothing.

On a side note, although uber-self-annointed 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.

But Mercer and Derbyshire do have their belief systems. Mercer's Libertarianism is her religion that excludes everything but the individual. The sacrosanct narcissist. No wonder this leads her to doom, and enter the "higher"realm of Derbyshire's belief system (an offshoot of his liberalism), which is nihilism.

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

The formidable Atlas Shrugs

Friday, December 24, 2010

Coventry Carol

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.

Monday, December 20, 2010

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

"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.

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)

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Erosion of Civility

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.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Library Closed due to Police Investigation


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.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Festering beneath the Calm of these Chinese Immigrants

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.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

St. Joseph and the Infant Christ

[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

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.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

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

Happy Thanksgiving



Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

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]

Happy Thanksgiving

Monday, November 22, 2010

"Idiot" Libertarians

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.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Forces of Nature

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.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Demise


For the past several months, I have noticed a trend where China and the Chinese have been given undue deference by Western media and cultural institutions. In fact, just this evening, the Toronto public television, Television Ontario, had a panel discussing the  twenty million dollars scholarship program allocated by the Ontario government to bring in up to 300 foreign students per year (it apparently starts with 75/year and will go up as high as 300) to study in Ontario's universities. A Macleans magazine report says that Dalton McGuinty, the province's premier, went to Hong Kong recently to announce this initiative. The article, which is generally against this initiative, is titled: "McGuinty's solutions aren't in China" so I presume that the majority of these scholarships will go to students of Chinese origin, whether from Hong Kong or from mainland China. The TVO panel rationalized this huge government funding by saying that the Chinese students will "pay back" the generous Ontario government by staying on and working miracles for the Ontario government.

This is of course lop-sided thinking. Chinese students don't even need a $40,000/year scholarship to go to university in Ontario, and later on to be specially hired as a gesture of gratitude in lucrative engineering or technical jobs with high salaries. Chinese are applying as immigrants to Canada by the thousands, and many are bringing their life's savings just to be given a chance to get here. They are paying to come here.

One of the arguments the conservative panelist, Jim Wilson, brought up was that all this scholarship money is being siphoned off from funds that would go to students from Ontario instead. He kept asking why bring in students from China, train them, and have them build the bridges and highways, when Ontario students can do all that just as well. These points were unceremoniously dismissed by the rest of the panel members.

I think this all goes back to this strange infatuation the West, at least North America, is having with the Chinese. If I were to analyze it and give it a syndrome, I would say it is a fear of the bogey-dragon. China has waved its tail around, and we have taken fright. It is the "China rising" perception I have blogged about here and here.

Yet, everything China has done so far has been on the backs of the West. Sending masses of people to immigrate to Canada is a form of colonization, not only to take advantage of the country, but also to have Chinese representatives in the West who can feed the "motherland" with important information. This is called spying, and Chinese students and immigrants have been caught doing just that. But, it is more far-reaching than that. Second and third generation offspring of Chinese immigrants predominantly associate with their Chinese heritage. Even the high Chinese/White marriages in Canada (usually Chinese women with white men, although that is reversing now, and I'm seeing many more black/Chinese couples) results with half Chinese offspring, who associate far more with their Chinese parentage. This is understandable because they look more Chinese than anything else.

All this has implications for a country. If a country cannot even trust its own citizens to be loyal to it, then it surely is the beginning of its demise. And worse, if it starts accepting foreigners who have shown a lack of deference and loyalty to it, then it is surely a form of suicide. This is where I think the Chinese story I've been trying to unravel for the past several weeks is leading. Canada has diluted is sense of country and peoples so much, through decades of multicultural policies and high immigration rates, that a stronger and more confident group is simply waiting in the wings to take over. And why not the Chinese, in all their variations, immigrants, several-generation citizens, half white/black/French/Polish, and so on.

Friday, November 12, 2010

We Stand on Guard for Thee?


I started posting about China a few months ago, since I saw a trend of undue deference that news outlets were giving the country (and people). There seems to be a consensus amongst journalists and politicians that "China is rising" and that it is a force to contend with. No one mentions the third-world level of subsistence that many Chinese live in, and the huge numbers immigrating every year to an accommodating Canada. Of course, once in Canada, it is not clear how these Chinese will contribute to Canadian, let alone Western, values and how much of their ancestry and cultural baggage they will force upon the unsuspecting.

As I wrote in a previous post, I spent several years teaching Chinese immigrants, who are meant to be the cream of the immigrant crop. The Canadian "landed immigrant" criteria requires that they demonstrate post-secondary level education, and that they bring with them substantial sums of money ($200,000, last I checked). Chinese and Korean immigrant are able to provide these criteria, more so than African or Latin American immigrants. Therefore, Canada is more than willing to accept and accommodate them.

I think this desire to accommodate Chinese immigrants goes beyond economics, politics or even education. I think part of it is a natural Western curiosity towards different peoples, who appear to have interesting things to offer.

This has been the case at least in art in the past, and especially in the twentieth century with the impressionists. Van Gogh and Monet were influenced by Japanese florals, and even the idea of flat surfaces (removing perspective in paintings, a method invented during the Renaissance) was an Asian influence in Impressionism and current art.


Currently, now that this Other is entering Western, and especially North American, shores, he should not appear too different. Perhaps it is the lighter skin of East Asians (Chinese and Koreans) that makes them more acceptable than Africans, although I personally disagree with this and find Chinese physiognomy as alien as any. But I think what modern Westerners do see is this superficial similarity.

There is also the much proclaimed "smart Asian" stereotype, with the high I.Q. But my brief personal interactions with East Asians, which includes Koreans, has always demonstrated the fallacy of the Asian with the high I.Q. For all the smarts and brains, I found they lacked inventiveness and imagination, which is a part of I.Q. measurement that is generally neglected. I originally come from a background of research which requires processing information (data) to come up with interesting and inventive questions to solve scientific problems. Later on, I switched to art and design. Imagination and invention have always been important in my world view.

But perhaps most important of all, current cultural opinion goes to great lengths to bridge differences. Liberalism teaches us that there are no differences between peoples, there is no Other, and contrary to our primordial nagging which tells us that there is indeed one, we must collide and cohabit with him in order not to participate in the world's worst crime: that of discrimination. Thus, we suppress all these feelings and accumulated knowledge and wisdom, and invite the Other right into our own back yards.

These impressions of similarity, or to be more precise, sameness, are exacerbated by modern media, which brings the Other to us in life-like forms through movies and television. But we (or our artists), God-like, recreate him in our own image, to suite our whims and fancies. And these fancies include all kinds of convoluted beliefs and superstitions (i.e. the evils of discrimination), to assure us that "we are the world." And the smart Chinese aggressively use modern communication systems to further this image created by the West, and which suites their agenda of infiltrating, at least economically, Western countries and institutions. One of the ways it it doing so is by allowing a tremendous out-migration of its population to infiltrate the West, or at least the countries which allow easy entry. China understands that ultimately, especially in a rabid multicultural society like Canada, loyalties will almost always return to ethnicity.

No-one digs too deep to uncover and understand these realities. And since when has liberalism been keen on self-reflection and analysis? The truth may just be too hard to bear. On a fundamental, evolutionary level, white men who abandoned their white women for Chinese women (the percentage for white men/Chinese women is extraordinarily high here in Canada) now have half Chinese off-spring who identify more with their mothers' ancestry than with their father's Canadian. This became apparent to me during my art studies years, when my Chinese and half-Chinese classmates consistently and constantly looked toward Chinese "influences" to do their art projects.

How long before any can "Stand on Guard for thee" with hand on heart, during a national ceremony? Not only are we accepting alien peoples, but the leaders of the society, the white men


Again, I had a shocking personal experience (posted here) where Chinese immigrants I was teaching English to refused to stand (or even sing) the Canadian national anthem, where the strong words "stand on guard for thee" now have no meaning for the thousands still pouring in to Canada.

I started posting about China a few months ago, since I saw a trend of undue deference that news outlets were giving the country (and people). There seems to be a consensus amongst journalists and politicians that "China is rising" and that it is a force to contend with. No one mentions the third-world level of subsistence that many Chinese live in, and the huge numbers immigrating every year to an accommodating Canada. Of course, once in Canada, it is not clear how these Chinese will contribute to Canadian, let alone Western, values, and how much of their ancestry and cultural baggage they will force onto the unsuspecting.

I spent several years teaching Chinese immigrants, who are meant to be the cream of the immigrant crop, since the Canadian "landed immigrant" criteria which they use requires that they bring in substantial sums of money ($200,000 last I checked), and post-secondary education levels. Prospective Chinese immigrants are able to fulfill these criteria more so than Latin American or African applicants, yet often the Chinese became the ultimate non-Western immigrants: ready to take but unable to give - much, anyway. How long before any can sing the lines from the Canadian national anthem "Stand on Guard for thee" with hand on heart? I had a shocking experience where Chinese immigrants I was teaching English to refused to stand (or even sing) these words. Their message clearly was that they are not Canadian, and have no desire to be Canadian.


Part of the desire to accept and accommodate Chinese immigrants into Canadian  society goes beyond economics, politics or even education. I think there is a natural Western curiosity towards different peoples, who appear to have interesting things to offer. But as with all things cultural, there were always small caveats to fulfill, even for these desirable Asians. Namely that the Other is sufficiently far away so as not to mingle and disrupt the Western society, or in our contemporary era, that he not appear too alien from the host's society. The former has been the case at least in art in the past, and especially in the twentieth century with the  impressionists. Van Gogh and Monet were influenced by Japanese florals, and even the idea of flat surfaces (removing perspective in paintings, a method invented during the Renaissance) was an Asian influence in Impressionism and current art. Now, the rationale seems to be that Chinese (and Koreans), don't appear to be too different,  compared to, say, Indians, Latin Americans or Africans. (I personally disagree with this and find Chinese physiognomy as alien as any. But I think what modern Westerners see is a superficial similarity, perhaps simply due to their light skin).


There is also the admiration for much proclaimed "smart Asian" with the high I.Q. But my brief personal interactions with East Asians, which includes Koreans, has always demonstrated the fallacy of the Asian with the  high I.Q. For all the smarts and brains, I found they lacked inventiveness and imagination, which is a part of I.Q. measurement that is generally neglected. I originally come from a background of research which requires processing information (data) to come up with interesting and inventive questions to solve scientific problems. Later on, I switched to art and design. Imagination and invention have always been important in my world view.  I was never impressed with my "Asian" colleagues in either of these disciplines.

And recent cultural opinion goes even further than trying to bridge differences. Liberalism teaches us that there are no differences between peoples (thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom is just claptrap), there is no Other, and contrary to our  primordial nagging which tells us that there is indeed one, we must collide and cohabit with him in order not to participate in the world's worst crime: that of discrimination. Thus, we have no option but to invite the Other right into our own back yards in order to be good citizens.

These uncontested opinions of similarity, or to be more precise, sameness, are exacerbated by modern media, which brings the Other to us in life-like forms through movies and television. But we (or our artists), God-like, recreate him in our own image, to suite our whims and fancies. Do the Chinese really look like that in their own environment, or are our filmmakers and television producers simply going on their own (desired) views, which are constantly trying to evade accusations of discrimination and racism.


And the smart Chinese aggressively use this benign, almost adulated image, of "Asians" is to infiltrate the West through a tremendous out-migration of its population into North America. China understands that ultimately, especially in a rabid multicultural society like Canada, loyalties will almost always return to ethnicity.
 

So why does China, still a bureaucratically-led, communist-style (perhaps I can coin a new term and call it neo-Communist) regime figuring so high in our imaginations these days? I think it is a natural Western curiosity towards different peoples, who appear to have interesting things to offer. This has been the case at least in art in the past. But now, we no longer admire and emulate from a distance. Our interactions are cozier and closer: immigration brings all these exotics right at our doorsteps. And modern media brings art to us in life-like forms through movies and television, putting us just just steps away from the real thing. Immigration adds the final clinch - bring them here, we know them, we know who they are...China itself aggressively uses these modern communication systems to further its image and agenda.

But, is what we see what we get? At least, regarding China, it is now becoming clear that it is not the flourishing, modern country that its leaders are pushing us to believe. Chinese cheap goods, faulty and even deadly China-made pharmaceuticals, collapsing buildings and dams, and that unanalzyed

, through modern media, immigration, and it's own media, often deceptive, gives the rest of the world that it is a flourishing, modernized place, worthy of emulation by any standards.

No-one digs too deep to uncover these declarations and beliefs. Perhaps the truth, the stark reality, would be too much to bear. China might just be the last exotic, Other, bastions for liberals, and liberal peoples, who always have to keep looking for the next fix and stimulation.