Credo

Jim Kalb still has his site Turnabout where he posts his activities on other websites and publications.

Here is the credo he posted at Turnabout, I assume around 2003 from the comments it generated.

Turnabout is:

- Antimodernist, and rejects the stripped-down understanding of knowledge, reason and reality that has led to the current intellectual, social, and spiritual dead end,
- Hierarchical, and accepts that man is a composite being—free and bound, individual and social, physical and spiritual—and each aspect of what he is must be given weight within an ordered whole.
- Traditionalist, and views particular attachments, the development of social habit, and informal refinement and transmission of past acquisitions as essential to a reliable understanding of almost anything,
- Catholic, and accepts the authority, sacraments, and teaching of the Church as an ultimate reference point.

We recognize that the great enemy today of Catholicism, a tolerable human existence, and even reason itself is a technocratic view of man and society. That view takes human desire, know-how, and purely formal—and therefore empty—concepts like equality as its final standards. It rules out all thought of a precedent order of things that is given by God, nature, or culture, and so must be respected. The “dignity of the individual” becomes identified with an equal right to the satisfaction of desire, and everything becomes a means to that end.

The technocratic outlook thus aims at comprehensive transformation of human life on simple principles. Equality, rationality, and efficiency become the highest goals. Traditional distinctions and standards are done away with in favor of universal technically-rational organization designed to secure the equal satisfaction of desire.

The self-contained perfection to which the outlook aspires demands that all things be subordinated to a universal administrative scheme that pervades and controls everything. The creation of such a system, and the abolition of principles of order not based solely on human will and formal rationality (for example, the particularities of religion, historical community and sex), become overriding political goals.

The attempt to establish such a system leads to self-seeking hedonism, politically-correct bureaucratic tyranny, and in the end utter irrationality due to its inability to recognize any principle of order or judgment outside itself. To avoid such an outcome, renewed emphasis is needed on man’s transcendent setting, on the natural basis of human life, and on the relative mutual autonomy of the various spheres of life.

The good life is possible only with the aid of the principles of well-ordered freedom, which Catholics sometimes call subsidiarity—limited government, decentralization, tradition, and public recognition of transcendent religious authority. Catholics should therefore promote those principles, and reject whatever fundamentally opposes them: liberalism, the welfare state, “human rights” as now understood, radical secularism, and contemporary ideologies such as feminism and inclusiveness.

By taking such a position. we put ourselves at odds with the functionaries and apologists of the technocratic order: the experts, educators, academics, lawyers, bureaucrats and media people who provide and make authoritative the asserted facts, concepts, and principles that order relies on.

Turnabout will develop facts and arguments relating to these issues and propose considerations relevant to their understanding. Criticism and debate is of course welcome—there’s nothing necessarily correct about what any of us say, and what’s worthwhile in it can only become apparent if it’s questioned and tested. I hope you join us!

Incompatibilities

Trudeau at the Al Sunnah Al-Nabawiah mosque, Quebec 2014

From Mark Richardson's Oz Conservative:

Another good find by Conservative Thoughts (Konservative Gedanken), this time by Collin Cleary:

The liberal “celebration of diversity” is in fact a celebration of culture only in its external and superficial forms. In other words, to Western liberals “multiculturalism” winds up amounting simply to such things as the co-existence of different costumes, music, styles of dance, languages, and food. But the real guts of the different cultures consist in such things as how they view nature, how they view the divine, how they view men and women, and how they view the relative importance of their own group in the scheme of things. And it is by no means clear that members of cultures with radically different views on these matters can peacefully co-exist.

Unless, of course all cultural differences are eliminated save the purely external, via the transformation of all peoples into homogenized, interchangeable consumers bereft of any deeply-felt convictions. This is, in fact, the hidden global capitalist agenda of multiculturalism, now being cheerfully advanced by useful idiots on the anti-capitalist Left.

Nothing

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" Friedrich Nietzsche


Derek Hough, the talented dancer from
Dancing With the Stars

I was by the lovey Jubilee Garden in Mississauga when I saw a young man moving gracefully. At first it looked like he was dong some kind of stretching exercise, but he was moving to some inner rhythm. He was not a dancer (I didn't think so) but he was artistic.


The Jubilee Garden as winter approaches
[Photo by KPA]

"Are you an artist?"

"No."

"What do you do?"

"Nothing."

"Oh. What did you study?" I've met before another young man who told me he had recently been a student at the nearby Sheridan College and was going on with more school since he couldn't find work.

"Philosophy," said this young man.

"You're a philosopher!" I concluded, pointing my finger at him telling him off for his lazy withdrawal.

How many times did this young, white man hear that he was "nothing?" In this world where the brown-skinned man rules, where Chinese and Indian philosophers are venerated, where multiculturalism runs the world, the heir to the white western civilization is deemed "nothing."

Does this young man realize that it is this "nothing" civilization that his "nothing" ancestors built which draws all these people here, reaping all the benefits but giving him nothing in return, other than to call him "nothing?"


Derek Hough

Voting for Trump is not hypocrisy. It’s realism

November 11, 2016 Remembrance Day event
at Celebration Square Missisauga, Canada
[Photo By: KPA]

Laura Wood has the following responses to readers' reactions to her endorsement of Donald Trump:

Susan-Anne White, from Northern Ireland:

I cannot understand why you are recommending that your American readers vote for Donald Trump. To say that this is hypocritical on your part is an understatement.

Laura Wood:

It’s not hypocrisy. It’s realism.

Let’s say you lived in a neighborhood ruled by two rival gangs. There is no hope in the immediate future, outside of a miracle, of ridding the neighborhood of gangs.

One gang leader recruits children as prostitutes and randomly torches houses to terrorize and instill fear. The other gang leader promotes the drug trade and kills his enemies, but does not present the same threat of imminent physical harm to children and non-criminal elements in the neighborhood.

They are both evil. But there is a lesser evil. Supporting the second one does not mean you endorse crime. Similarly, we only have two viable candidates. That’s it. If we support one who is seemingly less dangerous than the other, we are choosing a lesser evil not endorsing evil itself.

We keep forgetting (or get side-tracked from remembering) just how bad Hillary Clinton and the "Clinton Machine" really is in this brouhaha.

"If Hillary wins, Bill Clinton will be the first First Lady who’s a rapist." - Laura Wood

It is also interesting that the commentator Susan-Anne White is from Northern Ireland. She doesn't have to live with a (another) Clinton - nepotistic this time - rule.

The same thing happened in Canada. The media and his own party turned on Stephen Harp and in came Trudeau Jr. (nepotism if ever there was one) and this is what we got:

From an email I sent to a friend:

Trudeau, the lisping liberal, won the federal elections. He is married to a French-speaking Quebec woman, and I wonder what language they speak at home? I think it is French. Poor English Canada, with enemies from all sides. It was a depressing outcome, but then again, we will now have up front everything that the liberals want (or dream of). One of which is to advance the agendas of the "new" Canadians, by which they mean the Third World ethnic Canadians.

Harper, in one of his speeches, used "Old Stock" Canadians, by which he meant the English, Scottish, Irish, and even French (Quebec) conservative Canadians. I don't think it was a slip, and he meant it as a contrast to what we're seeing now, which is an ethnic, non-white, liberal population, which mostly came to Canada in the mid-twentieth century, around the 1970s, and which are majority populations in several Canadian cities, and even suburbs.

This actually goes some ways to prove my thesis that Mississauga [a suburb city of Toronto] has become a Third World enclave, a part of which is Muslim.

I said recently that we should look for the next suicide bomber/jihadi in Canada to come from Mississauga.

My work is cut out for me. Now, I know I am really separate, from my family and "friends."

I expect there will be a further exodus of whites away from here into the surrounding small towns (those racist towns...), and let Mississauga deteriorate as would a Third World city. Already, in my building, the majority, I should really say ALL, the residents are Indians or Chinese. And appliances and elevators are always breaking down. The cardboard wall separating rooms magnify conversations (Chinese or Indian) and Jeopardy TV shows. The building s showing wear and tear despite the being relatively new. I see a few elderly whites who were lured here as an ideal place for retirees. They always look bewildered, and are uncharacteristically silent in the elevators, where it is Canadian manners to at least say hello. I think they are also beginning to leave, as other whites also left in droves.

Devouring The West

The Art Gallery of Mississauga is presenting Ed Pien, in its Artists' Talk series in a topic titled: Shadow Land.

The invitation I received through an email newsletter goes like this:

Shadowed Land features new installation and video work in which Pien explores notions of sense memory and the irrepresentability of traumatic histories and loss. Incorporating photography, video, sound, light and kinetic installations, this body of work has grown out of Pien's interest in concepts of disappearance and haunting, and probes ideas of being implicated, bearing witness, loss, mourning, resilience, and empathy.

The Art Gallery of Mississauga is pleased to partner with the Thames Art Gallery in the presentation of an exhibition catalogue. An exhibition of Ed Pien's work will be mounted at the Thames Art Gallery in 2018.

Artist talk: Thursday, September 29, 6:30 pm

I have gone to two other artists' talks or presentations at the AGM and neither went well, nether for me, nor for the artists when they were confronted with my questions. I don't doubt that I will have something to "ask" of this particular artist as well. But I am tired of rehashing the same old questions and receiving the same old obtuse responses. In fact, I get much more information on theses artists' works and motives through the internet, and surprisingly quite a bit from their personal websites. Pien is no different.

I have began to decipher a certain orientation toward evil and horror, much more so than those days of "Carrie" horror movies, in popular and more elite art (.e. "high" and "artistic" art, although popular art, I believe these day is much more interesting than what these postmodern presumptives are giving us. That is partly my problem with these "museum/gallery" pieces, but the problem goes far beyond mediocrity, and is now at the level of the gore and horror one sees at the collapse of a building (or at a car accident) where destruction becomes the "artistic" method rather than construction.

I believe important contemporary artists have succumbed to evil, and to the devil. At one time, it was very subversive and no-one talked about it openly (or even showed it openly). I have written about that phenomenon here.

I was curious to see what Pien had to say before I decided to go and listen to his speech, or not. I thought he was gong to spea about Chnatowns snce vaguely remember seeng a photograph of a Toronto Chinatown supermarket the last time went into the gallery.

How wrong I was!

Pen's most extensive statement about his art is at the website The Chinese Canadian Art Communication:

Here is his "arts's statement" from that webste:

Through my work, I reflect upon the convergence of history, beliefs and mythology from diverse cultures. I am interested in the ways different belief systems influence how people negotiate and act in the world. Using drawing and installation, I explore curiosity, wonder and enchantment with a focus on the strange and grotesque thereby facilitating engaged perceptual experiences and opening up spaces for meaningful exchange. Through this work, I aim to challenge preconceptions and celebrate diversity.

Research allows me to work from a solid conceptual base. Combining intuition and imagination, I strive to make complex and multi-layered works: In Une Nuit de lunes, I applied optical arts’ illusions (magic lanterns, shadow theatre) to explore the grotesque and notions of Otherness; in Source, realized for the Sydney Biennale, I pursued the symbolic and mythological richness of water, conflating Taiwanese narratives with those recounted by First Nations’ elders[1]. Water’s political ramifications also potently informed the work: specifically the lack of accessible clean water experienced by many First Nations’ communities.

The recent work, Revel comprises an immersive installation with clear sheets of hand cut mylar suspended from floor-to-ceiling to create the main architectural structure. The spiral configuration forms both a passage and a chamber. Its exterior shell remains shiny and reflective while the entire inside surface has been carefully hand sanded, subtly altering the see-through material with a worked up, drawing-like quality. A handful of mylar constructions of houses sit precariously within this dense netting. A video projection of the shadow of a young woman, making and arranging the houses, is projected through the installation. To further complicate the negotiation within Revel, the video image intermingles with the real shadows cast by the actual installation.As the viewer walks through the installation the mylar sways. As a consequence, the projection of the video on the reflective surface emanates bands of flickering light onto a paper curtain that flanks the inner spiral. The video projection also casts the viewer’s shadow into the installation.

Part of my strong motivation to create Revel derives from workshops I conducted with immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. These intense engagements inspired my research, contemplation and making. Revel’s ghost-like aura traverses effortlessly among real, memory and dream-like imaginary spaces. It has a physical presence that is almost not quite there, further adding to the psychological and emotional impact of a haunting and of how the past always manages to impinge on and speak through the present and future.

[1] First Nations are one of three aboriginal groups native to Canada. The First Nations elders are the most respected members and leaders of their communities.

It is a clever convergence of multiculturalism, a nod at the "First Nations" as the Indian groups are deferentially called in Canada, a subtle put-down of whites and white "art," and finally, the truth of the matter: a direct invocation of "the strange and grotesque":

Revel's ghost-like aura traverses effortlessly among real, memory and dream-like imaginary spaces.

One commentary especially captures Pien's art, and his intent.

This suite of drawings began during Pien's four-month Canada Council's Paris residency in 1998. During that time period the artist researched into the depiction of Western Hell and martyrdom. His interest was, and still is, in the visual representation of the discipline of the body, power relationships and the sense of vulnerabilities. Engendered by notions of Hell, fear is a tool many societies use for controlling and shaping ethical and moral behaviors and judgements. Since Pien see most treatment, discipline, punishment and torture as aspects of social and political control, in this suite of drawings he attempts to collapse the boundary among these different realities of Hell. Ultimately, awareness, self-empowerment and change can only begin from confronting one's fears as well as the forces that instigate power and control.[ Source: edpien.com]

In 1998 (thirteen years ago) Pien was given a Canadian government grant (the full title of that government body is Canada Council for the Arts) to study "Western" Hell


And with further investigation (not at all difficult, since Pien is very productive and has his material exhibited all over the word and posted in dozens of art websites and blogs) I found these:


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Pen camouflages hs wors n a couple of ways. Frslty he states that he s followng the tradton of Bosch..... and other western artsts and ther concepts and depctons of hell.

t s nterestg that he doesn't reference Dante and thn that s for a specfc reason.

He s not nterested n the Chrstan Hell where snners are sent for ther rebelllon aganst God whch Dante clearly portrays but n a horror-flled hell of debauhery and human w




His second entryway into the western psyche is by referencing the "immigrant" tale. Here he says about his work Memento, a creepy installation which, s titled Psycho, like that horror movie by the same name:

Memento is a large walk-through installation and consists of ropes, cut silhouettes, sound and video.
Memento has been developed out of research into the plight of illegal immigrants who often take great risks in the hope of living a more significant and meaningful life. Examples include snakes or ghosts, those Chinese who remain hidden in society (the tragedy that beset the cockle pickers), the Faujis from India as well as the burnt ones, young Moroccans, who perish while attempting to cross the Straight of Gibraltar. Memento is a walk-through installation and consists of ropes, cut silhouettes, sound and video. The hand tied configuration alludes to fishing nets, traps, security fences and engulfing waves. The network of patterns is also reminiscent of the human circulatory system, passageways and maps. The video shown within the structure depicts the artist negotiating the might of churning waves emphasizing human beings vulnerability as well as celebrating the strengths to confront and overcome difficulty. Memento is a continuation of Pien's ongoing interest in the otherworldly, invisibility, disappearance, and journeys. It poignantly reflects on the displaced, forgotten and unseen yet remains poetically open-ended, embracing multiple interpretations.
Special thanks
Special thanks goes to The Chinese Arts Centre, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support in realizing this work. Chinese Arts Centre is grateful for support from Arts Council of England, North West and AGMA.

His Chinese outreach is beyond the North American borders, venturing as far out as Manchester England. What do Chinese immigrants in England have to complain about? Well, to make his case stick, he has made it into an "immigrant's experience" including such disparate groups as Moroccans and of course, those Asian co-conspirators, Indians.

Psycho popular culture smply means somedody who s so mentally deragned as to be dangerous even
Here Pen descrbes how he created the nstallaton Psycho whch was ntalled at the Tree Museum n Ontaro:

These 9 digital prints began as images taken from a speeding train traveling across the English countryside shortly after a winter storm. The whiteness of the snow, combined with the bleak, grayness of the land, created seemingly endless and highly contrasted scenes evocative of charcoal smudged drawings. What also fascinated me, aside from the drawing quality, was the play between relativity of speed and motion. The elements closest to the train appear to be moving so fast that they became transparent blurs, while objects the furthest away, seemed to be in near stillness. The insertion of an image within the central circular form, is based on the play with mirror reflections from my outdoor installation entitled Psycho, that is installed at the Tree Museum, in Ontario.

Walking through the woods like Little Red Riding Hood, we may encounter the big bad Psycho Wolf hiding and lurking behind the trees.

Psycho s also short fo Psychopaht - a dangerous evl murder who pcs hs vctms and relentesly stals them untl the day he commts hs murder.

Who s the psychopaht - Pen or some personalty (whtes?) who threaten hs (Pen's) lvlhood?

He enters our psyche through hs psycho....
< Greek, combining form of psȳchḗ breath, spirit, soul, mind; akin to psȳ́chein to blow (see psykter ) dctonary... from Greek psukhē spirit, breath... Once again Pen s reference western stores to interject hs artistic demons into our psyche. Here s Pen describing his work Invisible Sightings #1, #2, #3 now avalabel n the Canad Councel for the Arts Art Database:

I explore curiosity, wonder and enchantment with a particular focus on the strange and grotesque, deploying these as a means to challenge preconceptions and celebrate diversity…”.

He has to add n the "dversty" Ths s Canada and that ultra-lberal/leftst Canada Councl for the Arts after all! He depends on thousands of dollars from the CCA as documented here...

Hs installaton invokes uses the popular and well-nonw (and loved) tale of Lttle Red Rdnng Hodd n a Chnese context callng hs wor

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But Pen came to Canada as a yougn and malleable 11year old. What happened durng those decades where he stll dentfes hmself as an mmgrant. Why wasn't he able to go over those hurdles to fnally fnd hmself n the mdst of "canadans" rather than mmgrants? And why sn't he able to over the hurts and rejectons now n ths super-postve-mgrant world that s Canada?

thn ths "mmagarnt" story bols down to the fnally obvous concluson that Asans come from a culture so dfferent and so alen from Canada's the they mature nto embttered adults who feel that they have lost out on the mmgarant "pe." My personal observatons has also been that Asans actually do not acheve those expectatons and see themselves (wthout llustons) as not matchng up to the standards of ther whte compatrots.

Therefore even a long-tme resdent of Canada brought up under the "Canadan culture" wll always feel nferor and btterly so to hs fellow canadans.

And we get art le ths.....

But hs "alenees" s even bgger than mere rejecton. He has found a way to ntroduce not just a poltcal (and cultural) dmenton to hs grevance but a sprtual one as well. By nvong hell and ts demons he s also subvertng our Chrstan God. He has found a hole throgh whch he can ntroduce hs sprts and gods. Modrn (or mdernst/postmodern) art allows for ths gateway partly because modern and postmeodr artsts by dened God nto ther art have destroyed a fundamental element of Western art even nto.

The other weakness (or postmodern development) he s usng s the glorfcaton and even defcaton of the "other" whch lterally means anyone that s not whte.

t s n museums and galleres fudned and mantane by whtes where he shows hs horrfcally alen materal and gets ther blessng wth hundereds of thousands of dollars of "artst" grants.

Thus hs "mmggrant" status allows hm to do just what astute whtes have sad all along: he ntroduces hs own gods deologes languages and culture.

One small nteresgnt note for all of Pen's three decade long Canadan resdencey he stll speas wth (albet mperceptve) grammatcal erros. t seems that he stays wthn hs Asan enclave and even hs "Canadan born" or le hm "Almost-Canadan-Born" Chnese stll haven't fully mastered the Englsh language even f t s clearly ther "frst language.

We have seen nfluxes of mmgrants addng ther own varaton to the Englsh language. One could say that Pen s smply fllowng n that tradton.

But the talans Grees Germans and Scandnavans although they leave behnd a nostalgc reference to ther mmgrant voces have become fully ntegrated n the NOrht Amercan socety. Any of them who may demonstrate deep dscontet do so n a poltcal/doelogcal manner and not n ths cultrual and artstc one.

beleve we have reached a new level of:
Sprtualy - wher alen gods are now elbowyng ther way nto our pshyches
Cultural dentfcaton - where "mmgrant" now means people who have no ntenton (and no ablty gven ther deeply foregn roots) to ntegrate nto our western socetes.

Pen evoes the "ghosts" of verous mmgrant "experences" whch translated means mmgrants who dd whle worng under whtes - n hs case he

t s more apparent wth Muslms but Asans are now more sublty and more ntellgently begnnng to buld ths new socety n our coutnres.