Taxes are necessary for living in a civilized society- Toronto and Torontonias

I am appalled by the indifference of our citizens to tax debates. Anytime there is a tax debate in the city hall, it is taken over by the right wing organizations that send their cronies and supporters en masse to the meeting. There are no supporters of tax for the benefit of public in these meetings. What you hear is moaning by a bunch of millionaires and their supporters that there are already too much taxes and it should be cut especially for high earners(How about a flat rate tax? They love it, don’t they?). But come to think of it, you can’t blame them, after all they are defending their millions and billions. But… where…. Oh where are the average middle and lower class citizens to bring their point of view to the meeting?

Bush, Stem Cells and Iraq

Bush did it again. He vetoed the stem cell research bill for the second time. He is a really great man. He is so much worried for the life of cells, single cells. Who cares if millions and billions of people are going to benefit hugely from this research that needs these cells. Who cares if this research is going to save people from miseries and pains of cancer, Alzheimers and many other diseases.

On the other hand, why on earth should he worry about the death and destruction in Iraq??? The life of a single cell is much more important than the life of millions of Iraqis. On one hand he is protecting these cells, and on the other hand he does not give a damn about more than 100 people being killed each day in Iraq.

That is what I call a consistent humanitarian conscientious policy.

Luminato gala opening in Toronto June 2007

Click on this link to see a clip of the ball runners in the gala opening of the Luminato

What has happened to the modern art and culture

I am reading a book called "OUR CULTURE, WHAT'S LEFT OF IT" by Theodore Dalrymple. I don't agree with all his opinions. Some of them are shot from the right wing of the British classes, but I can't agree more with some of his opinions. I loved the article " A Lost Art" and advise everybody to read it and write their opinion here. In it he writes about the demise of modern art.

Personally I think he is right here. Art is art as long as the artists create it for the people not for each other. When it is created just to impress your peer and the media, and to sell, unfortunately it is distanced from the really great art. It becomes ugly. It becomes "SHOCKING" instead of beautiful. We have forgotten that there is a difference between Shocking and beautiful.

And it seems that the aim of many a modern artist is to be more "SHOCKING" than his fellow artists. If you are not shocking you can't be recognized and known, and you can't sell. And the race continues. So each new artist should be more shocking than the previous one. And then we reach the point when you cut a cow in half and put it in Tate Modern as art, because it is shocking, and the critics praise it because it is shocking, and the public pretend they like it because they don't dare to say what they really feel, which is, "Oh my god, how ugly it is". You create ugly music that is a torture to listen to, but the overly refined art connoisseurs sit through it because the critics have praised it and it is fashion and you have to pretend you like it. You create ugly sculptures. you put a likeness of a guy shitting while stooping with his turd 4 meters long in the middle of the Museum of Modern Arts in New York and everybody gathers around and praises it as art. You put up a completely bland canvass on the wall as painting and critics dare to praise it. Art turns into words. Critics words. Without the words written to give it meaning, it is meaningless because it is ugly in itself. It is not like works of Bach or Michael Angelo that talk for themselves and don't need a word on paper to praise them for people to understand them.

I am an architect and see it quite clearly among architects. Architecture nowadays have turned into a race among architects to impress each other, not the public. They don't design for the public any more, but for each other. So each work should be more shocking than the previous one, otherwise you risk being forgotten and never mentioned in the architectural journals and that means death to an architect. As an architect, I find some of these works impressive(I don't use the word beautiful here), but then I ask common people what they think of it, and I don't get positive remarks. I go inside these buildings and again I am "impressed" but when I think of the poor “end user” who has to live and work in this building, I pity them because I know very well that "function" has been sacrificed for the sake of the "SHOCK" effect. The building shocks, the critics write rave reviews, the architect becomes famous and sells, but nobody thinks twice about getting back to the building one year after it is finished and ask the occupants how they feel about the building.

I believe you should cut the name of the artists from the art piece and then look at it and see if you like it or not, trust your feelings, not what critics tell you. Whenever I go to a museum or gallery, I try to avoid looking at the name of the creator, I just trust my senses, what do they tell me. I don't trust words by others to tell me what is good and what is bad. It reminds me of an experiment done sometime ago by a reality show. They put some paintings by 5 year olds in a big famous museum. The works were signed as Picasso and other famous painter's works. Not even one person there dared to say they are childish. The interviewer was asking the viewers and all of them were praising the works. He even asked a few critics and they were praising the works and then when he revealed that these were done by 5 year olds, many people would not believe it. The funniest part was that even one of the critics was insisting that these are the works by Picasso and other famous painters after he was told about the ploy.

What has happened to art that childish paintings by 5 year olds can’t be recognized as what it is and differentiated with great art? Something has gone horribly wrong in 20th century.

Hillary won't win

It is just a gut feeling, but why do I feel that Hillary won't win the elections in the US? I just write it down here for the posterity and will check it after the 2008 elections.

A City Without the Ads, It can be Done

Sao Paolo Brazil has passed a law to clean up the city from any and all ads anywhere. On the buses, billboards, benches, etc.

Others dare to do this, and do it, why can't we in Toronto be like them? Look at Dundas Square in the heart of Toronto, supposedly the heart of Toronto. Nothing is more garrish and ugly than this square with huge ads and billboards all around it.


READ THE ARTICLE HERE

As I had Expected- Hamas and Fatah

As I had expected Hamas easily won the battle in Gaza. Hamas was elected by the people of Palestine in a free and fare elections that has the approval stamp of all the organizations that observed it. The corrupt Fatah did not like the defeat and unfortunately the dumb US policy supported Fatah. If Americans had not supported Fatah, had not stopped the international aid and tried to get rid of a legal government by all illegal means, Palestine would not have been in this mess now. But, the US government is doing the same dumb thing it always does. Supporting an unpopular group who now has seized power in a coup with total disregard for the people’s aspirations and decision. What will be the result? A long protracted civil war until the group favoured by people seizes power.

And shame on Canada, today they announced they support the coup government. I just don't understand these supposedly western democracies. They say they respect the will of people and rule of law and the election results. But when people vote for groups that these western powers dislike, then they become the sore losers and whine and complain and don't accept the result of the free elections they themselves were insisting on. Then... What do they expect? To be treated respectfully by those people? To be trusted?

They did the same thing with Algeria and condemned it to years of brutal bloody civil war. They support unpopular and corrupt dictatorships in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. And yet, they dare to lecture the world about democracy????

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This is from a post by a Palestinian from the occupied Jerusalem. It proves very well what the ordinary man in the street in Palestine thinks about the Fatah government now:

The Palestinian masses know very well what the US symbolize for them, their children and their enduring cause. It symbolizes oppression in its ugliest forms. It symbolizes mass murder, land theft, dispossession, deprivation and ultimate mendacity and hypocrisy. America is the enabler, sustainer and justifier of 40 years of Israeli Nazism whose ultimate goal is the obliteration of Palestinians as a nation, by arrogating their homeland for them and making their future as precarious as possible.

In short, America to the Palestinians is very much like what Nazi Germany was to the Jews. Hence, any government agreeing to throw itself into the American lap will lose its legitimacy if not its very existence. This is probably the reason why Palestinians in the Gaza Strip didn't fight for Muhammed Dahlan and his men.

Hamas and Fatah

Fatah and hamas are fighting it out for the control of Gaza strip. Years ago, when Hamas was just a very small and marginal group, Israel helped it to grow in the vain hope that it will destroy Fatah. Now it is happening. Apparently the Israelis brought a dragon into the wolf’s den(wolf from their viewpoint, not mine) to get rid of it, without thinking twice what will they do when the dragon has won and killed the wolf.

Now what they wished for is happening. But will it help the Israeli occupation? I doubt it. This dragon is 10 times more dangerous than the wolf it has replaced. Living side by side with a dragon is ten times more difficult than living near a wolf’s den. Hamas will win this battle if Fatah is not helped out by the reactionary Arab governments and the Saudi money. Americans and Israelis for the time being will watch the battle from the sides, not taking part, hoping on hope that both organizations will demise. It is a vain hope. Hamas will most probably win in the long term, and that will bring Palestinians one more step closer to freedom from the yoke of the Israeli oppression.

We Are All Parasites, But Wonderful Parasites

Apart from Plants, all other animals on this planet are just parasites; parasites on the body of plants. Plants are the only living things that produce their food directly from inanimate chemical ingredients. All the other animals depend on plants to survive and live. But what wonderful parasites are we! We are much more advanced and complex than the living things we rely upon to survive. Nearly most animals are so much more complex than plants. It seems that because plants, early on on the life of this planet, found out how to turn the sun's energy into food, just were satisfied and happy with this process and did not have the urge to evolve much. But look at any animal, the eyes, the ears, the muscles, the nerves, the brain, how complex did we become, just to survive among other parasites and beat them on our main pursuit, which is to compete to have food from the plants.

Wolves, prey and the human society

I was watching a beautiful National Geographic documentary about wolves. While watching how the wolves hunt their prey, it passed my mind how similar are we, the human society, to a pack of wolves and also their prey. All through the human history, a small pack of cruel Alpha males in the form of armed groups have done unimaginable cruelties to the huge masses of the people, and yet, like the prey, the masses never react. They just escape, are happy to be let to graze in peace from time to time, and when one of them is hunted down, they just watch from distance, breathing a sigh of relief that it was not them and promise themselves to be more submissive to escape the pack. While when you look at the herd, you see and know that this huge herd can easily get rid of the wolves if they unite and fight back instead of running away each for itself. But the sad fact is, the herd always escape instead of fighting back and getting rid of the wolves. Only in rare moments in history, during revolutions and mass uprisings, do the herd fight back, and each time, when they unite and fight, they win. It is just impossible not to win as long as you are united, as the herd is much larger and more powerful united than a small pack of "wolves".

Click Here to see the New ROM's Crystal's photos

ROM's Crystal opened on Sunday 3rd of June. It was open just for one day from 1am Sunday until 6pm. I was among the lucky few who managed to visit this gem of architecture and took photos of inside without the permanent exhibitions. The photos show the raw Crystal, only the spaces inside. It is amazing, I really loved the building. Minus some central spaces which seemed to be wasted, like corridors that end up right into the walls. To see the photos click on the title. Enjoy!

See how Heather Reisman the owner of Chapters/Indigo escapes the meeting with Nader