Behind the Scenes

These are the hard-working men behind the scenes of Mississauga's revival. And they were all set in place by the city's last mayor, Hazel McCallion.

The question is of course if this is a real revival, which I think it has the makings of, or if it just adding infrastructure to accommodate the unmentionable: increased immigration.

I think it will in some way sort itself out. If the city revives itself in a true sense: higher quality buildings, a "luxury mall" as Square One is being structured, improved landscaping and surroundings with better parks and recreational areas, but above all a with a Canadian perspective, then it will attract for a longer term those that can afford to stay not just for quick real estate flips (buying and selling), but those who would stay to buy good homes for their families.

I am seeing more of the latter, which to my observations looks less Asian (Chinese and Indian) and more white (possibly those attracted from nearby cities, including Toronto).

Let's hope so.


The Jubilee Garden is full of magnolia trees.


The C-Cafe, which is adjacent to the Jubilee Garden, has two industrious chefs, cooking up their appetizing meals on a daily basis. Here is one, barely visible, preparing a dish.


I keep thinking they're brothers. "Cousins?" I asked, but not even that. "Then they must be from the same Welsh town," I joked. They looked Welsh to me.


These are the groundsmen preparing the area for a new addition in the Jubilee Garden: The Hazel Tree, in honor of the former (last) Mayor Hazel McCallion. What an apt recognition. A tough nut to crack! I asked them what they were working on, and it seems they were told only a few days ago the nature of the project. "I got the scoop!" I joked.


And Andrew Wickens, Parks Manager for the City of Mississauga, was in the garden discussing with other officials some details ont he tree, and the surrounding magnolia trees. He was kind enough to stand for a photograph.

He will be responsible for the Hazel Tree.

Hazel McCallion as mayor of Mississauga, sitting in a council session

Hazel McCallion on Mississauga's growth:

Growing up:
Growth is good, says Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion - within limits

Full article at: Toronto Star, Mar 27 2013

Facing pressure under Ontario’s Places to Grow Act to house more of the GTA’s population boom, Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion is pushing back.

At city council Wednesday, McCallion said Mississauga has accepted the province’s mandated growth targets but will not accept decisions by the Ontario Municipal Board that allow developers to build beyond those targets. The spurt of highrise construction is hurting the city’s already overstretched infrastructure, she said.
“They can’t be playing around with our land use like they do,” McCallion said of the province and the OMB, which rules on municipal and planning disputes.

Council unanimously passed a motion asking that Ontario’s Planning Act be amended so developers cannot appeal city council decisions to the OMB, if the city’s official plan is in compliance with Ontario’s growth strategy. The strategy sets municipal density targets that aim to encourage cities to build up rather than out.

McCallion and other councillors said developers, seeing profits in building even higher, are simply going to the OMB whenever they want densities for projects increased. The OMB then uses the growth plan as the rationale for ruling in favour of the developers. The end result is often more lucrative for builders, but puts pressure on already overstretched municipal services.

For Mississauga’s motion to take effect, it would have to be endorsed by Queen’s Park.

Councillors cited a number of high-density projects in Mississauga over the past few years that residents and council, adhering to the city’s official plan, opposed. But developers eventually got their way at the OMB [Ontario Municipal Board], they said.

“I am really concerned about the increased densities … our (infrastructure) is not designed to take the climate change and the increased densities,” McCallion said.
She said the increased densities beyond what , Mar 27 2013has been planned will cost Peel Region “at least a billion dollars” to take care of the extra garbage alone.

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.

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

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rob Ford: Mayor of Vicious Toronto

Mayor Rob Ford in City Hall, lunging at Councillor Pam McConnell



Pam McConnell
No wonder Ford lunged at her. Who would want her around?

Pam McConnell is a limousine-lefty city counsellor (of the New Democratic Party). No wonder Ford wanted her out of his way. She is at the top of the "spending" bracket for Toronto's politicians. Ford is at the bottom.

The mayor of Toronto has become known to Americans mainly through CNN's obsessive reporting, and now through a Saturday Night Live spoof.

Basically, the mayor was caught in a crack cocaine bust, because of a video that the bunch of crack-smoking hoodlums with whom Ford was associated sold to a US blogger. Ford is not shown smoking crack.

Ford admitted to smoking crack once, although it is not clear if he did so during this up-for-sale photo shoot.



I should add that Ford used to coach inner-city black boys soccer. This photo could very well be one of his moments with his "gang."

In any case, Ford has been coming out in public denying allegations, and even weeping a little. Finally, Ford cleared the air and admitted that he smoked crack once, and that he is not an addict nor a repeat user.

His other folly is that he drinks a lot, and has been caught drunk on a couple of occasions. He also has a tendency to use swear words in some of his colorful retaliations.

Still, despite all this, he managed to turn around Toronto's economics, by actually saving the city money and leading it down a prosperous road. In fact, Toronto looks really good these days, with interesting restaurants sprouting up, a revamped shopping center at the Eaton Center, clean roads, and flower baskets on lamp posts along the main (and even side) streets.

For whatever reason, Ford is reacting very viscerally to all this. When he is not half-weeping in front of the camera, he is throwing fists at his adversaries.

And the media - left, right and center - is loving this.

I say, leave the guy alone. When left to his smarts, he does good things. Perhaps it is his home life that is in turmoil (although his wife is now dutifully appearing beside her man), or some other issue. But, Ford, although he admits he needs some counselling (for his temper, his alcohol drinking, for giving it to the media and his left-wing City Hall colleagues?), has said that he is not resigning, and will in fact run again at the next municipal elections.

Good for him.

There is a viciousness in Toronto politics, and generally Toronto life, where anyone remotely associated with a "right-wing" politics is deemed the anti-Christ. This leaves two options for the condemned: sit quietly and take it, or fight back as viciously as the adversaries. Ford decided to take the second route.

I think he'll be alright. He used to be a football player at one time, and he knows what fighting, and competition, is all about. I also think he will win in the next elections. The municipal elections will bring a large roster of candidates, and votes will be splintered between them. And I think Ford will amass enough votes to win. People like what he's doing for the city.

There was a time also when politicians were admired for any whisky drinking and cursing tendencies. A little red-blooded rowdiness never hurt anyone.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Handsome Kennedy Brothers

John, Robert and Edward Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts,
in July 1960 after John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for president.
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum

Chris Wallace, anchor of Fox News Sunday, presented John F. Kennedy's legacy on the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination in a panel discussion. Below is Wallace's interaction with Brit Hume, who was on the panel:

Chris Wallace: ...I think a fair reading of history would be that President Kennedy's promise exceeded his accomplishments, and perhaps, the most resonant thing was in fact his death. Why do people 50 years later care so much?

Brit Hume: I think he was the coolest president we ever had. He was just a cool guy and therefore, appealing [Note: I like Brit Hume, but he seems cursed with the adolescent vocabulary of our era. Why does he say "cool?" He could have stuck with "appealing" and made a more convincing point. Who wants a "cool" president?]

Chris Wallace: If you look at the pictures of him that we're running, he’s impossibly glamorous.

Brit Hume: Yes. No question. I think, however, that despite the thinness of the record that you just mentioned, that George mentioned, he has been the subject of the most successful public relations campaign in political history. The notion that he was a great president, indeed, perhaps, in some surveys he’s been listed the greatest president, is really a remarkable testament to the ability of those who have so admired him and others to have built this man's legend, and it is a legend bordering, I think, on myth.

Here is the video clip:



But, who doesn't want a handsome president running the country. All the Kennedy brothers were handsome, even the odd member, Edward Kennedy.

The Kennedy aesthetic gene went even further with JFK's son. Camille Paglia, the cultural critic, wrote several articles on the Kennedys, and especially Jackie Kennedy. About JFK Jr. she says:

In a certain way, John Kennedy Jr.'s beauty was a kind of narcissism. His physical perfection came from entrapment in a youthful persona.

John F. Kennedy Jr. in the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997,
two years before his death

Perhaps these Kennedys' potentials were cut short with assassinations and careless accidents. Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated, five years after his brother. And death followed another Kennedy brother, Ted Kennedy. A young woman who was with him in his car, died after he drove the car off a bridge, and this only a year after his brother Bobby was assassinated.

How could these Princes of Camelot disappoint us?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Response to: Women as Public Figures: Why it Doesn't Work

Diana West beint interviewed at the Presidential Speakers Series

Tiberge from GalliaWatch wrote a post on women as public figures here.

I was recently discussing the evil Angelina Jolie, and the horror she has inflicted on us, and most terribly, on a whole generation of young women who want to emulate her. I think Tiberge's comments on her are exactly right.

She agrees with my views on Diana West and Pamela Geller, who are Of course, not on the same level as Jolie, but who nonetheless inhabit the world of women as public figures.

On women in general, Tiberge wrote:

It's difficult to criticize a person's appearance. I feel uncomfortable doing it, so I keep it to a minimum. Lawrence Auster did it all the time, and sometimes I felt he went much too far, attributing an entire gamut of psychological traits to a person based on one photo.

I have to disagree. There are certainly many uncontrollable elements when one's photo is taken, but we still have control over a lot. We decide what to wear, how to pose, whether to smile or to scowl, how we groom ourselves (make-up, hairstyle), and we can even control with whom we have the photo taken. The ultimate decision is ours, unless we live in some kind of totalitarian gulag. If we don't like the photo, we can ask to have it removed from a public posting, and if that is not possible, write a statement that it wasn't our decision to have that (unflattering) photo taken in the first place.

So, if we as ordinary citizens can do all that, more important figures have more power over the dissemination of their image and to present the kind of image they want disseminated. And ultimately, their responsibility is also larger, and hence their damage potentially greater.

And writers also have some kind of duty to call them out on this. If these public figures claim to represent us, then they should represent us properly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------