Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts

Monday, February 9, 2015

The Anti-Life We Are Allowing To Trample On Our Morality

I didn't want to post this yesterday, trying to keep what we have of the sacred as sacred. Yes, Sunday is sacred.


What makes a beautiful and feminine woman
decide this is the life she wants?


Here is what's on Page Six of the New York Post:
Rosie O’Donnell and her wife, Michelle Rounds, have split, and O’Donnell will leave “The View” next week to concentrate on her family’s well-being, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

[...]

Rosie’s rep, Cindi Berger, confirmed the marital split...in a statement Friday night: “I can confirm that Rosie and her wife Michelle split in November. Rosie has teens and an infant at home that need her attention. This has been a very stressful situation. She is putting her personal health and family first. ABC has been wonderfully understanding and supportive of her personal decision to leave ‘The View.’ Next week will be her last.”

[...]

O’Donnell, 52, married her second wife Rounds in private in June 2012. In 2013, they adopted a baby girl, Dakota. She has four other older kids.
So, this is Rosie's second "marriage" and a potential second "divorce."

I really don't care what this coarse, narcissistic, obese woman does with herself, but she has managed to ruin the lives of five innocent lives, whom she shuttles around as "her children." One day, she will be accountable to these lives, if not directly demanded by them, then through a judgment that will not leave her out.

We are also not excused. We let her step on, creating her life as she treads on our morality.

Below are the lurid details, which I had to search around the web to ensure accuracy. This creature has had five children through a myriad of means, including artificial insemination, foster-child care, adoption, and has had "married" and "divorced" status along the way to three women.

Rosie O'Donnell's Anti-life life:
1. _

Adopted son Parker Jaren O’Donnell in 1995 (born 1995)


----------------------------------------------------------

2. _

a. Together with Kelli Carpenter since 1998

b. Married Carpenter in 2004, divorced Carpenter in 2007

c. Tried to adopt with Carpenter:
Mia (b. 1997, O'Donnell's foster child 2000 - 2001)
Mia was taken from O'Donnell in 2001 as per the Florida state law prohibiting same-sex family adoption

d. Carpenter adopted O'Donnell's adopted kids :
Parker in 1995 (born 1995)
Chelsea in 1997 (born 1997)
Blake in 1999 (born 1999)

e. Artificial Insemination via Carpenter:
Vivienne, born 2002

----------------------------------------------------------

3. _

a. Married Michelle Rounds in June 2012, separated from Married Michelle Rounds in November 2014

b. Adopted with Michelle Rounds:
Dakota, 2013 (b. 2013)
----------------------------------------------------------


O'Donnell with "her children" in 2010:
Clockwise from back row center: Blake, Parker, Vivienne, and Chelsea



O'Donnell with the infant Dakota in October 2013
Adopted at one month old in February 2013, Dakota is ten months old here


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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Sunday, January 4, 2015

"He that is not with me is against me"


Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682)
The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities
ca. 1675-82
Oil on canvas 115 in x 122 in
National Gallery of London


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Matthew 12:30-32
He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Friday, February 21, 2014

Young and Lesbian: An Epidemiology?


Photo from article: "Why Are So Many Girls Lesbian or Bisexual?"
From: Psychology Today, April 3, 2010
By: Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.
These look just like the "college best friends" I write about below


Camille Paglia would be intrigued, and horrified, at this epidemiology of young lesbians, cheerfully "coming out."

Ellen Page

A few days ago, a young and pretty Canadian actress, Ellen Page, declared herself to be a closeted lesbian, that is until that moment when she dramatically announced to whomever bothered to listen: I am gay. She's twenty-six years old at this announcement, but according to her testimony, had been "gay" for years.

I found her video on New York Post's online magazine. It was hard to miss on the side column, with a large photo of her, and the headline: Tired of Hiding: Actress Ellen Page Comes Out as Gay.

Page is claiming that her "coming out" is "a personal obligation and a social responsibility [direct quote from the Youtube video here around the 6:15 minute point]", and is otherwise a "traumatic event."

It is interesting to see that "coming out" in the 21st century is such a traumatic event. I thought we had taken care of stigmatizing gays and had built such a "gay-friendly" world that people were declaring their "true selves" left and right.

Well, not so, apparently. Page tearfully declares: "I suffered for years because I was scared to be 'out'." Didn't Ellen DeGeneres, pernicious model for this young Ellen, present us with her "secret" in a similarly tearful declaration seventeen years ago? Her career hasn't diminished one bit, and in fact has climbed since then.


Page with "girlfriend"

Page was brought up in Eastern Canada, in Nova Scotia. Her parents divorced when she was very young, and her father remarried. She lived with her mother. At about fifteen, Page enrolled herself into a "Buddhist" school, with no academic structure, which emphasized "the arts." And her parents let her do this! Divorce is hard on any child, but a structureless one must be harsh. And worse, letting a young teenager decide on her intellectual and spiritual development is bizarre and cruel.


This is the best I could find of Page with her father.
Notice the impish quality of the father, who looks like he's out with his young son.
But then, what young boy would cling to his father like that?
Such is the ambiguous world of tomboys.



Page with her mother, looking dishevelled and tomboyish.
It looks like they were both out at some film premier,
where Page should be the star, but is upstaged
by her glamorous mother instead.


But homosexuality is still a social stigma, if "celebrities" have to make such a spectacle about their revelations. Normal, ordinary people, those that pay the films and shows to keep DeGeneres and Page in the business, will momentarily forget a gay person his abnormality as long as he entertains well. And if homosexuality is still a social stigma, despite all these efforts to normalize it, then it will always remain a social stigma.

And just in time for Obama's homosexual agenda of equality, the PBS program To The Contrary "for women, by women, about women" (my quotations), recently included on its panel an articulate black women, Danielle Moodie-Mills. I wondered who she was, with her caked make-up and twisted stringy hair.


Moodie on the PBS program To The Contrary, which aired a couple of weeks ago

I found her profile all over the internet, since then. She is a black lesbian, whose "marriage" to another black woman was profiled in the black magazine Essence. They "married" in 2010, Mills at 32 and Moodie 31, and had "been together" for six years before that, which means they started this "relationship" when they were in their early twenties.


Danielle Moodie, on the right, is:
Advisor, LGBT Policy and Racial Justice
Center for American Progress
Nonprofit; 201-500 employees; Think Tanks industry
(LinkedIn Profile)

and Ayisha Millis is:
...a Senior Fellow and Director of the FIRE - Fighting Injustice to Reach Equality - Initiative at the Center for American Progress, where her work explores the intersections of race, class, and sexuality.
(Center for American Progress profile)


They both have those fluffy jobs just right for the Obama administration.

There must be dozens around of these "lesbians" around. Girls walking around the mall, chattering and laughing: are they "young lesbians"? Two young women eating in a restaurant, fancily dressed: are they on a date? A couple, women, picking up a young child at school or at a day care: are they "two mommies"? And so on.

I won't go into the pshychological, sociological, cultural, School of Camille Paglia, analyses of what I'm seeing here, so here's my take, at least on Page, Moodie and Mills.

There is very little information forthcoming from Moodie or Mills. I've gleaned what there is available from various websites and their limited profiles in their professional biographies.

Danielle Moodie

Danielle Moodie's only reference to her parentage (from searches around the web) is a photo of hers which appeared on Essence magazine's profile of her "marriage" to Mills. Here, she is standing with a white man, named as Michael Newton, with the caption:
Dance with my father:
Danielle’s dad Michael Newton was close to tears as he danced with his daughter on her momentous day.
Below is the photograph:


(Source: Essence)

I can only assume that she is adopted. Where is the mother (adoptee)? Why isn't she included in this wedding photograph? Is she white, black, other? What kind of life does Moodie live where she has to call a white man as her father? How hard was this for her as a young girl (assuming she was adopted young)? How much harder did it get as she became conscious of her surroundings? How did the "black identity" culture affect her identity? How does she relate to whites, and to the ominous White Male?

Aisha Mills


Mills posted this photo collage on her Twitter page

Mills was raised by her grandmother. She says: "My entire life, I have been a variety of 'others'." According to this post, her mother had "Asian" roots, but she was raised by her Black Southern Baptist grandparents, as the photos above indicate. The young, light-skinned boy in the photo collage could be her brother. Or is it her dressed in a suit and tie (as a young boy)? Yes! It is her, dressed as a young boy! So there you have it.

And here below, she is with her MIU (Missing in Upbringing) father at her "wedding."


Source: Essence
Caption reads:
Proud Father
Aisha's father James Mills kisses his baby girl and wishes her well on her big day

The Mills-Moodie "elegant affair" of a wedding included baskets of chopsticks. The ominous absence of her Asian mother must make even the most mundane of Chinese objects into bouquets of roses.


Chopstick elegance: Reaching for some ephemeral roots
Chopsticks, from the wedding album by Essence
The caption reads:
Cocktail Hour:
"The entire wedding was an elegant cocktail affair," Aisha explained.


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So what is it with these young women?

- A chaotic home life?
- A dearth of masculine young men?
- Feminism pushing young women into competitive and masculine roles, where they clash with young men, both the feminized ones, and those standing their ground and refusing to give in easily to a woman-centric environment?
- Black men, unavailable, either through their dropping out of society, their criminality, or their immaturity?
- Men refusing marriage, for fear of repercussions by feminism, and feminist women and wives?
- Men refusing to mature, and instead delaying marriage and family?
- The culture pushing, through mass media, that marriage is not necessary?
- Divorce rates, and divorce costs, high, especially (uniquely?) for men, so many opting out of marriage?
The "otherness" of the other becoming too much to deal with for young people these days, who are not used to natural competitions, and eventually some awe for differences.
- The desire by contemporary people to make everyone the same, to avoid this natural alienness or otherness of people?
- The desire to make everything "nice" and non-combative?

In any case, this "best friend" type of coupling is well suited for girls in college and high school. Under normal conditions, these girls will find staunch mothers or grandmothers who will diminish that seductive environment, give them the education they need, and place them in situations where they can lead a normal life, including building their future families.

The women I've described above are traumatized orphans, both in society and in family. They have been dealt with difficult beginnings. Since their families didn't come through for them, then it should have been up to the larger society to see that they didn't normalize their ambiguities and abnormalities. Now, as adults, they are seeped in their iniquities, and will only further terrorize society. Our job now is to see that they don't do that, and that they don't amass more vulnerable innocents along their way.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Man, Nature and God


Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway skis during the Alpine Men's Downhill.
He finished fourth


Many of the Winter Olympics' events are frighteningly dangerous. I recently watched a replay of a female skateboard competition, where the Czech Republic contestant fell in a dramatic way. She came back to show she was O.K., although her helmet was cracked!

I feel sorry for these contestants. I think they are being pushed to the extreme. But what else is there but for more - more speed, more height, more aerial acrobatics, more danger. Perhaps it is time to stop these Olympic events (and other championships too). But that will never happen.

It is sad that I have to feel sorry for athletes, whose role (if I can call it that) is to show me their strength, not for me (or spectators) to detect any weakness. The Olympics, and the inhuman standards that have been set, have made these athletes into vulnerable creatures, instead of confident and bold humans. The joy of watching sports is lost once we suspect that the athletes aren't up to the standards.

So, do we lower these standards that we have set? I think it is too late for that. Either we have to re-invent the Olympics' sports, or we have to watch each competition with the dangers (of death, even) that are imminent. If we chose the latter, than we have truly become barbarians, sending our men into the lion's den to be devoured for our enjoyment.

So all we can do is watch with bated breath at these incredible feats of these mere humans. We want them to be god-like. We want more of everything, for them to prove their mettle. After all, humans have always aspired to, and admired, physical strength. But I don't think we've ever gone this far, pitching one human being with nature, with the mountains.

And we watch in horror as nature takes one of them and plays with him as a puppy does with a ball.

But, there is an option: NOT to watch. That is the one I have chosen, which is the only one I have control over. And of course, that means not listening to the news for the next couple of weeks, and to click past all postings that fill every webpage. We have to be inhumanly absent from the world around us, for two weeks, at least.

Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's filmographer, understood the god-like energy of man that can be displayed in the best of men. Her film Olympia, on the Berlin Summer Olympics accentuates the incredible feats of the athletes. She was a skier herself, and had already acted in several mountain films, and understood the majesty of nature, and the thrill of conquering it.

Her magnum opus is the film Triumph of the Will. It has been labeled as a "Nazi film" or a "propaganda film for Hitler," The initial shots of the film are of Hitler hovering above in an airplane, ready to land, god-like, on earth. But Triumph of the Will is bigger and more ambitious than a propaganda, or even a Nazi, film. Riefenstahl's artistic vision (and mission) was to show the glory of man, who can reach the skies. Yet she forgot, or ignored, Icarus, one mere man who tried to reach the heavens where only gods could reach.


Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Icarus, plate VIII from the illustrated book, "Jazz"
Date: 1947
Medium: Stencil
Dimensions: 16 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


And the biggest irony of all, which she in her frenzied passion didn't see, was that Hitler is not even an Icarus, but a stringy, spindly, short, dark-haired man, who was ready to destroy the world for the Nordic Blonde Gods of Germany. His Icarus moment was short-lived, although devastating to Germany. His vision of heaven transformed quickly into a Götterdämmerung, leaving Europe shell-shocked for decades to come.

Here we are adulating athletes, and urging them to fly close to the sun. How close are we to Hitler's vision now?


An unidentified skier takes part in the first training session
of the Val Gardena Men’s World Cup Downhill on December 16, 2009

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Friday, November 22, 2013

Share Joy with a Starbucks Holiday Coffee

The gradual move away from Christmas is subtle and clever.

Starbucks has a new "holiday" logo out, which seems to be celebrating Christmas. But it doesn't quite do that.

The main, written message of the logo, instead of saying "share the joy" of Christ's birth, simply tells us to "share joy." What could this joy mean? One million things. Something different for each person. The unified joy that we are to feel around the Christmas season has splintered into the joy each of us feels for whatever reason.

That is one way Starbucks is shifting us away from Christams.

Another way it is relaying its message of a Christmas Holiday without Christmas is through the design of its products, which either distort Christmas symbols, or leave them out all together.

Here is the Starbucks paper cup for this "holiday season":



1. What looks like a star on the left cup could just be a sparkly tree decoration shaped in a flower design.

2. The triangular star shapes in the octagons (dispersed around the cup) are too uniform, and there are two of each star ray, making a total of eight. The rays are all the same length.

The star that shines in many renditions of Christmas paintings and illustrations has four rays. And the top and bottom rays are longer, with the bottom the longest. This elongated bottom ray connects the star to the earth, to show the spot where Jesus' manger lay. This star is often called "The Star of Bethlehem."




Elihu Vedder (American, 1836–1923)
Star of Bethlehem, 1879–80
Oil on canvas: 36 3/16 x 44 3/4 in
Milwaukee Art Museum

The frantic holiday scene I’ve described is starkly in contrast to the peaceful one we find in Star of Bethlehem created by American painter Elihu Vedder in 1879-80. This painting, currently housed in Milwaukee Art Museum storage, depicts a serene moment in the muted, golden desert. Three figures on camels overlook the path before them, while three shepherd/guides ahead and three behind also survey what lies ahead. Color can be seen in the distance in the green of trees. Above them the sky contrasts what is seen below with a bright light that illuminates the sky. There is a sense of anticipation created by figures that can be seen in the clouds, standing there, backs slightly hunched as they look down upon the earth. [Source: The Milwaukee Art Museum]
Here's Rembrandt's (or what is attributed to be a pupil of his) Adoration of the Shepherds, where Jesus is bathed in what is most likely the light from the Star of Bethlehem.


Pupil of Rembrandt, 1606–1669
‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’, 1646
Oil on canvas


Painters and art of various centuries and cultures show the importance of the star as a guiding light, and especially its pointed direction toward the earth to indicate where the infant Jesus lay.

Even popular illustrations, often for cards and hanging pictures, depict the bottom ray of the star pointing downwards. In the image below, the star shows the three kings where the manger lies.



3. Back to the Starbucks cup. The illustrations on the cup are sloppy. They look like they're preliminary sketches, rather than decorations ready for display. Especially irritating is the cone-shaped decoration, which is drawn as an amorphous blob.





4. The leaf at the bottom of the smaller cup is not that of a pine tree, nor does it look like a holly, the traditional leaf for most Christmas decorations.



It is a coffee plant leaf, and the nut-like shape, a coffee bean. Starbucks' marketing strategy, is to commemorate this "holiday" season through coffee rather than through Christmas.

The Starbucks Christmas cup is all about the coffee and very little about Christmas.

5. Shapes are scattered around the cups, as though to fill in gaps. What are the spikey triangular shapes - rays from a star? And the white dots - snow flakes? Why not have sketch of snow flakes, with some of the beautiful shapes?





6. The homes we see on the package illustration could be homes on any product cover. They have no Christmas distinction: there is no Christmas tree near the homes; there are no decorations around the houses; there is no angel or star above.



Below is a promotional image from the Starbucks website, showing the homes and their surroundings. There is no Christmas tree. The odd, leafless trees are dotted with what could be lights, but it could just be any kind of graphic embellishment. The homes have what look like lights framing the roofs, but it isn't enough to indicate Christmas lights. And the diamond-shaped objects in the sky could be stars, but there is no unique, distinct Star of Bethlehem to show that this is a Christmas scene, and not just any winter scene.

And we are invited to "create wonder," as though we have supernatural powers. What kind of wonder do we create? Again, whatever strikes our fancy, creators that we are. Like the message "Share Joy," what we create, and the joy that we share, are not related to the Christmas story, but rather, our very own individual fancies.



And finally, here is the description of the Christmas Blend mixture, from the Starbucks website:
A time to create wonder. An invitation to share joy.

Three decades ago, we created something wonderful - a coffee special enough for your celebrations big and small. Christmas Blend brings bright, lively Latin American coffees together with smooth, mellow Indonesian coffees, including rare aged beans from Sumatra. The aged coffee dramatically balances the overall flavor to create luscious, sweet, spice notes. Crafting this coffee embodies the best of everything we do - sourcing, roasting, blending, exploring, perfecting and sharing. It’s one of our most cherished traditions - made for you to savor season after season.
Of course, coffee is a Third World export. But, the description above tells us that it is part of Starbucks' "sourcing" strategy.

Dictionary.com defines "sourcing" as:
...the buying of components of a product from an outside supplier, often one located abroad
And Starbucks tells us how it does this "ethically":
Ethical Sourcing
We've always believed in buying and serving the best coffee possible.

And it's our goal for all of our coffee to be grown under the highest standards of quality, using ethical trading and responsible growing practices. We think it's a better cup of coffee that also helps create a better future for farmers and a more stable climate for the planet.
With the help of Conservation International, we’ve developed ethical sourcing guidelines that help us purchase coffee that is responsibly grown and ethically traded.

We’re working directly with farmers to develop responsible growing methods and investing in their communities to ensure a sustainable supply of quality coffee.
This sounds too much like the "Banana Republics" that developed through vast farmlands being allocated for big business plantations, while local farmers had to do with inferior land.

In this Starbucks produced video, Carlos Mario (no last name), who is clearly an intermediary between Starbucks (the corporation) and the local Costa Rican farmer, talks about the farmer and coffee production. This Third World company man says:
We are helping farmers, teaching them how to improve production, improve the quality, and reduce the use of pesticides. We are taking care of the environment and the pretty country that we have. Helping farmers is really good, and I feel really proud of that. I think Starbucks is working with agronomists because they know that if they don't care about the environment, they will not have good quality coffee in the future."
All Hail King Coffee!

Below is Toik Wolf, the cup's designer saying "All Hail King Coffee."

I found his quotes after I wrote my design break-down above. Wolf is saying almost to the word what I've written about the cup design. Of course, he thinks it is a Good Thing, while my analysis is a lament. This shows further that the deconstruction of Christmas is systematic and deliberate by the likes of Wolf and Starbucks, and not some random aesthetic project:

On The Design Process
Toki Wolf, Creative Director, In-store Promotions:
One of our early idea explorations was treating our core product, coffee, in its agricultural form and seeing if we could apply that in a beautiful way for the holidays. See if it can be meaningful in the holiday timeframe. So, there’s this image, a quick sketch of a coffee plant with coffee cherries coming out of the red cup. We were literally thinking, “If coffee is at the heart of what we do, can that be the foundation where the exploration comes from?” Even in that little sketch form, we thought we might be onto something. We kept going back to it, even after moving on from it and exploring different illustration style. We always went back to the drawing with the red cup below it. It was the basis of the elements that ended up on the red cups and the coffee bags for this year.

So, the idea was to take these coffee cherries and use them as a holiday element – like holly berries. The coffee flower that you see on the cups comes across, as maybe a snowflake, maybe a poinsettia. We start to see these interpretations. Even in the origin patterns, they kind of look like snow in an abstract form. They start to have a holiday feel to them. Once we realized that we could make this work visually in a way that was both authentically Starbucks and authentically holiday, we went for it, and extracted it all the way across all of our holiday elements. We started with the way it can be interpreted, creating the story around it. Going back to that original sketch, it feels like this beautiful holiday moment is coming out of the red cup, literally coming from the coffee. We ended up keeping the element in the swoop. We call it a “story swoop” or “story arch” that kind of flow around the packaging. So, you’ll see that across all of our holiday design elements, including the cups and the coffee packaging.

[...]

This holiday is the next step of the visual journey we’ve been on with the brand. Beginning with the new coffee packaging. We wanted the coffee to be at the center. We wanted it to look like the leader and to elevate above the noise in the coffee category. We wanted to create something that felt right for coffee but was unique and own-able to Starbucks. By doing so, we created this new visual vocabulary around coffee that looks traditional, and looks like it’s rooted in heritage, but yet it’s fresh and new. We haven’t done anything exactly like it - nor has there been anything like it in the category. You’re right. This holiday feels like a natural extension of that [the coffee packaging redesign]. It keeps that momentum going.
I like coffee, and I especially like Starbucks' blends. There is no doubt that its the "King of Coffee." I wish its leader would just say that they're in the business of making great coffee, and that they work in Third World countries. Let those countries make the necessary steps to help the farmers, while Starbucks provides the coffee for us through a true market and competitive manner.

And, I wish Starbucks wouldn't tell us to "Share Joy," or to "Create Wonder" if it cannot come right out with "Share the Joy of Christmas." I would rather just have a warm cup of coffee without being pulled into a false sense of the Christmas holiday. It is just coffee, after all.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Share Joy with a Starbucks Holiday Coffee

The gradual move away from Christmas is subtle and clever.

Starbucks has a new "holiday" logo out, which seems to be celebrating Christmas. But it doesn't quite do that.

The main, written message of the logo, instead of saying "share the joy" of Christ's birth, simply tells us to "share joy." What could this joy mean? One million things. Something different for each person. The unified joy that we are to feel around the Christmas season has splintered into the joy each of us feels for whatever reason.

That is one way Starbucks is shifting us away from Christams.

Another way it is relaying its message of a Christmas Holiday without Christmas is through the design of its products, which either distort Christmas symbols, or leave them out all together.

Here is the Starbucks paper cup for this "holiday season":



1. What looks like a star on the left cup could just be a sparkly tree decoration shaped in a flower design.

2. The triangular star shapes in the octagons (dispersed around the cup) are too uniform, and there are two of each star ray, making a total of eight. The rays are all the same length.

The star that shines in many renditions of Christmas paintings and illustrations has four rays. And the top and bottom rays are longer, with the bottom the longest. This elongated ray is to show a star that is connecting with the earth below, to show the spot where Jesus' manger lay. It is often called "The Star of Bethlehem."




Elihu Vedder (American, 1836–1923)
Star of Bethlehem, 1879–80
Oil on canvas: 36 3/16 x 44 3/4 in
Milwaukee Art Museum

The frantic holiday scene I’ve described is starkly in contrast to the peaceful one we find in Star of Bethlehem created by American painter Elihu Vedder in 1879-80. This painting, currently housed in Milwaukee Art Museum storage, depicts a serene moment in the muted, golden desert. Three figures on camels overlook the path before them, while three shepherd/guides ahead and three behind also survey what lies ahead. Color can be seen in the distance in the green of trees. Above them the sky contrasts what is seen below with a bright light that illuminates the sky. There is a sense of anticipation created by figures that can be seen in the clouds, standing there, backs slightly hunched as they look down upon the earth. [Source: The Milwaukee Art Museum]
Here's Rembrandt's (or what is attributed to be a pupil of his) Adoration of the Shepherds, where Jesus is bathed in what is most likely the light from the Star of Bethlehem.


Pupil of Rembrandt, 1606–1669
‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’, 1646
Oil on canvas


Painters and art of various centuries and cultures show the importance of the star as a guiding light, and especially its pointed direction toward the earth to indicate where the infant Jesus lay.

Even popular illustrations, often for cards and hanging pictures, depict the bottom ray of the star pointing downwards. In the image below, the star shows the Three Kings where the manger lies.



3. Back to the Starbucks cup. The illustrations on the cup are sloppy. They look like they're preliminary sketches, rather than decorations ready for display. Especially irritating is the cone-shaped decoration, which is drawn as an amorphous blob.





4. The leaf at the bottom of the smaller cup is not that of a pine tree, nor does it look like a holly, the traditional leaf for most Christmas decorations.



It is a coffee plant leaf, and the nut-like shape, a coffee bean. Starbucks' marketing strategy, is to commemorate this "holiday" season through coffee rather than through Christmas.

The Starbucks Christmas cup is all about the coffee and very little about Christmas.

5. Shapes are scattered around the cups, as though to fill in gaps. What are the spikey triangular shapes - rays from a star? And the white dots - snow flakes? Why not have sketch of snow flakes, with some of the beautiful shapes?





6. The homes we see on the package illustration could be homes on any product cover. They have no Christmas distinction: there is no Christmas tree near the homes; there are no decorations around the houses; there is no angel or star above.



Below is a promotional image from the Starbucks website, showing the homes and their surroundings. There is no Christmas tree. The odd, leafless trees are dotted with what could be lights, but it could just be any kind of graphic embellishment. The homes have what look like lights framing the roofs, but it isn't enough to indicate Christmas lights. And the diamond-shaped objects in the sky could be stars, but there is no unique, distinct Star of Bethlehem to show that this is a Christmas scene, and not just any winter scene.

And we are invited to "create wonder," as though we have supernatural powers. What kind of wonder do we create? Again, whatever strikes our fancy, creators that we are. Like the message "Share Joy," what we create, and the joy that we share, are not related to the Christmas story, but rather, our very own individual fancies.



And finally, here is the description of the Christmas Blend mixture, from the Starbucks website:
A time to create wonder. An invitation to share joy.

Three decades ago, we created something wonderful - a coffee special enough for your celebrations big and small. Christmas Blend brings bright, lively Latin American coffees together with smooth, mellow Indonesian coffees, including rare aged beans from Sumatra. The aged coffee dramatically balances the overall flavor to create luscious, sweet, spice notes. Crafting this coffee embodies the best of everything we do - sourcing, roasting, blending, exploring, perfecting and sharing. It’s one of our most cherished traditions - made for you to savor season after season.
Of course, coffee is a Third World export. But, the description above tells us that it is part of Starbucks' "sourcing" strategy.

Dictionary.com defines "sourcing" as:
...the buying of components of a product from an outside supplier, often one located abroad
And Starbucks tells us how it does this "ethically":
Ethical Sourcing
We've always believed in buying and serving the best coffee possible.

And it's our goal for all of our coffee to be grown under the highest standards of quality, using ethical trading and responsible growing practices. We think it's a better cup of coffee that also helps create a better future for farmers and a more stable climate for the planet.
With the help of Conservation International, we’ve developed ethical sourcing guidelines that help us purchase coffee that is responsibly grown and ethically traded.

We’re working directly with farmers to develop responsible growing methods and investing in their communities to ensure a sustainable supply of quality coffee.
This sounds too much like the "Banana Republics" that developed through vast farmlands being allocated for big business plantations, while local farmers had to do with inferior land.

In this Starbucks produced video, Carlos Mario (no last name), who is clearly an intermediary between Starbucks (the corporation) and the local Costa Rican farmer, talks about the farmer and coffee production. This Third World company man says:
We are helping farmers, teaching them how to improve production, improve the quality, and reduce the use of pesticides. We are taking care of the environment and the pretty country that we have. Helping farmers is really good, and I feel really proud of that. I think Starbucks is working with agronomists because they know that if they don't care about the environment, they will not have good quality coffee in the future."
All Hail King Coffee

I like coffee, and I especially like Starbucks' blends. There is no doubt that its the "King of Coffee." I wish its leader would just say that they're in the business of making great coffee, and that they work in Third World countries. Let those countries make the necessary steps to help the farmers, while Starbucks provides the coffee for us through a true market and competitive manner.

And, I wish Starbucks wouldn't tell us to "Share Joy," or to "Create Wonder" if it cannot come right out with "Share the Joy of Christmas." I would rather just have a warm cup of coffee without being pulled into a false sense of the Christmas holiday. It is just coffee, after all.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Sunday, May 12, 2013

Ken Russell's Tchaikovsky: Descent into Sublime Evil


Tchaikovsky in Music Lovers during a fantasy sequence of aerial conducting

Richard Chamberlain (himself a homosexual) as Tchaikovsky in one of the memorable moments of the film. The grand globes of the Russian Orthodox church frame this fantasy shot of Tchaikovsky, who swirls around conducting some imaginary symphony.

The scene is at the end of the film, and was shot at Bray Studios, near Windsor, England. The golden domes of the Kremlin were built on the backlot.

This image "freezes" into a statue as the film ends, giving is that moment for eternity.



Imagine going to so much trouble to orchestrate these scenes!

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Ken Russell has made a grand film on Tchaikovsky titled The Music Lovers. It vacillates between the sublime and the horrific. Images of beautiful Russian architecture and interiors are juxtaposed with crass sex scenes and characters (Tchaikovsky's mother, for example) rotting on their death beds. The film's director seems to think that these ugly images constitute drama, and scripts the score with Tchaikovsky's grand oeuvres. The more delicate scenes are honored with softer works.

I watched the whole film, both fascinated and horrified (I switched channels a couple of times), but I was also enchanted by its beauty. This was clearly a clever, sophisticated trick to pull me into the sublime evil of the film.

Roger Ebert agrees with me:
Ken Russell is a most deviously baroque director, sucking us down with him into his ornate fantasies of decadent interior decoration, until every fringe on every curtain has a fringe of its own, and the characters have fringes, too, and the characters elbow their way through a grotesque jungle of candlesticks, potted plant stands, incense sticks, old champagne bottles, and gilt edges, and it is almost certain that something is happening in the movie. But what?
But I think there is another reason for the film's descent into horror. Tchaikovsky cannot allow him to view homosexuality as normal. Visions of horror keep escaping through the beauty he's trying to capture.


Video of Jennifer Roback Morse of the
National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute
speaking at a Catholic Women’s Conference.
in Venice, Florida on February 2013
Her speech is titled "Defending Marriage."


Tchaikovsky is said to have died of cholera, although some attribute his death to suicide. I tend to believe the latter. It was his only out, other than to renounce his sins, beg for, and wait for, forgiveness. And live his life as piously as he could after that. But with stubborn and strong-willed men, who have defied and rejected God for so long, waiting for God's answer would seem longer than eternity, and his own swift hands would send him to the eternity that seems shorter to him.

One commentator somewhat agrees with me. It was not Tchaikovsky who took his life, it was his family which influenced him to take arsenic and end his life:
Quite contrary to the ridiculous myth that he drank a glass of unboiled water in order to contract cholera, thereby committing suicide, strong evidence suggests that he was forced to take arsenic as a matter of honour: one of his sexual adventures with a boy of noble birth so outraged the boy's father that Tchaikovsky's dalliances were in danger of being brought to the attention of the Czar, thus bringing dishonour to the school where Tchaikovsky trained as a civil servant. A sort of trial was held by about a dozen of his former classmates, now holding high positions in government and law. He was presented with two choices: have his indiscretion revealed to the Czar (a letter had been written but had not yet been delivered), or commit suicide through taking arsenic.
Perhaps it is this attempt at expiation, however coerced, that allows us to appreciate and admire Tchaikovsky's music. The world of Western art is full of such ambiguous characters. The beauty that they try to capture is tainted with sin. It is the arrogance that we think we can create as well as God which exposes our weakness, and our achievements become hostage to dangerous forces.

Here is the soundtrack for The Music Lovers

"Polovtsian Dances"
from "Prince Igor"
Composed by Alexander Borodin

"SCHERZO BURLESQUE"
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"DANCE OF THE CLOWNS"
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"PIANO CONCERTO IN B FLAT MINOR"
(slow movement)
Piano soloist: Raphael Orozco

"THE LETTER SONG"
from EUGENE ONEGIN
Vocalist: April Cantelo
"6th Symphony"
(excerpts)
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"MANFRED SYMPHONY"
(excerpts)
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"STRING QUARTET No. 3"
(adante)
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"ROMEO AND JULIET"
(overture)
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"MINIATURE MARCH"
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra

"1812 OVERTURE"
Conducted by André Previn with London Symphony Orchestra


Tchaikovsky-Piano Concerto no. 1 in b flat minor op.23
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Hypocritically Pious Catherine Deneuve


A wry and wary Catherine Deneuve on a French television program
where she discusses her position against marriage


Tiberge, from GalliaWatch, has written a post on the still-beautiful Catherine Deneuve (it is hard to imagine that Deneuve is now sixty-nine years old). The article is on her blog GalliaWatch, and I have posted it in my previous post. The post is on a television appearance by Deneuve where she talks about marriage (or more precisely, the elimination of marriage).

Tiberge in the email she sent me writes:
I did this post today on Catherine Deneuve...There might be something to say about beauty - it changes according to what the person says and represents. She is certainly beautiful, but her thinking is so twisted, that she suddenly appeared ugly to me. She is so terrified (or horrified) of "bourgeois" values she goes to any length to discredit them.
Deneuve is staying true to her artistic choices. She appeared in a horrific film by surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel titled Belle de Jour, where she is a prostitute by day and a bourgeois housewife by night. Belle de Jour is also her "working" name, "Since you only come in the afternoons" says the woman who is about to hire her. The clever and cynical Bunuel is of course playing on the "housewife as whore" who is available at home to her husband at night to be a "whore for a housewife." Bunuel resumed his "bourgeois" theme with his 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. It is a more banal film, but no less a devastation of French middle-class society. Bunuel's aim is to destroy its fabric.

Even the usually permissive and liberal J. Hoberman, The Village Voice's loose and liberal film critic, finds Belle de Jour shocking ("chic and shocking" are his words, where he hangs on to his avant-garde superiority while remaining a bourgeois at heart).
Unavailable for almost two decades because of rights problems, Belle de Jour emerged from its long absence in the mid-nineties looking as chic and shocking as when it first scandalized the bourgeois world. Catherine Deneuve, fresh from her triumph in Jacques Demy's films, plays Severine, a middle-class Parisian wife who seems to have the perfect husband: solicitous, successful, and kind. But the bored bourgeoise daydreams about degradation, and finds it in a brothel where she spends her afternoons as fetish and fantasy object to an assortment of strange clients (including the famous Japanese with the mysterious box). Séverine's fantasies of humiliation escalate until she (and we) can no longer tell illusion from reality. The coolly beautiful Deneuve, who has never seemed blonder, is an object of desire whose very remoteness, coupled with Bunuel's serene tone, only amplifies the film's perversity. (Chaste precision provides the kick in Bunuel's kinkiness.) "A perfect film" (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).
Bourgeois sentiments are easily "shocked," or they claim to be shocked, while supporting any kind of perversity at least in principle. "We would never do this, but other people can, if they want to."

I watched the film either at a film festival or on an "arts film" program on television, and was shocked, not at the content of the film (by then, I knew that surrealists, and many French directors, filled their scenes with similar images) but at Severine's callousness. "Coolly beautiful" is how Hoberman describes Severine, where she wreaks havoc on her unsuspecting husband's life while indulging in her desires. And there is no-one more suited to play Severine than the "coolly beautiful" Deneuve herself.


Scenes for Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour: The two sides of Severine

Bunuel, before he started making "chic and shocking" films, stuck simply with the shocking. One of his first films is the horror-like "semi-documentary" film Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread), where he portrays a real village in Spain. According to John Hopewell, author of Spanish Cinema Post-Franco:
In many ways, [Land Without Bread] was a surreal documentary. Much of the imagery is dramatic and studied.
I would add, "dramatic and studied in order to shock." Inhabitants of Las Hurdes complained that:
He prostituted and falsified history disgracefully... His whole film is one big lie... He was very cruel to blacken us in that way... I think it's a pointless film.
The rich and "coolly beautiful" Deneuve (unlike the poor inhabitants of a remote village) can chose what films she will act in, and what roles to refuse. But, even she is not immune to the film fiction that will chain itself to her real life.

This most famous of French film stars shows that she is willing to attach her name and talent to positions that could essentially destroy life. Forty years after she played the marriage-destroying Severine Serizy, she publicly announces, without any of the ambiguity of art, that marriage is unnecessary, that homosexuality is good, that children don't need mothers and fathers. She is willing to prostitute herself for the pleasures of sex (what else is conjugal living without marriage, and what else is at the core of homosexual unions?), while destroying society.

As she says in her interview above:
Why marry when everyone is divorcing? It's bizarre.
Deneuve married photographer David Baily in 1965 whom she divorced in 1971. This was to be her only marriage. She has two illegitimate children, by two different men. She's had a string of partners, some lasting a few months, others several years. One could say that she practices what she preaches.

The great Portuguese director Manuel de Oliveira re-made Belle de Jour in 2006, calling it Belle Toujours (Always Beautiful), which is a wry regard at the no-longer so beautiful, elderly Severine who is forty years older. The two protagonists of Belle de Jour, Deneuve and Michel Piccolet (who encouraged her into prostitution) return twenty years later, and engage in a series of conversations. The film is lovely, only as de Oliveira can make films. I wrote about the film here:
Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 in G major, Allegretto grazioso was playing throughout Maneol de Oliveira's 2006 Belle Toujours, with scenes of Paris floating by at night... De Oliveira is a Portuguese filmmaker, but like all artists, he quotes other artists. In this case, it is Bunuel's 1967 Belle de Jour. In fact, de Oliveira ingeniously resumes Belle de Jour by reintroducing the two lead characters several decades later.

The...man, now in his late seventies, is clearly enjoying life with his cigars and whisky. But, the woman (played in Bunuel's film by the beautiful Catherine Deneuve) has ended up bitter and wary. She was the one who became a prostitute to overcome her frigidity. She now talks about going to a convent, surely to repent of her past sins.
Oliveira's re-make is more of a morality tale. Perhaps life does resemble art, where the contemporary Deneuve succumbing to many years of sinful living (her affairs, her illegitmate children), can now only live through her sins, speaking out for any kind of atrocity that a more Godly woman would denounce.

Ironically, she made Belle de Jour while she was in the middle of her (only) marriage. Perhaps the film corrupted her ways. The "madam" in the film sold Severine's body. Deneuve now sells the souls of others.



A much older Severine (impersonated by Bulle Ogier) has become a dour-faced, prudish middle-aged woman who thinks of retreating into a convent in de Oliveira's Belle Toujours. Is Deneuve, in the twilight of her days, trying to expiate herself of her sins by piously handing out maternal and paternal rights to those she deems unfortunate?

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Ugly Views of Catherine Deneuve: "For adoption, against marriage"


Deneuve contre le "mariage pour tous" by LeHuffPost

For adoption, against marriage
By Tiberge
May 8, 2013
GalliaWatch

Catherine Deneuve is against "Marriage for Everyone". But her reasons are cynical and useless to the cause of French traditionalists. In the video the still-beautiful actress is supportive of homosexual adoption (without marriage) and indifferent to marriage in general:

- (...) It left me a bit perplexed. I would have preferred them to improve considerably the PACS and to allow adoption for homosexuals. People marry a lot and divorce a lot. So eventually, it may become a frightening situation. There are very few children at school with a father and a mother.

- It's a question of rights.

- Yes, but they could have just as easily improved the PACS so that the rights would be the same. Why marry when everyone is divorcing? It's bizarre. But the issue of rights could be settled differently without marriage.

Reminder: The PACS is the existing civil union agreement for heterosexual and homosexual couples. Adoption is a complex question. The PACS allows for adoption, but only by an individual. The couple, as a couple, cannot adopt. Filiation is established through the person who is adopting. That person alone has parental authority.

Note: I have always found Catherine Deneuve to be exquisitely beautiful, even as she aged. But there was a cold-blooded cynicism in her look and her words in this video that betray her lack of connection to or affection for traditional France, traditional Western civilization and traditional morality. While it is true that people marry and divorce frivolously, this is not a reason for throwing gasoline on the fire. Being a woman with two illegitimate children, and no interest in marriage (she was married once, and wore black, presumably to show off her disregard for convention) she could not bring herself to endorse a family values program that would attempt to strengthen marriage and in-wedlock birth, encourage young couples to stay together, and restore the teaching of French culture in the schools to better revive a feeling of national identity and personal responsibility. She does none of that. It is not in her nature. Instead she advocates adoption for anyone, and marriage for no one, essentially in line with François Hollande's thinking.

We have always known that celebrities often live more turbulent personal lives than the rest of us. In recent decades that has changed and what the general population does today makes the Hollywood stars of yesteryear look like stodgy stay-at-homes. But the fact that "everybody does it" does not make it right. For a famous personality to say that it does is cause for concern. What makes her think that a gay couple joined by the PACS will not do as much harm to the child as a married couple who divorces? And what makes her think that PACS couples will not separate, leaving as much, if not more, destruction behind as those who divorce?

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Friday, May 3, 2013

"A Thief is Never Rational"


Guido Reni (1575 – 1642)
Archangel Michael Defeating Satan
1635
Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 293 x 202 cm
Private Collection


I recently posted an article from the Orthosphere, The Metastasy of Wickedness, by Kristor in its entirety and without my commentary.

A poster named Bedarz Iliaci makes some important points about Kristor's thesis. Below is some of their interaction:

Bedarz Iliaci:
Kristor,

BI: I am surprised to find you spouting such modern sentiments.
K: So long as society is so ordered as to promote or encourage or reward vice, there will be vice.
BI: NO. There was sin even in Eden.
K: And indeed, they are not altogether useless, or they would never have succeeded at what they do.
BI: A thief has no social goodness altogether, even though he promotes lock-making industry.
K: The control of vice and the promotion of virtue therefore depends, not on the elimination of the vicious – who are, after all, only responding rationally (if amorally) to the vicious environment in which they find themselves, and who if eliminated will be replaced – but of the weakness and perversity of the system itself.
BI: Isn’t this what Progressives say?. The individuals are good but the system is bad and must be reformed. The the usage of the word “rationally” jars – you are using it in the sense of economists – a purely instrumental thing. A thief is never rational.
Kristor:
Bedarz, you aren’t making sense here.
BI: There was sin even in Eden.
K: That there was sin even in a pure society does not mean that there is no sin in a perverted society. Indeed, that there can be sin even in Eden makes sin in a perverted society seem all the more likely. You make my argument.
BI: A thief has no social goodness.
K: Really? None? He is no good at all to anyone? What about Jean Valjean?
BI: A thief is never rational.
K: Really? The thieves are all wandering about gibbering and drooling like maniacs, with their flies open and their shoes on backwards? How on earth, then, do they ever get it together to steal anything?

That a thing is deformed does not mean it is altogether evil. The zero of goodness is the zero of being. Even Satan retains the glory, power and intelligence of a seraph.

As to whether I am saying something the Progressives say: no. The progressives say that what we do is not our responsibility at all, and that we are wholly the products of our environments. I am saying that while we are certainly influenced by our environments, we are responsible for what we do. Only thus could any of our acts be characterized as either good or evil.
Bedarz Iliaci:
A thief has no social goodness.

Means that as a thief, a man has no goodness. That is, the essence of stealing is bad for the City. Surely, you would not disagree. Thus, the vices, even greed are not conducive to the good of the City even though they may lead to material growth, but inevitably the social bonds are weakened. And thus contra 18C economists private vices do not make for public good.

A thief is never rational.

Simply, it is not rational to steal. You have modern instrumental view of rationality. I take the view that being rational implies having correct premises.

Your point may be recast as - Man is largely formed by his City. We see the acts but God sees the heart.
[My notes: Yes, exactly right. It is like liberalism, which appears to be doing us good, but the system inherently leads to destruction, even if some of its manifestations (early on) appear to do us some good.]

Kristor:
I think I see what you are getting at. The thievery of a man is bad, even though the man himself, qua man rather than qua thief, may not be all bad. Likewise, the thievery of a man, being inherently irrational, vitiates his rationality, even though he might be quite rational in many other respects. Agreed.

Thus, the vices, even greed are not conducive to the good of the City even though they may lead to material growth, but inevitably the social bonds are weakened.

Yes. This was a prominent secondary theme of the post. You are saying the same thing I did.
I searched for the image that the Orthosphere blog has put up as its masthead. The painter is Guido Reni, from 17th century Italy and the painting, Archangel Michael Defeating Satan. This is an apt figurehead for the blog, although we have not yet defeated Satan.

I also found the painting below by Guido Reni of a young David. We can see the character and the strength of David who went on to defeat Goliath.


Guido Reni (1575 – 1642)
David
Oil on canvas
1620
65 x 50 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
[source: Wikipaintings]


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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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