Ô, Canada!

For better or ....

Screenshot of post at Hall of Macademia.

Soldiers and Sailors' Monument, New York

Soldiers and Sailors' Monument
Riverside Drive and 89th Street, New Yorkk
[Photo By: KPA]

This massive circular temple-like monument located along Riverside Drive at 89th Street commemorates Union Army soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War. This monument, one of the few in a city park that the New York Landmark Commission designated a landmark, was designed by architects Charles (1860–1944) and Arthur Stoughton (1867–1955), who won a competition with this ancient Greek design.
The marble monument, with its pyramidal roof and 12 Corinthian columns, is based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. It was commissioned by the State of New York, and dedicated on Memorial Day in 1902. Sculptor Paul E. Duboy carved the ornamental features on the monument. The pillars list the New York volunteer regiments that served during the battle as well as Union generals and the battles in which they led troops. For years the monument was the terminus of New York City’s annual Memorial Day parade.

In 1961 the City spent more than $1 million to fix the monument’s marble façade, which had deteriorated, and portions of the monument were replaced with more durable granite. [Source: NYC Architecture]

More than the Optics

Optics is a word that has been repeatedly used to refer to President Obama's behavior this past week.

Here's one juxtaposing Obama playing golf with Rand Paul in Guatemala doing charitable doctoring.

Well, how about this one? Obama in his vacation tan suit, with Putin watching. Obama has that frantic look in his eyes that I have documented over the years of his presidency. Putin just looks on, calm and collected.

The caption for this Reuters photograph of Putin reads:

Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs a session of the State Council Presidium in Voronezh, August 5, 2014. Putin has ordered his government to prepare retaliatory measures against the latest round of Western sanctions, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.

Obama's photo caption from ABC News says:

President Barack Obama gestures in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Aug. 28, 2014. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

I think it is more than a "summer suit." Obama is saying that he is still on vacation, no matter the world's situation.

The not so subliminal message is that he doesn't care. And the political message is that he is not watching out for America in particular, and the West in general. He is siding with the enemy. But then, our enemy are his friends, so is behavior his to be expected.

The "perception" message, the "optics" message, is that he's giving the enemy information that should be kept secret for national security reasons, but is now out in the open: America's leadership is hesitant, which makes it vulnerable to attacks. Now is a good time to attack.

All this, in other words, it is more than "the optics."

Here is Republican King basically saying what I'm saying:

You have the whole world watching, you have a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is going to do and then for him to walk out – I'm not trying to be trivial here – but in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about, and he said that's the vision of the second-quarter numbers on the economy.

This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded, and he's trying to act like, you know, real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say that he has no strategy!

Now you know, listen, you and I know that it is easy to mis-speak [inaudible]...you can say the wrong things. What this showed was, you know, you know there's always a few issues you're not overly familiar with, and you can find yourself saying the wrong thing or saying it in the wrong way. That's the way it struck me is that this is not, that foreign policy is not a major issue to him. It's something he has to talk about, he's not crazy about it, and he'd much rather talk about some social engineering or healthcare or whatever. And he doesn't even know how to..For a guy that's so articulate, he does not know how to express himself on this issue. He's not the --thoughest radar screen, he really isn't.

It was just a terrible performance by a commander-in-chief.

Forget that our allies are watching, forget that the American people are watching. ISIS is watching.

If you were the head of ISIS, if you were [ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi, or if you were any of the ISIS, anyone in the ISIS leadership, would you come away from yesterday afraid of the United States?" he asked. "Would you be afraid that the United States is going to use all its power to crush ISIS?

Or would you think, here's a person who's going to go out and do a few fundraisers over the Labor Day weekend? [More of the interview at Newsmax.com]

A Chinese J-11 fighter jet is seen flying near a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon
about 215 km (135 miles) east of China's Hainan Island in this U.S. Department
of Defense handout photo taken August 19, 2014.

Chinese interceptions of U.S. military planes could intensify due to submarine base

"We didn't give [the Americans] enough pressure (before)," Zhang* said... "A knife at the throat is the only deterrence. From now on, we must fly even closer to U.S. surveillance aircraft."

* Zhang is Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong from the National Defense University in Beijing

----------------------------------------
Source, text and image: Reuters

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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A Candidate for House of the Un-American Activities

In my last post, I wrote that Obama was anti-American.

I think he is actually un-American.

He cannot seem to relate to any of the fundamental aspects of America: its British and European history; its break from Britain to form its own country; its sad and difficult past of slavery for which it has expiated one hundred times over; its civil rights revolution to put the wrongs right; the inability of the aggrieved groups, despite decades of ample assistance, to come to par with the rest of the county. And so on.

Obama, of course, couldn't belong anywhere else either. No African nation, the continent of his father, would accept him as an African, nor would the Indonesia where he grew up (less so because he doesn't even look Indonesian).

Still, he has acted against his country, his country of birth, America, whatever his psychological baggage. He has tarnished the highest post of this land, which allowed him to be its leader.

And his bitter medicine is that he can't quite handle that job. He's smart, he has a lawyer's mind, he has high speaking abilities, and he's a good family man. But so are many CEO's and school principals. He aimed too high.

In any case, none of that exonerates him.

What I think should happen now is that he be investigated by the house of Un-American activities.

Obama is beyond anti-American, he's un-American. He seems to have a deep-felt antagonsim toward America, a desire to bring her down and humiliate her. Why? Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-political columnist says in a news discussion that we should not bother with psychology, and concentrate on actions.

Well, we cannot help but wonder at the underlying psychology of Obama's behaviors.

But, I agree with Krauthammer. There is no need to analyze, which is tantamount to excusing, Obama. I conclude that Obama simply hates America.

Therefore, we need to bring Obama to the House of Un-American activities. His actions have come to a head these past few weeks, each one supporting my claim of his un-Americaness, and each one thus tied to the other.

Today, Obama stood in front of the world's leaders, and in front of the world, and talked at the D-day commemorations. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of state of mind allows him to stand there and make the speech, while his past conduct, now exposed, has been to undermine those very soldiers. His hypocricy, like many of his atrocities, is astounding.

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Addendum
I'm not the only one to discuss Obama's un-American activities. John Hawkins from Town Hall, who has written a column titled Three Un-American Activities of Barack Obama, lists three of the lesser-known un-American activities of the President (I've just posted the headings to his points. The full discussion can be read at Town Hall).

Hawkins lists Obama's violations:

1) Siding with Mexico against Arizona.

2) All the bowing to foreign leaders (I wrote on this several years ago).

3) Criticizing America abroad.

Hawkins doesn't follow the logic of his thoughts, to continue writing that un-American activities necessitate investigation by the House of Un-American Activities, not some list in a newspaper.

That is the problem. Journalists and politicians have pussy-footed around Obama for so long that they don't know how to approach the seriousness of the issues, and what to do (or to recommend to do) about them. It is too little too late for lists.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Sins of the Fathers

The President of the United States at a public press conference with Jihadists
in the White House Rose Garden, where Brendahl's father
used many Islamic phrases including: Bismillah al Rahman al Raheem

The second phrase, which sounds like "ze aba yem," is the Afghani language Pashto for "I am your father," which Brendahl does translate:

"I am your father, Bowe."

Below is the video, and Brendahl's father speaks the words above between the 4:00 and 5:00 minutes point, and he continues to speak for another twenty seconds or so.



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The media is giving a lot of slack to Obama, tripping itself over words like "he's ignorant and arrogant."

Obama is neither ignorant nor arrogant. His made a spectacular move in releasing the five Jihadists. They are being presented as terrorists, which they're not. Their mission is existential, not political. Their aim is to bring glory to Allah, their god, to whom they bow five times a day in prayer. They're not after some ideological change, but a the Ummah, when the whole world is Allah's.

Obama is simply anti-American, and anti-Western. He hates the America of Washington and Lincoln, and even that of his biggest living American allies, the Clintons.

He is not merely lying, he is establishing his ingrained beliefs to restructure and change America.

He may not actually be a Muslin, or may never convert to Islam, but he is a Muslim and Islam sympathizer. He is willing to change centuries of American history in order to make something different, something that is not American. The most effective method to do so at the moment is to cause Islam to do the damage.

As a young girl, student in a British schools, I attended chapel daily, as did all the students. We used to pray for the Queen, for Queen Elizabeth. We used pray:

O Lord, save the Queen;
O Lord our heavenly Father,
high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes,
who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth;
most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour
to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth;
and so replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit,
that she may alway incline to thy will, and walk in thy way:
endue her plenteously with heavenly gifts;
grant her in health and wealth long to live;
strengthen her that she may vanquish and overcome all her enemies;
and finally, after this life, she may attain everlasting joy and felicity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

I tried very hard to be in this prayerful spirit for Obama, but I cannot.

How can I say: "Strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies" when in actual fact he is part of the enemy?

This is bigger than impeachment. In fact, that may not even happen. This requires the concerted effort, understanding, and prayer of all Americans, and all westerners, that the god-forsaken Islam has taken a stronghold in America, and no-one is doing anything to stop it. And it is time to start.

This primal disconnection from the leader of one's country is as painful as disconnecting from any leader: a teacher, a parent or even a priest. But, these mere mortals are at the bidding of God. Once they have discarded or tarnished that honorary role, then God would ask us to follow Him rather than them.

We should pray for ourselves.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Auster/Asrat Interaction: Saving the West and Other Urgent Matters

In my last post, I wrote of my first posted interaction in November 6, 2008 with Larry Auster's View From the Right. I did a search at VFR's site to see if I was correct, and in fact, my first posted comment was as an anonymous KPA, in the article Minority Female Republicans For Diversity, written on May 9th, 2006. That is a couple of years earlier than what I thought.

Here is what I wrote in 2006 as KPA, commenting on the article:

KPA writes:

Mr. Auster,

I admire your fairness and generosity towards all types of people. Those who may have called you racist are using the term erroneously. Racial pride does not equal racist.

I had noticed your staunch support for Hirsi Ali, when I could see months before that she had no intention to really help the Netherlands, but was focused on her own status as female, Muslim (and I suppose black too).

Malkin seems also intent on vociferously asserting herself. I always find that such passionate self-justification (maybe to feel a part of the rest) is a symptom of insecurity and dare I say, inferiority.

Perhaps all these non-white women need to do is to have a certain humility. To agree and accept the fact that America was founded by other white nations. That a Philippino or a West African population could never have created what the British did.

And if that becomes too difficult, then stay away from public life, rather than eventually become hypocrites.

Although, one final thing that I may add. Race is war in a sense. Each one wants supremacy over the other. Rice may very well envision a land full of powerful blacks, and Malkin may lapse at times into a vision of a world of powerful browns.

Well, we certainly are headed for interesting times!

I commented on this interaction, again at VFR, which I wrote on June 19, 2012:

It was fun to go through your search engine to find my first emails to you. I used my initials KPA then, and I think I identified myself as being from Canada since the beginning.

From what I can find, my first email to you was on May 9, 2006. The thread was on how nonwhites, even the “conservative” ones, push for the advancement of nonwhites at the expense of whites, as well as on Hirsi Ali, Islam, Western culture, gender, and what I thought were race “wars.” Quite a post! And I declared myself your ally!

My second comment, in the entry, “The enemy is not jihad,” deals with more pressing and tangible material, namely: Islam’s incursions into Western society, from cultural strongholds to actual preparations for jihad. This was in September 2006. I am surprised that I understood (I think) the problem so well so far back, when few people were talking or writing about the reality of Islam.

It is interesting that Laura Wood, in her first email to you, was also concerned about religion (or the loss of Christianity).

It seems that spiritual and religious matters are at the forefront of the West’s problems, and the decline of religion makes it easier to dismantle the civilization.

Larry added the article I had written for VFR, Christian Tolerence, Islamic Jihad:

Also see the article Kidist wrote for VFR in 2007 (when she still was ID’d as “KPA”), in which she told how the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia’s tolerance toward its Muslim minority in the 16th century enabled the Muslims to launch a jihad.

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Addendum: The View From the Right search engine, in the right margin of the VFR website provides shortcuts to the posted articles.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Mutli-Culti Girl Riveters Building Amunition?

Laura Wood, at The Thinking Housewife has posted the above image, which was sent by one of her correspondents. It is a crew of multi-culti future girl engineers. On closer inspection, what these girls are really interested in are the pinkness of their toy kitchen cabinets. The full interaction about girls (and women) in men-oriented fields like engineering, is discussed at the site.

What I'm interested in is the expressions of these little girls.

I kind of like the black girl's "come and get me if you want trouble" expression, in the group photo I posted above. I think black girls, and low-income black girls in particular, are at the bottom of the totem pole of American life. I think they have it tough. Being on welfare, as many are, is a mind-numbing life. And as the statistics show, they are single mothers on welfare: i.e their men have abandoned them. So I think this aggressive stance is a form of self-protection, even against those men who may show up for whatever opportunistic reason. Does that translate into the tough job of a construction worker though? I doubt it. Manouevering welfare to bring up a baby is very different from wheeling huge machinery around and planning the construction of a building.

But, then look at the black girl when she smiles. What a pretty face, in a strong and chiseled way, she has. Her behavior seems spontaneous and genuine. She really is smiling. And is happy to smile. I suspect that when she gets mad, it is with equal genuineness.

Next, the Asian girl. She seems the most out of place. She cannot act "tough" following the black girl's lead, and instead looks self-conscious, doing an uncomfortable parody of "tough." What happens when a rough, aggressive working man questions her authority? No smile, or half smile, will work.

And she smiles (or half-smiles) as though she doesn't know how to read the cues for "it is o.k. to smile now." Danger seems to be around the corner.

The white girl has mimicked the black girl the closest. She does look serious and angry. I suspect she could wreck her own little havoc if she had to.

But then her expression later in the video loses that boldness. Not only has she lost her boldness, she seems to be asking, pleading, for help from some higher power. Can she not act tough on her own? Does she need the guidance of her black mentor (or some other mentor - probably a male)? Her toughness seems to fall apart pretty easily.

These girls may be wearing construction helmets, but they show us that they just want to be happy, pretty girls, surrounded by pinks and lavenders. Each in her own way, seems to buckle into being the kind of girl she knows how to be.

In terms of running the world, I would give the white girl a longer piece of the rope. And I would prefer the honesty of the black girl (think if Mammy in Gone with the Wind, who loved and took care of Tara and taught her right from wrong) to the hard-drives of an Asian girl (think of the Tiger Mom, who cannot seem to push - force - even her own children to the level she expects them to reach).

Now, the next experiment would be how this multi-culti assortment of female engineers would really fare in the real world. Would the black woman listen to the Asian? Would the white woman diplomatically lead the group? Would the firm build any bridges while making money? So far, the evidence is negative.


Rosie the Riveter: I Can Do It!

I got the title for this post from Rosie the Riveter. She was the iconic image for women working in factories building war machinery towards the war effort during WWII. The "We Can Do It!" Rosie the Riveter poster was created by J. Howard Miller for the War Production Coordinating Committee of the Westinghouse Company, in 1942.

I used Rosie's image and changed it to look like a black and an Asian woman to parody "inclusive" feminism that contemporary feminists advocate.



But, the reality is that even feminism cannot unite the different races of women. Even if the language is a war against a "common" enemy: Men.

Rosie (and the Rosies) went back to their domestic domains once the men came back from the war fronts.

And all little girls want are pretty, soft toys in pinks and lavenders.


Title: I'm proud ... my husband wants me to do my part
See your U.S. Employment Service / / John Newton Howitt.
Creator(s): Howitt, John Newton, 1885-1958, artist
Related Names:
United States. War Manpower Commission , funder/sponsor
United States. Office of War Information , funder/sponsor
Date Created/Published: [Washington, D.C.] : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944.
Medium: 1 photomechanical print (poster) : halftone, color.
Summary: Husband, in suit, and wife in working clothes, standing in front of U.S. flag.
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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In Flanders Fields

Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, MD
(November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918)

In Flanders Fields
By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, (1872-1918)

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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With a Cross at the Helm

Crusaders attacking Muslims
From a fourteenth-century manuscript
(Bibliothèque Boulogne-sur-Mer)

I didn't write anything on September 11, the morbid anniversary of the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York by Muslims. What is there to say? Now, twelve years later, it looks like we have learnt nothing from those attacks, and are meekly waiting for another (or blithely going about our own ways).

Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife writes:

In a 2006 post at Gates Of Vienna, Baron Bodissey described the Battle of Vienna on September 11, 1683, when the Christian army under Jan Sobieski, the King of Poland, ended the Muslim siege of the city.

A commentator at her site writes:

It is good to be reminded of what should have been Christendom’s conclusive triumph over Islam, in the persons of the Ottoman besiegers of Vienna in 1683

[...]

So while we should lament that, through our moral weakness, Vienna was not the last word in the struggle between Islam and the West, we can draw hope from its example that the West can endure if we can only summon the will to prevail.

I think we are at a more difficult juncture than ever before. The Christian spirituality of the world, and especially the Western world, has diminished. Are we ever going to get those armies which march forward with the cross at their helm?

I think it is still possible, but it will be a difficult undertaking. The boldness of the Muslim world has occurred now because of our spiritual weakness. Muslims are not weak. They know they come in the name of Allah. We have to counter that by marching in the name of God.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Daughter of Third World Immigrants: This Is Who Will Save America?

The butch-looking Anuradha Bhagwati was a former Captain and Company Commander in the Marine Corps. She served in the Marines from 1999-2004 (going one year beyond the minimum requirement of four years). She was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2004 and completed her graduate education, receiving and a Masters of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government focusing on international human rights policy. She already had a B.A. in English literature from Yale University, before entering the army. Bhagwati is also a 2010 Petra Fellow, which is an award given to:

...unsung individuals making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy and dignity of others...

Often at risk and without the safety net of personal privilege or institutional support, Petra Fellows fight poverty, discrimination, environmental degradation and violence. They work in prisons and police departments, factories and migrant worker camps, health clinics, housing projects, family farms and public schools—wherever people lack the resources, connections or clout to participate fully in American society. [Source: The Petra Foundation]

Bhagwati's special qualities that earned her the Petra Fellowship include being ignored or by-passed for her accomplishments. As the Petra Foundation, which finally and generously recognized her, informs us:

When Anu Bhagwati finished her first three-mile fitness run at Quantico ahead of all of the women and most of the men in her platoon, her drill instructor accused her of skipping a lap. When she stood up in a basic training class of 300 to inquire when submarines would be gender-integrated, she was loudly booed. And when she could no longer stop or stomach the sexual harassment being directed at female NCOs by her second-in-command, her formal complaint was not only disregarded but the offending lieutenant was promoted to command a gender-integrated unit. [Source: Petra Foundation]

Bhagwati with a fellow (female) marine. Her colleague
could muster some femininity, even in the Marines,
unlike Bhagwati's androgynous, young boy, look.

After she left the Marines, Bhagwati co-founded Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) , and served as its first Executive Director.

Under Anu’s leadership, SWAN has spearheaded legislative reform and litigation to end military rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence, and to eliminate all barriers to equal opportunity for service women. [Source: SWAN Executive Staff]

Bhagwati says about her time in the Marines:

I served for five years, with many gay and lesbian Marines, both enlisted and officer.

My best friend in the Marines was an incredible officer. She was also a lesbian. Because of this, she wasn’t allowed to live a normal life. While I could walk down the street holding the hand of my male partner, she could not do the same with her loved one, for fear of being outed.

Despite the enormous strain of living under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, my friend volunteered to serve for a year in Iraq, knowing that because she was lesbian, she wouldn’t be able to easily correspond with her partner back home. A couple of years after returning home from Iraq, she was discharged under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

What happened to my friend was unfair, wrong and un-American.

Unfortunately, my friend’s story is all too common, especially as it concerns women in the military. While women make up only 15% of the entire armed forces, they make up almost 50% of last year’s Army and Air Force discharges under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Race is another relevant factor in these discharges. African-American women are discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at three times the rate that they serve in the armed forces.

These statistics are not evidence that the military is upholding unit cohesion, good order and discipline, or any of the other convenient catch-phrases used by proponents of this archaic and useless policy. These statistics are, at the least, shocking, and at the worst, shameful.

Numbers like this originate from an ugly context, which we must discuss. Sexual harassment of women in uniform is pervasive. Lesbian-baiting is simply another insidious manifestation of sexual harassment. Many servicewomen risk two equally devastating prospects, as far as their professional careers are concerned: resist a serviceman’s advances and be labeled lesbian, or don’t resist, and get labeled promiscuous. Being labeled a lesbian, even by rumor, can prompt an investigation that ends in discharge. [Source: Service Women.org]

Baghwati has an interesting background. Her parents are academics, with professorships at Harvard and Columbia and at least two books between them. Her father, Jagdish Bhagwati, speaks highly of his daughter:

"...we are proud of her accomplishments, - particularly since they are based on social engagement that characterized our own parents almost 100 years ago, and are the jewel in the crown of the State of Gujarat from which we come, as did Mahatma Gandhi - but because it shows that none of what Anu has accomplished would have happened if she had not joined the Marines in the first place." [Source: The American Interest]

Bhagwati with her parents in her Marine uniform

Here, he's trying to understand his daughter's choices, and sympathizes with her "social conscience," that is also part of his (and his wife's) background.

"She is consumed by Human Rights work," Professor Bhagwati has said about Anuradha. When his 70th birthday was being celebrated, she could not make it to the event because of her political commitment in Palestine.

"She's our joy," her father said at his birthday celebration, the New York Sun reported in its account of the event. "And while I miss her tonight, I am delighted that it is in a good cause. After all, that is what counts."

One can also see where Bhagwati acquired her narcissism. Her parents give lavish praise and attention to their only daughter. Yet, as is characteristic of narcissists, one gets the feeling that Bhagwati resented their standards which she could never achieve, and her stint in the Marines was a way escape this family's high expectations. Even her post-Marine efforts with graduate work in Harvard and working on a novel, all seem to emulate these pleasant but demanding parents.

Here in this video, she says exactly that:

I had a very unique childhood. I mean, it was all about my parents. Obsessively so about the pressure of like getting into the top schools. And then I went to the top schools, and I was miserable. I just wanted to travel the world, go to war-torn areas and meet people and learn languages, and find out how people lived...I left grad school like mid-semester, and joined the marines [she completed a Masters in Public Policy after her discharge from the Marines].

Her parents seem to vacillate between leftist Third World positions and a capitalist Western lifestyle, which is often the behavior of committed, elitist ideologues: they want all the amenities of the West, but will promote ideologies that could destroy it (with them sheltered in safe havens). This can't have been a very stable environment for Bhagwati to grow up in.

Bhagwati père came to the US in 1969 to study economics at MIT. He is linked throughout his career with leftist institutions. He served:

...as an external advisor to the Director General of the World Trade Organization in 2001, as a special policy advisor on globalization to the United Nations in 2000, and as an economics policy advisor to the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade from 1991 to 1993. From 1968 until 1980, Bhagwati was an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bhagwati currently serves on the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Asia) and on the board of scholars of the Centre for Civil Society. He is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. [Source: Web India]

Her mother, Padma Desai, is linked with similar leftist ideological bodies. She served as:

...US Treasury’s Advisor to the Russian Finance Ministry (1995), [and] she is regarded as a leading scholar today on the Soviet Union and Russia. [Source: Celebrating Padma Desai, Columbia University]

There is a strange moment in Desai's life where she:

...won a scholarship to the US [from India] and never went back [to her first husband]. In the end, faced with his refusal to grant her a divorce, she converted to Christianity, because under the Indian law, religious incompatibility is a ground for divorce. The suggestion had actually come from him and she converted. She describes in moving detail how the forlorn ceremony took place on a rainy day in a small village in Gujarat. [Source: Random Truths and Common Threads, in The Hindu Business Line].

It is one thing to have leftist parents, another to have a first marriage in her mother's history, but how about her mother's conversion to another religion to facilitate her personal life?

After Desai gets her PhD from Harvard, she returns to India to teach at the Delhi School of Economics, and meets Jadish Bhagwati. They immigrate to America with a position for Bhagwati at MIT, but:

more importantly in order for Desai to make a clean break from her bad first marriage. [Source: Time Out India]

More on her mother's divorce, and her second marriage:

[T]he incredible legal entrapment of the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955...drove Desai to a phoney religious conversion - the only permissible grounds for a judicial separation, if her husband agreed. He did - after years of denying her a divorce - then recanted. Her Christian conversion was in vain. Eventually, in 1968, she followed Bhagwati to Boston, won a position at Harvard, and freed herself via a Mexican divorce before she could remarry...Eventually, she finds [a] life (and an exciting career) in America, with the ever charming and lovable Bhagwati, first at Harvard and then at Columbia. [Source: The Hindu]

Their daughter, Anuradha Bhagwati, was born in New York in 1976 (I calculated her birth date from this article, written in 2008, and which cites her age then as thirty-two). I find it important to know how soon after her parents immigrated to the US Bhagwati was born. She's had the typical, complicated life of a child of Third World of immigrants who arrived in the US after:

...the 1965 Immigration Act which opened U.S. immigration on an equal basis to every country in the world, rather than, as in the past, favoring our historic source nations of Europe. Of course many of the recent immigrants from non-European countries have fitted into America and made good contributions here. It is the unprecedented scale of this diverse immigration that is the problem. [Source: View From the Right"]

When Bhagwati's parents came to the US in the mid-sixties, multiculturalism was just becoming an accepted way of cultural life. By the time Bhagwati was born, it was a part of American life. I wouldn't be surprised if growing up, her life was full of reminders of the country her parents left behind, from the food, to the music, and the friends and relatives who frequented their home. So although she grew up in America, hers was a specific, ethnically restricted, America. I think this speaks of her behavior at the hearings, her victim stance, her repeated blame on racism for her discharge, and her particular singling out of white men leaders in the military as those who prevent non-whites (and of course women) from advancing in the military.

Here is a fascinating video of Bhagwati rambling on in free-style fashion about the evils of the military, misogynistic white men, fighting wars, and the hegemonic empire that is the United States. The video is titled: "Interview With a Reluctant Veteran: Anuradha Bhagwatl." I've transcribed it below from around the 15 minute point in the video to the end, to show the quality of her mind.

And when I see the usually white men who are providing the, I don't want to say, the state version, it's really how it seems at times [laughs while she says this], the state version of events and the state version of how you should operate in Iraq or how you should fix the military or improve and take care or support our troops, which is the biggest slogan of them all, you know, it feels very odd for me to have the same status, you know this veteran status. It feels very awkward. Because I wonder if they are having any intimate conversations with anyone about anything. I mean there are things that happen to every soldier's soul in that institution, regardless of where he or she comes from originally, political baggage, all of that. There's something that happens to their soul, and I'm not sure that enough of them examine what it is that happens. It's a very fragile thing, dealing with force and violence. You don't even have to physically hurt somebody, and you could have, you may have committed an act of violence upon them in what you bring to the table. And the society I don't think understand the ramifications of this, the violence. There is an indoctrination in any army that comes with the training. And any time that the nation perceives itself to be at risk of annihilation, well you know, or invasion, to use a smaller term, the existential issue of Israel, for instance, where you have so much more national ideology at play, and the basic indoctrination of the soldier, all politics aside, I mean that is how literally how Israelis are trained, so you think you're defending your individual family, you know, and societal existence, whether or not that's true. And you'll believe it, and you'll fight and kill, you know, to the end. You know, in a case like India I would imagine that was true at least on a partial scale, because of historic conflicts with neighbors to the north, right. But I don't know, I've talked to members of the military from South Asia, of various nations, there's something slightly more intellectual about their approach to, but I'm sure not everybody, but the few that I've talked to, about their role in the world. The thing that makes an American soldier stand out is his country's role in the world that bleeds into his ideology about where he thinks, who he thinks he is. Completely inflated sense of self. And it's unfortunate, right, because it prevents him from actually reaching out to people from other countries and cultures. It's a shame, in fact, it's a shame. Because it prevents him from being human, right. And so, yeah. I'm not saying, you known, that this is the American condition, and it couldn't ever happen. I think any hegemonic empire that this is the result, right. It's our turn, in the United States. [Source: Kran Film Collective]

This is someone who reached the rank of Captain in the American military. This is the type of soldier who is out in the fields, representing American soldiers. It is not an issue of women in the military anymore, it is an issue of Third World minded, anti-American, anti-military soldiers who are becoming a real detriment to America.

This is who represents America now.


The face of the victimized, feminized, Third World,
anti-American former soldier.

This is who will save America?
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Ancients and Their Chiding Message

Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825)
Oath Of The Horatii
Oil on Canvas, 10' 10" x 13' 11""
1784
Musée du Louvre at Paris

I watched two films yesterday.

One was Spartacus, by Stanley Kubrick, a fictional recounting of the supposed slave rebellion in Rome. I don't know much about the historical accuracy of the film, but this historian says:

Perhaps the most surprising thing is that the Kubrick film isn't complete fiction, but offers some historical truth. The truth is that Spartacus really was a slave and a gladiator in Capua, Italy, and he really did lead a revolt. As the movie shows, it started in the kitchen of the gladiatorial barracks with the men using basic kitchen utensils to fight the guards and break out. And it's even true that Spartacus had a ladylove as he did in the movie. But there are some real differences as well. The movie Spartacus was born a slave and was the son and grandson of slaves, but the real Spartacus was born free. He came from Thrace, roughly equivalent with today's Bulgaria. And far from being a lifelong opponent of Rome, he started out as an allied soldier in the Roman army. He fought for Rome. His fate, ending up as a slave and gladiator, was quite unexpected and quite unjust. The Romans themselves admitted that Spartacus was forced to become a gladiator even though he was innocent. (The historian is Barry Strauss, and here is his link at Cornell University)

The other was My Life in Ruins, a silly film with Nia Vardalos (who was in the mildly funny and somewhat successful film My Big Fat Greek Wedding). My Life in Ruins is about a Greek-American academic (Vardalos - highly unlikely as an NYU professor) who goes to Greece as a tour guide (much more likely) to share her erudition with annoying tourists.

Spartacus is by far the superior film. It takes us back to a formal, civilized Rome. The Romans' strategic and methodical fighting plans are deeply contrasted with the thousands of men that Spartacus has amassed, who swarm across the plains towards the Romans during an epic (in the film at least) battle. The Romans, in their beautiful crimson capes, riding their multicolored horses (white for the leaders), with the footmen carrying steely shields, shine against the slaves in their tattered rags of grays and browns. Even in war (especially in war?), the Romans took care with their appearances. Red for blood, red for war, and the crimson red for beauty.

But My Life in Ruins, despite its silliness and its clever title, takes us to ancient Greece. It is hard to imagine that the pretty Greek villages that the tour bus drives by are on the same land as the civilization which built the Parthenon almost 3,000 years ago.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film was when the tour guide takes her motley crew to a ruins site. We see one pillar standing. It is part of the Temple of Zeus at Olympus. As the camera pulls out, we see the rest of the ruins, with scrambling tourists stepping all over the sacred stones.

The effect of the lone pillar, filmed separately from the human rabble, was strong. It was as though these ancient peoples had left behind a god buried deep in the pillar, who was watching over them (their remnants) as well as gently warning these swarming modern humans who they are.

Later on, the tour guide takes her group to the Acropolis at night. Approaching it, we realize why. It is lit up, on the low hill. A regal, gentle presence. I don't think this lighting is out of place. The Greeks would have found a way to light their beautiful monument, with candles and torches, so that it glows for miles around, to admire and to be in awe of.


The Temple of Zeus After Restoration Works

The Temple of Zeus was burnt by order of [the Byzantine Emperor] Theodosius II in AD 426. Badly damaged by the fire, it was finally thrown down by the earthquakes of AD 551 and 552. Excavations at the temple began by the French in 1829, and were completed by the German School. Parts of the sculptural decoration have been restored and are now on display in the Olympia Archaeological Museum, while the metopes removed by the French expedition of 1829 are in the Louvre. Conservation and cleaning of the monument are currently in progress. [Source]

And more information below:

Since the 1870s, the excavation and preservation of Ancient Olympia has been the responsibility of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens. The first major excavation of Olympia began in 1875, funded by the German government. [Archaeologists] excavated the central part of the sanctuary including the Temple of Zeus, Temple of Hera, Metroon, Bouleuterion, Philipeion, Echo Stoa, Treasuries and Palaestra. Important finds included sculptures from the Temple of Zeus, the Nike of Paeonius, the Hermes of Praxiteles and many bronzes. In total 14,000 objects were recorded. The finds were displayed in a museum on the site.

Excavation was continued in a more limited way...between 1908 and 1929 but a new systematic excavation was begun in 1936 on the occasion of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin under... [The] excavation focus was on the area to the south of the stadium, the South stoa, bath complex and gymnasion.

Between 1952 and 1966, [archaeologists] excavated Pheidias' workshop, the Leonidaion and the north wall of the stadium. They also excavated the southeast section of the sanctuary and out of approximately 140 debris pits found many bronze and ceramic objects along with terracotta roof tiles.

[E]xcavations between 1972 and 1984 reveal[ed] important dating evidence for the stadium, graves, and the location of the Prytaneion. From 1984 to 1996...the focus shifted to the earlier history of the sanctuary with excavation of the Prytaneion and Pelopion.[Source: 1000 years of the Olympic Games: Treasures of Ancient Greece - pdf file]

Conquering the Architecture of Death

The Shard, London

Conquering the Architecture of Death
ChronWatch.Com 02/7/08
Kidist P. Asrat

Just before the stealthy rise of Hitler, there were many signs in German culture which inadvertently anticipated the annihilating environment that Hitler sought.

Expressionist German filmmakers of the 1920s such as Robert Wiene and Friedrich W. Murnau were making symbolic films about their degenerating society and individuals in purely symbolic, rather than realistic, terms. They built this sense of doom through set designs and lighting. Structures were on the verge of collapse, or caving in on their inhabitants; shadows and their subjects were misplaced; hallways and corridors were twisted and claustrophobic. The actual realities of the post World War I inflation, the high unemployment, and the general sting from the losses of the war never figured in the films.

Horror and fantasy became symbolic devices for the filmmakers to make films which ignored the physical realities of their environments, but surreptitiously captured the mood. The German public was highly captivated by the macabre themes of these films.

Our current equivalent of these expressionistic films is not the cinema, but architecture. The last couple of decades has shown a proliferation of architectural “directors” such as Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, who build these very same types of disorienting structures with jagged, broken, and disjointed forms, not as stage sets, but as actual buildings.

There is always an initial recoil from these buildings by the public and critics. But, they eventually become very popular, with the public attending Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish museum in the millions, the new additions to the Denver Museum of Art boasting attendance higher than for any other year prior to the addition, and the Crystal extension at the Royal Ontario Museum breaking attendance records during the 2007-2008 holiday season. Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim has become a national tourist attraction in Spain.

The critics have yet to explain the public’s enormous interest in these buildings. Yet, the reaction of the modern-day public is no different than how its 1920s counterpart responded to the German expressionist horror films. It is the same dark fascination for death and destruction (Libeskind’s architecture has been called deconstructivist architecture) that draws people in the hundreds of thousands to these close-to-collapsing buildings.

There is a certain thrill in entering the twisted corridors, with unexpected paths: sometimes leading no-where, and other times taking one to the next room of collapsing walls. Just like in horror films, the anticipation and excitement for something potentially foreboding is the drawing factor. Yet, none of the public would ever (I would wager a high bet on this) have a home built in that style. Libeskind’s public buildings are just curios one enters to leave soon after.

But architecture, the most public and practical of all the arts, is not something we can escape from. We will still have to face these buildings daily on our streets. And in fact, this deconstructivist architecture is being commissioned for ordinary office buildings and churches, and no longer remains in the realm of the occasional national museum or landmark.

Why do these modern architects build structures that prefigure death and annihilation, and why does the public oblige by accepting them on their streets?

One proposition I would like to make is that they project the dearth of hope for the future. Beauty, permanence, and solidity are the works of people who are confident that whatever they are making and participating in - buildings, art, literature, film - will have a legacy, and will benefit and be appreciated by future generations. A myopic vision of the future translates into buildings that are about to destruct and collapse, film repertoires that are filled with unredeemable monsters, and art that depicts horror, thus condoning violence and death, rather than life and continuity.

The 21st century atmosphere in which deconstructivist architecture thrives is very different from that of expressionist filmmakers of post World War I Germany. We cannot complain of being on the losing side of a great war. Yet, there is another war being waged. A war that has been going on for the good part of a century, and in fact initiated around the very time when the German filmmakers were entertaining their 1920s audiences.

Our war is a war on culture, that we seem to be losing. Our transgression is that we no longer believe in our common sense, and our common heritage, and cannot project our cultural legacy into the future. We opt instead for titillating horrors and mediocre and dangerous structures. The 1920s Germany became more hospitable in the 1930s. But Germans had given up by then. Whatever anxiety and gloom we may feel now is no excuse to succumb to the doomsayers of our time. We really can be the architects of our destinies.
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Post By: Kidist P. Asrat