Happy New Year - Melkam Addis Amet

 A new year for Ethiopia, for new beginnings.

Sunflowers for a New Year

[Photo By: KPA]

Art Sabotage

I have my photograph at the "Sunflower" exhibition hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga.

It is of the barn, with sunflowers, at Visual Arts Mississauga, which I titled Barn Glow with Sunflowers.

I sent the same photograph for the Art Gallery of Mississauga's "Juried" exhibition, coming up in November. The AGM's site was long in describing the event, and who the "juries" were to be. Very close to the application deadline, they produced this list:

You can see their credentials at the site, here (or by clicking on their names at the announcement page, here).

Both Asma Sultana and Asma Mahmood are "South Asians."

Here are a few details about their artistic activities, and associations.

Mahmood's Face Book page has as its header this image:

Her post on this image says this:

I contacted Bushra Mahmood, through her website (I found through google - there is no link on Asma Mahmood's post) and asked her this:

To whom it may concern:

I found this image (attached) on the web, and was wondering if it is yours. The background looks like a "sunflower halo." If so, would you have a title for it, and its context.

Of course, the "sunflower" would fit in the theme of the recent Visual Arts Mississauga exhibition, of which Asma Mahmood would be aware.

I never heard back from B. Mahmood, but I found the image's exhibition history (through image search on google) at mybindi.com, supposedly posted on September 2013, although the actual site does not display the image. 

 

So what is it?

It looks like, besides the sunflower "glow," (or a sunflower crown?) of a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.

Mahmood's webiste address is goatsandbacon.com, where she "builds tools for the future," but there is no posting that directly reference goats, or bacon, or this goatherd with blood on her hands and mouth surrounded by a sunflower .

Bacon is the Muslim prohibition against eating pork meat, the goat is a well-known symbol for Baphomet, and at the final judgment, God separates the sheep, who stay with him, from the goats: 

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne

32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

This drawing now stands as the Face Book header of Asma Mahmood, a Mississauga woman who has been given the task of judging art work that is meant to represent Mississauga's artists. 

I sent an email to the jury group for the Juried Show of Fine Arts:

I find it very interesting that you purport to be a "Mississuagan," i.e. a Canadian, organization, yet your jury is composed of two women (out of four jurors, that is 50% of the jury) who call themselves "Asma" and whose works is posted all over the internet for all to see advocating their Pakistani and Bangladeshi roots, and even presented in their own script and language.

What dies the twitter head of Asma Arshad Mahmood mean? What does that have to do with Canada? Hwo will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what she says on her twitter page?

Why is Asma Sultana's facebook page, and her webpage showing me her work mostly in an Indian language script? What is she saying? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what says about her own "art?" 

You don't even attempt to present yourselves as "multicultural" and instead you have been hijacked by Indians/Pakistani/Bangladeshi who will have their own criteria for judging and critiquing Canadian art and artists.

This is a very interesting, and important, development 

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

By the way, the other two aren't much better.

Fauste Facciponte photographs dolls, which Globe and Mail writer R. M. Vaughn describes thus in a 2011 article "Double Visions and Scary Dolls" (the excerpt is of a screen shot from a pdf file):

 

 

And here is Jay Wilson's Toothpick Mountain

And here is Asma Sultana's twitter page entry, clearly a self-portrait. But what does it say?

And the banner for the show? The background to the banner is what looks like clipped paper collage,

 

whereas it is an acrylic painting, by Elizabeth Elkin, 

who nonetheless paints still lifes and flowers with skill.

Ethiopia's Elections - A Strong and United Ethiopia

[This article was in draft form, originally written on June 24, 2021]

Prime Minister Abiy completed his promised election in Ethiopia, with more than a dozen parties. All that is left is ballot count, and he is the clear winner. 

It was extraordinary. People voted! It was not so much the "vote" but the promise that each person can have his say, and will be part of the collective, national decision. Ethiopians can have their say, is what Abiy said, and delivered. "I have a duty to chose whomever will represent me," said one, who came late after work. 

And one old lady, possibly in her seventies, said: "I came happily, I came happily to choose." And her wishes for Abiy: "May they [this is is a polite, formal, way for saying "he"] live in peace...And let Ethiopia grow, let her live, let her live for us." 

"Thanks be to God," says another women. "May God bless our country, and make it peaceful."

And one man says: "And the results after the election, and until the election results are revealed, then each one of us should protect our country with care, keeping the peace, as we wait for the results."

Each person, in the wisdom of the unsophisticated, simply says that he came because he was given the chance to decide.

But, there is also a unique intelligence of these sincere, and patient people. They have been through so much, and yet they are not bitter. They accepted to come with trust, and faith.

Of course, Abiy's promise is democracy, which, I am sure even he realizes is a symbolic promise, a promise that people can live their lives free from fear.

All those critics, naysayers, and those that put obstacles, whether physical, ideological, or simply diffusing subtly damning words, can now rethink their positions. 

I think that this is a new era for Ethiopia. There are enemies throughout. None of the media reported on this, other than a Reuters report, and BBC-Africa report, which was more vicious than reporting. "You have war and famine in Tigray" says the female Ugandan BBC-Africa reporter, who was sent to Ethiopia for the election. "There is no war, there is no famine in Tigray," tells her the clearly irritated, but patient, Abiy, who knows who these people are and what their agenda is. He waves her off after her persistence, and walks away.

Western countries, i.e. Western liberal countries, completely ignored this. There is nothing from the US or Canada. No well-wishers for Ethiopia - Biden and Trudeau are completely silent. Nothing from England or France (Macron was supposedly Abiy's "buddy" - they are the under-fifties leaders). 

I believe they want him to fail. A strong and united Ethiopia means a strong region, and who wants that? Better war and famine. 

It is fascinating for all these reasons. I think it is a historical moment. And those that wouldn't see it as such, and who put obstacles in its place over these years, shame on them.

In the Beginning

In the beginning:

Kara Walker

Savant from an Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters/AKA The Full-On Mask

2020

It is fascinating to find this image. I wasn't looking for it, but rather found Kara Walker, whom I know as the "cut-out" artists, a black American women - married, by the way to two white men, one she divorced and with whom she has a daughter - who spent her artist's career finding ways to malign white America (and America in general).

Her masked black woman is of course a metaphor for the "muzzling" that whites have done to blacks - her own radical perspective, which she hypocritically holds as she lives her life with those muzzling white men, and as she finds prestige in those very same white-built and white-organized museums, who genuflect to her otherness induced by their centuries-induced guilt for an event that took several hundred years ago, and for which, for all practical purposes - including monetary - they have redeemed themselves.

Still, the unforgiving, and money-grabbing, Walker will have none of this.

The muzzling mask is prescient. This is now happening on a global scale, but through which her own black "brothers and sisters" are suffering the most.

Full-on is what we should expect, metaphorically or not.

Clockwise from bottom left: MacArthur Fellows Ta Nehisi Coates, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jad Abumarad, Kara Walker, David C. Page, Angela Duckworth, Robert Axelrod and Junot Diaz.

[Image Source]

So. How exactly did Walker come up with this mask, an (almost) exact rendition of the mask the American, and Canadian, Sheep, are wearing? All that is left, and as we can conclude, is that the future of the mask is a la Walker. The Full-On.

Above, Kara Walker with daughter Octavia Brugel (image source) from around 2007. 

Brugel appears to be in her very early teens (she was born in 1997), 

and below Brugel with Walke in 2007.

Summer! (Still)

[Photo By: KPA]

Spring!

Spring: Magnolia Tree Flowers - Jubilee Garden, Mississauga

[Photo By: KPA]

COVID Update: About 80% of all people develop only mild or no symptoms

COVID Update, September 2020, from the Swiss Policy Research, Facts About COVID-19 web posting. 

Via The Thinking Housewife.

Here are a few points from Swiss Policy Research September update:

About 80% of all people develop only mild symptoms or no symptoms. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% develop only mild symptoms. About 95% of all people develop at most moderate symptoms and do not require hospitalization.

[Read my previous post: Vaccines Produce Polio]

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

UN Forced to Admit Gates-funded Vaccine is Causing Polio Outbreak in Africa
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 BY NEWS WIRE

This really should be one of the biggest public health scandals of the decade, but instead it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organisations involved.

Rest of article here.

Of course, the COVID-SCAM is a great way to cover up real public health emergencies.

And who cares about Africa, anyway?

Gates Vaccine Produces Polio

Gates Vaccine Produces Polio
Via Tradition in Action

From article:
United Nations forced to admit that vaccines from Bill Gates
are spreading polio throughout Africa
Natural News
September 08, 2020

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

United Nations forced to admit that vaccines from Bill Gates are spreading polio throughout Africa

(Natural News) A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), a branch of the United Nations (UN), confirms everything we have long been saying about the deadly nature of Bill Gates’ vaccination programs in the Third World.

Entitled, “Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 – Sudan,” the report outlines how polio vaccines from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are spreading more polio throughout Africa. Not only that, but these “relief” jabs are killing young black lives in places like Chad and Sudan where outbreaks of the vaccine-induced disease are spreading like wildfire.

Amazingly, the WHO openly admits that the strain of poliovirus currently circulating, known as cVDPV2, is “vaccine-derived.” This clearly indicates that it is being spread by the very same vaccines that Bill Gates claims are helping to “save lives” and “eradicate polio.”

“Sequencing of viruses isolated in Sudan so far reflects that the viruses are related with viruses reported earlier in neighboring Chad from where there were multiple separate introductions into Sudan from Chad,” the report explains.

“There is local circulation in Sudan and continued sharing of transmission with Chad.”

As far as we know, this is the first time that an official government body – and the WHO, no less – has used the words “vaccine-induced” to describe how and why polio is still spreading all throughout Third World Africa.

Original here.

Free to Breathe

Via The Healthy American

Voiceless Victims of the COVID Meltdown

Voiceless Victims of the COVID Meltdown

Exposing the dehumanising effects and severe human rights violations of the Covid-19 medical tyranny.

Via The Thinking Housewife.

Breaking the Cycle of Foreign Aid

[With]Holding of US Assistance Won’t Hurt Ties with America...
All Ethio News
September 5, 2020

The temporary holding of USA assistance to Ethiopia will not affect the long bilateral ties between the two countries, Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

In his regular weekly press briefing today, Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Dina Mufti said the diplomatic relationship between Ethiopia and the United States is historic and will not be eroded by such an act.

The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had reportedly approved a plan to halt America’s foreign assistance to Ethiopia as the administration failed to impose unacceptable agreement on the country over its dispute with Egypt and Sudan on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The decision by the Trump administration could affect up to 130 million USD assistance to Ethiopia and fuel new tensions in the relationship between Washington and Addis Ababa.

However, Spokesperson Dina said the bilateral ties between the two countries would not be affected due to the holding of the assistance.

Speaking about the ongoing annual training for Ethiopian ambassadors, he noted that the forum will help to boost the capacity of the ambassadors to better carry out diplomatic works.

Among the topics covered included the concept of synergy and the revised foreign policy of the country that replaced the document in use for the past 18 years, the spokesperson stated.

Dina further pointed out that Ethiopia is determined to return Ethiopians under difficult situation in various countries.

The ministry is working to repatriate about 2,000 citizens soon, in addition to the 400,000 migrants that were brought home during the past three years.

The Museum of Beauty

Trillium/Queen Anne's Lace
[Design by KPA]

I am putting together a website called "The Museum of Beauty." Its accompanying book is almost complete.

Here are the beginnings of The Museum of Beauty, and book soon to follow.

"Kyle Rittenhouse - Hero And Martyr"

Kyle Rittenhouse - Hero And Martyr

Via Brother Nathaniel

Re-posting Posts

President Donald Trump toured damaged businesses
and met with law enforcement in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
[Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images]

I've decided to re-post the following posts from a couple of weeks ago (which I had saved in draft form):

- Trump and His Darth Vaders

- Trump is Getting Back on Track

I was never a follower of Trump the Politician. But, politicians are what they are, and it is up to the public, the ordinary citizens, to make sure that politicians honor their office. Trump is just one man, the American citizens are in the millions, including leaders, thinkers, and truth seekers.

Perhaps that is what Trump is reacting to in his recent comments: Trump in Kenosha (via The Thinking Housewife).

And also standing in the middle of the rubble caused by "domestic terror," as Trump says, must have a sobering effect.