Elenitica: August 2011

Factory by Erik Hart

Personal favourite at the moment the 2011 Fall collection; Factory by Erik Hart. They are simplistic, well cut, minimalist and sophisticated designs and best of all incredibly affordable.

Enough to make your heart skip a beat..

You can buy it here at Oak NYC.

Adidas history

The company was founded by Adolf (Adi) Dassler, who started making shoes in the 1920s with the help of his brother Rudolf Dassler who later put the basis for the rival shoe company Puma. Adi Dassler's aim was to provide every athlete with the best sport equipment and based his work on designing the best sport shoes, protecting the athlete from injury, and making the product durable.

For many years, the only symbol associated with Adidas was the trefoil (flower) logo design. The leaves stand for the Olympic spirit, with links to the three continental plates. In 1972, the trefoil was set as the official corporate logo design.

Thesis Social Jam Session

We are coming in bigger, better and fresher, with a new set up and bigger sound. TSJS is going to give the spring/summer something fresh to the urban youth of JHB in large. This line up is sure to give people the growing sound of one of South Africa’s premium artists beyond the television screen. Motlatsi and the Dark knights make a gracious welcome back to grace the stage of TSJS.

Trevor the Japanese is kicking off the day with some laid back downtempo sounds that will keep the masses chilled to the sunset vibe that he will be bringing. Soulostarr swings onto the tables on that glitch-hop, breaks and soul vibe that he is introducing to the people of JHB and Soweto in large. Playkaystat is the prodigal son of the session and he will be bringing something soulful.

Live Act

Motlatsi and the Dark Knights

DJ Line up

Trevor the Japanese

Soulostarr

Playkaystat

Details

Date: 04 September 2011

Price: R30

Venue: Thesis Concept Store, Mofolo Village Soweto

Adidas Bus (Adibus) is coming to the next Thesis Social Jam Session

Adidas Originals

An extensive campaign was launched in 2008 to promote the label. "Adidas Originals invites today’s lifestyle consumers to Celebrate Originality through an exceptional brand campaign and a variety of product themes inspired by the rich sporting heritage of Adidas and the global reach of the Trefoil.

Nicknamed the Adibus, it features the classic blue and white logo and three stripes and is kitted out with an on-board photo booth, sound and screens. The bus showcases Adidas Originals exclusive ranges, while the latest collections are presented on-screen: the Denim, Blue and ST ranges, and Jeremy Scott’s and David Beckham’s collections.

Whittaker Chambers: The Cancer Eating the West.

(Some explanatory notes. Chambers considered Socialism, Leftism of any kind and Communism to be essentially the same ideologies, differing only in the practical means of implementing their vision)

This is the fact which absolutely sunders the mind of the Communist from the traditional mind of the West-which makes him in the mass a new breed in history. For our breeds, in this sense, are defined by the view we hold, unconsciously or not, of the world and its meaning, and the meaning of our lives in it. Obviously, a breed of men who hold that everything is in violent flux and change, moving by laws and in a pattern inherent in matter, and having nothing to do with God-obviously, that breed of men is different in kind from the rest of mankind. It is closest, in our time, to the viewpoint of the scientist for whom a simple, solid chair represents a form of energy whose particles, seemingly solid and commonplace, are in fact in violent motion. This, incidentally, rather than the "Progressive" elements in Communism which are usually brought forward in such cases, is the instant point of appeal which Communism so often has for the scientists of the West. They feel in Communism the force of a faith based on a material reality which more or less matches their own vision of reality. It is an abstruse view, and the scientists who hold it are lonely men, since the masses of the West cannot possibly understand or sympathize with what the scientists are talking about. The intelligent Communist knows exactly what they are talking about though he may know little or nothing about abstruse physics. Similarly, the scientist may know little or nothing about the niceties of dialectical materialism. Yet each senses that the other's basic view of reality is much the same. The affinity is strong.

This process in history, and this view of it, Communists call dialectical materialism (or, in that Communist shorthand that we commonly call jargon, Diamat). It is dialectic because it deals with quantities of force in motion, sometimes violent, sometimes gradual. It is called materialism because the Communist mind, like the scientific mind, rejects any supernatural factor in his observation of experience. In short, God is rigorously excluded from the equations of changing force in which the Communist mind tirelessly seeks to grasp, to express, and to act on history at any and every moment.

To try to explain Communism and the Communist while ignoring dialectical materialism is like trying to explain a man's actions while leaving out the chief clue to his mind and his motives and general viewpoint. Dialectical materialism is the central fact of Communism. Every Communist is a dialectical materialist. Ultimately, be cannot be understood in any other terms. This does not mean that all Communists are consistent or successful dialecticians. There are millions of Communists in the world and they show the same gradations of intelligence and character as millions of anybody else. There are millions of Christians, too, of whom only a comparative handful are theologians (Communists say: theoreticians). The mass of Christians is held together by a faith in what suffices to explain to them the meaning of their lives and history, although even highly intelligent communicants may be quite vague about the doctrines of their faith, or even specific articles of it. This is made possible because the center of efficacy of their faith is the Cross, using that symbol in its most inclusive sense. The Cross makes them one in faith even though at thinner fringes of Christendom the efficacy of the Cross is questioned or tends to fade. In much the same Way, dialectical materialism is the effective force of Communism, and even when understanding is weak or lacking, it operates as a faith which explains satisfactorily to millions of Communists the meaning of life and history-reality, as Communists say. By this they always mean reality in a state of flux, usually violent. Dialectical materialism is the crux of Communism, and not to understand this means never truly to understand the Communist.

Chambers here clearly puts forward his proposition that what separates the Left from the Right is the metaphysical vision of man. The Leftist vision of man is that of a machine which responds to physical forces which themselves are a product of circumstances. It follows therefore that a man's behaviour may be predicted, in the same way the same way we can make other scientific predictions, by analysing the forces in play at any given moment. There is no free will, there is no choice, only the arrangement of matter responding to temporal forces.

Evil, according to the atheist, is a product of circumstances which are either exogenous such as poverty, violence and oppression or endogenous such as genetics. The social desire to get rid of evil hence resolves around social programs to eliminate social evils, the other stream of leftism (fascism and its crytpo vairant, HBD worship) seeks to eliminate it through better breeding and facilitation of evolution. It's really a testimony to just how much Kool-Aid Western Society has drunk when Fascist and Socialist are seen as the polarities of Right and Left when in reality they are factions of the same team, the materialist vision of man has utterly permeated the ideology of West.

It is this materialist ideology which is corroding the west. Lots of well meaning Righties feel that if abortion could be could be made illegal, porn blocked on the internet and the tax rate lowered that all would be right, but it wouldn't. In the next election the people would rebel, and those laws would be repealed, since the current laws reflect the wishes of the people. That's not to say that legislative reform would not stem the tide for a bit, but inevitably the slide would continue. You can't force virtue onto people, people have got to take it on board themselves.

There is no technological fix which will remedy the corruption of the bankers and politicians, you simply need honest men who are prepared to pay the price. What does it matter if your country can push the world around whilst at home you wife is sleeping with next door neighbour, your kid is a sleazy realtor and your daughter a stripper? The structure is corrupting from the inside. Moral relativism, which flows from atheism, is the poison of the West. There is no political arrangement which will save the West because the salt has lost its saltiness.

MBFF Emerging Designer Show.

Snaps from the MBFF emerging designer show. More impressive then the graduate show and exciting for Brisbane as some of the designs will be available in store soon. My personal favourite from the show was the Soot. Collection.

For more photos from the event, see my facebook page here.

Line 1: Soot.

Line 2: Thousand Dancers

Line 3: Sharka Bosakova, Kip & Brand

MBFF Graduate of the Year.

Snap shots of the MBFF Westfield Chermside Graduate of the Year show from last weeks events. I have to admit out of all the years I have been attending I was a little disappointed this year. Whilst some of the collection were excellent (the girl who won deserved to) there were others that were ordinary and a little bit boring. What once was unique and innovative is now becoming mainstream and almost typical of graduate/emerging designers. I was really hoping to see something different this year. Interestingly enough, two of the finalists were also from project runway.

For more pictures from the evening (I took an obscene amount) please go check them out on my facebook page here.

I held my breath as I watched the models walk down the run way in these shoes. Can anyone explain to me why they have used sticky tape around the middle of them ? My theory was was possibly for extra support ? Beats me as to why the designer picked them if that's the case.

1. Shenaz Engineer

2. Rachel Perks

3. Emily Walters

Can Communities Reclaim the Right to Say "No" to Corporations?

YES! Magazine / By Mari Margil

4 COMMENTS

Many communities trying to stop fracking, drilling, or big box stores out are finding they don't have the legal right to say no. So they are trying to change the structure of law.

August 24, 2011 |

It's no wonder that many communities want nothing to do with the natural gas drilling procedure known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

The practice, which involves pumping chemical-laced water underground at high pressure, results in millions of gallons of frack wastewater that's been found to contain dangerous levels of radioactivity, carcinogenic chemicals, and highly corrosive salts. Last year, 16 cattle died after being exposed to the wastewater; a famous scene in the documentary Gasland shows a resident lighting his tap water on fire.

But communities trying to protect their drinking water from fracking haven't found it at all easy to do.

No Right to Self-Government?

In June, the city council of Morgantown, West Virginia--which draws its drinking water from the Monongahela River, just downstream of a new natural gas well--passed a ban on horizontal drilling and fracking within one mile of city limits. Two days later, a company seeking to drill sued Morgantown, claiming that because drilling is regulated by the state, it wasn't within the city's authority to keep fracking out.

In August, a circuit court agreed, invalidating the city's ordinance. In her decision, Judge Susan Tucker ruled that municipalities are but "creatures of the state" without jurisdiction to legislate on drilling or fracking within their borders. Tucker further wrote that "the State's interest in oil and gas development and production throughout the State...provides for the exclusive control of this area of law to be within the hands" of the state of West Virgina. The environmental concerns of the residents of Morgantown, she determined, were not relevant to her ruling.

Morgantown is far from the only town to have discovered that it doesn't seem to have the legal authority to say "no" to drilling and fracking. When communities try to exercise such authority to protect themselves, they are met with threats of corporate lawsuits and state efforts to override their decisions.

Why is it that cities and towns facing the direct impacts of these and a wide range of other harmful corporate activities do not have the authority to determine whether they should occur? How is it that corporate directors who live hundreds if not thousands of miles away--working hand-in-hand with the state and federal officials that residents often expect to protect them--are able to override local, democratic decision making like Morgantown's?

Since the early part of the 19th Century, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted ever-expanding rights and protections to business corporations under the Commerce and Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Corporations use these "rights"--originally intended for actual people--to challenge laws protecting the environment and public health.

At the state level, once an activity is deemed a "legal use," communities are legally prohibited from banning it. Legal uses include everything from drilling and fracking to factory farming and corporate water bottling projects. When state governments legally authorize corporations to conduct fracking, they simultaneously prohibit communities from saying "no" to it.

When a community finds itself facing fracking and drilling, it learns that its municipal powers are very limited, largely confined to influencing site selection by zoning. If it attempts to use zoning to ban drilling or another legal use, it finds itself violating the corporation's "right" under the law.

This is why communities engaged in traditional "site fights"--trying to stop an unwanted corporate project by appealing state-issued regulatory permits that allow corporations to site a new drill well, factory farm, Walmart, or other unwanted activity--are relegated to fighting about limiting traffic, noise, or odor, instead of about whether the activity should be allowed to occur at all.

Communities are therefore left with a choice. They can fight the traditional site fight, or they can decide to take a different approach, one that challenges the fundamental structure of law that allows corporate interests to override the best interests of people, communities, and nature.

To read the rest of this interesting article:

http://www.alternet.org/story/152167/can_communities_reclaim_the_right_to_say_%22no%22_to_corporations?page=entire

This is how I Lomo.

Been a while since I did a photography post.

These are a couple of images that I took on my Lomography Diana F+.

Whittaker Chambers: The failure of Conservatism.

(Germany's children are starving, 1924. Kathe Kollwitz)

In the years when Communism was advancing successfully against the West there were those who believed that its disruptive power was its power to manipulate a Fifth Column composed of non-Soviet Communists, sympathizers, fellow travellers, dupes, opportunist politicians, hitchhiking with Communism as they would in any other vehicle that seemed to be going part of their way-in short, the kind of debris and dust that almost anything with sufficient gravitational pull attracts and keeps whirling around it. I held that such elements, while dangerous, were not Communism's chief power in the West. I held that power to be something else-the power of Communism to manipulate responsive sections of the West to check counteract, paralyze, or confuse the rest. 'nose responsive sections of the West were not Communist, and never had been. Most of the minds that composed them thought of themselves as sincerely anti-Communist. Communism manipulated them, not in terms of Communism, but in terms of the shared historical crisis-peace and social justice being two of the most workable terms. They were free to denounce Communism and Communists (and also anti-Communists) after whatever flourishes their intellectual innocence or arrogance might choose. Communism asked no more. It cared nothing, at this point, about motives. It cared about results.

Unlike Communism, the West held no unified solution for the crisis. In face of the crisis, part of the West reacted with inertia- inertia, in the simple terms of the physics primer, that is, the tendency of a body to remain at rest or in a straight line of motion. But the responsive section offered a solution for the crisis. This solution, whatever differences it assumed from place to place and time to time, whatever disguises Political expediency or preference draped or phrased it in, was always the same solution. It was the socialist solution.[Ed] Derived, as doctrine, from the same source-the historical insights of Karl Marx-the socialist solution differed from the Communist solution chiefly in political methods. One difference consisted in the slower rate of speed at which socialism proposed to apply its solution. Another difference concerned the kind and degree of coercion that socialism would apply to impose its solution. In practice, no socialist government had yet pushed its solution to the point where full coercion must come into play. Therefore, this difference bad not yet stood the test of reality. Otherwise, between the end solution that socialism and Communism both hold in view for mankind-the matured planned economy of the future-the difference was so slight that it would be difficult to slip a razor blade between them.

(Whittaker Chambers. Cold Friday)

Conservative thinkers do not spend much time dwelling on why leftism has made such inroads into society which I think has been a fundamental error in conservative thought. Instead they spend their time try to combat the spread head on, instead of trying to tackle the pathology at its source.

As mentioned previously by Chambers, Socialism (and its bastard brother Fascism) did not arise in a vacuum, rather they were a cognitive response to the social crises of the times. They were an attempt to solve the problem and hence were proactive remedial proscriptions and offered hope. The fact that they were eventual quack remedies is irrelevant in terms of their effect to elicit societal transformation, since what they offered was hope to multitudes in a promise for a better world.

People just fail to understand how bad life was for the bottom rungs of society in the late 19th Century. The massive migrations to the New World by Europe's poor, hungry and homeless masses, in age where ship travel was risky business, and return was very difficult, illustrates just how much people wanted to escape the social situation of the times and just how intense the pressures were. The great migrations of the English to the New World was testament to just how crap life was like in ye Old England. The same could be said for all of Europe.

Chamber's astute observation was in recognising that traditional Europe's response to this problem was nothing: inertia. It resisted any form of change.

Socialism offered a quack solution for the problem, but it did offer a solution. Most men are not profound or elaborate thinkers, judging things by their appearance instead of their true nature's, and faced by a choice of a traditional miserable life or promise for a bright future, it was a no-brainer for most men. To passionate believers in Socialism, Conservatism became the enemy whilst to the less passionate, Conservatism became irrelevant.

Now Chambers appears to have had a different view of conservatism than many conservatives have of it;

I think I have gone beyond the conservative position. I have found that behind it lies something much more steadfast-the conservative spirit, or, if you will, the conservative principle. Ages change, politics shift and slither-the conservative spirit does not change. It adjusts because it is a summation of human wisdom, and in a sense organic, it looks from the fastness of life, and bends or yields to what is passing, but maintains, as the light shines in darkness, what is everlasting because it partakes of it itself.

Note that Chambers felt that conservatism was adaptable whilst keeping a core essence, he was no traditionalist. For Chambers, the traditional conservative position, which was both unyielding and inflexible, was part of the root cause of the crises, the festering sore which seeked a remedy, even a quack one.

Chambers' position however raises an interesting theoretical question. How much can conservatism change before it ceases being conservative? Chambers seems to allude to some underlying "core principle" which underpinned a degree of flexibility. I think Chambers is partially right here in identifying that conservatism is flexible to a degree as opposed to traditionalism which isn't. The mistake I think that traditionalists make is taking the form of conservatism at a particular point of time
and mistaking it as its substance, conservatism is far deeper.

Where I disagree with Chambers is where he places the locus of this Conservatism, seeing it a summantion of human wisdom. This may of been the case in Ancient Rome or Greece, but it is not the Conservatism of the West. The Conservatism of the West is a Christian Conservatism and hence its underlying principle is Christian. If I had to identify this inflexible core in Christian Conservatism it would be rooted in Caritas, the stuff of God operating in Man. Christian conservatism as such is an expression of Caritas. The word is frequently translated into English as Charity or Love, but I feel that it something more ecompassing than the limits that these words place it on it. At its essence, it is not only goodness itself, but in act which flows from it. Caritas is the inflexible principle of conservatism. Local and temporal contingencies will affect the expression of Caritas but its underlying nature will remain the same.

The Christian religions teach that Caritas is a grace given to man by God and its also why there will be no Western revival without a bended knee. No Caritas, no West. It's as simple as that.

They baaaack!!!!

if there's one thing you'll see in the streets: is these hats! they've done for the passed 3 years & in over 50 colours. In a more fashionable term they called bucket hats! Here in the hood they called spoties! worn by hustlers & thugs, in the golden days. since then the days have gotten even brighter & now when you want to look cool, get yourself 1! dankie bade!

NB: someone hala at spkiri to hook himself up with one or two or three! ;-)

slick embroidery

did i tell you they reversable! 2 hats for the price of 1

even little man is in on the whole thing!

They go for R80, qha!

MBFF Outfit Post.

Tuesday night I attended the Fashion Graduate and Emerging Designers Show at Brisbane's MBFF. It was a fantastic night, made even better by our front row seating. I look forward to sharing some photos of my favourite designs with you this week.

Top: SportsGirl

Pants: Zara

Vest: Zara

Shoes: Zara

Cuffs: H & M

Thank you Suzie for your photography skills !

Whittaker Chambers. Conservatism in the Age of Machines.

September 1954

Dear Willi:

History tells me that the rock-core of the Conservative Position, or any fragment of it, can be held realistically only if conservatism will accommodate itself to the needs and hopes of the masses-needs and hopes, which like the masses themselves are the product of machines. For, of course, our fight, as I think we said, is only incidentally with socialists or other heroes of that kidney. Wesentlich[Ed:fundamentally], it is with machines. A conservatism that cannot face the facts of the machine and mass production, and its consequences in government and politics, is foredoomed to futility and petulance. A conservatism that allows for them has an eleventh-hour chance of rallying what is sound in the West......

[Ed: Chambers here discusses some contemporary aspects of rural socialism]

The machine has done this. But every one of my indicted neighbors has sold off his horses and rides his tractor, and sends soil samples to the state college to learn how to up his yields. And not one of them has the slightest intention of smashing his machines or going back to horses and moderate yields-because machine farming is one reality that he can see and feel. Moreover, each knows how absurd it would be for him alone to buck the trend-he would be ploughed under by those who would not go along. The mass of farmers will keep their tractors, and milk more and more cows, until they drop of heart attacks. Only, they will not cut back. Therefore, the machine has made the economy socialistic.

A conservatism that will not accept this situation must say: "We are reactionary in the literal sense. To be logical, we must urge you farmers to smash your machines (not sell them off, but smash them, and buy no more). For, otherwise, you will always get what you wanted; while what you do not want (restrictions, the end of the private domain) will be the literal reaping of what you sowed." But a conservatism that would say that is not a political force, or even a twitch: it has become a literary whimsy.

.....[Ed:Chambers makes some more comments on rural Socialism in America].........

As you know, most factory workers are farmers manques. Moreover, they rocked to the factories in the first place because even the industrial horrors of the nineteenth century seemed preferable to more than ten hours of haying in a shriveling sun, or cows going bad with garget. I worked the hay load last night against the coming rain-by headlights, long after dark. I know the farmer's case for the machine and for the factory. And I know, like the cut of hay-bale cords in my hands, that a conservatism that cannot find room in its folds for these actualities is a conservatism doomed to petulance and dwindling-first unreality and then defeat. Let the conservative fill barley sacks behind the moving combine for even eight hours in a really good sun, and then load them, 100 , 150 lb. bags, until midnight and he will learn more about the realities of rural socialism (and about the realities of conservatism) than he could ever glean from the late, ever to be honored Robert Taft.

and in a letter to William Buckley(not in the book Cold Friday) he wrote.

The Republican Party [and by implication the conservative movement) will become like one of those dark little shops which apparently never sell anything. If, for any reason, you go in, you find, at the back, an old man, fingering for his own pleasure some oddments of cloth (weave and design of 1850). Nobody wants to buy them, which is fine because the old man is not really interested in selling. He just likes to hold and to feel. As your eyes become accustomed to the dim kerosene light, you are only slightly surprised to see that the old man is Frank Meyer.

(Rather apropos with respect to this article at the Front Porch republic which deals with some of the problems of contemporary conservatism. (Intelligent comments thread there) Hat tip, Throne and Altar)

Just as modern life support machines and transplant technologies raise new issues with regard to medical ethics, so did the social changes bought about by technological invention bring forth new social pressures, which may have existed previously but became concentrated to new levels by the massive urbanisation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Vogue.com.au

Just going to take this opportunity for a bit of self gloating. As you know I attended YEDP last week but this morning I had the pleasure of finding some of my photographing from the evening on Vogue.com.au. I'm just a little fish in a big pond so I am rather proud of this. All my thanks must again go to felix & slink for so kindly inviting me to attend the event.

Make sure you all check out the actual link to see more photos from the night and also the video here which is also fantastic!

Lulu lusting.

Can't remember your anniversary and want some special someone to casually remind you forever?

How about wearing your special digits in 14k gold.

Totally lusting on these bad boys by Lulu Frost.

Also a great idea for milestone birthday's... shame I won't be having another one for a while.

Whittaker Chambers: The Dying West.

For some must at last have eyes to see the plain fact that the revolutionary proletariat in the West (including Russia) is not, and never has been, a factory proletariat. The forces of revolution in the West are an intellectual proletariat, disinherited, not in this world's goods with which they are often incongruously replete, but disinherited in the spirit. The revolt of the intellectuals of the West almost without exception begins (no matter how it ends) as the frantic threshing of those drowning in the materialism of the West, a convulsive struggle against the death of the spirit. This is the answer to the fatuous, reiterated question why men like Arthur Koestler or Whittaker Chambers became Communists. For the differences in background, which the shallow world magnifies, are trifling compared to that convulsion of the drowning spirit which carried us, and men like us (each in his own individual way with his own individual rationalization) into Communism, and which makes a second death for those who, recognizing at last that Communism is itself evil, must burst from that second drowning back into a West which has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Hateful home truths! For they invite the West to stop looking at Communism and look into itself. Hateful home truths! (I said them all in Witness.) "Communism is never stronger than the failure of all other faiths"; "Men are by nature conservative; they become revolutionists only by despair"; "Communism did not attract, it repelled me; I became a Communist to escape the dying West."

Whittaker Chambers, Cold Friday

Over the last few days my curiosity has been directed toward the history of Fascism. Wikipaedia has a rather good summary on the subject and more importantly, the article has good summary of the on intellectual atmosphere of the times in which the ideology was in gestation. It's important to note that Fascism, like Communism was a response to the social crises of the time. Its aim was to improve the lot of the proleterait. The proletariat, being who they are, were not able to organise themselves, and as such, the response to the crises was organised by the intellectuals of society. Where the Communists and Fascists differed is on how to implement the improvement. Both parties carried on the tradition of the French Revolution, in that the solution to the problem was through a reorganisation of society. The important point here being that both movements were meant to fix the social problems of times.

Both movements had their intellectual origins in the prevailing fads of the times. The influence of Darwin and Nietzsche molded the Fascists whilst the influence of Marx and Engels and Comte influenced the Communists and Socialists. Both movements had rejected God and consequentially the limits that this places on human action. But to think that the problem of fascism and Communism is solely a problem of atheism is the misdiagnose the pathology. The birth of both these malignant ideologies were contingent on the festering sore of widespread poverty in traditional society.

Many people wonder how someone like Hitler could sway the German populace. Various idiotic theories are put forward to explain the phenomenon however it needs to be remembered that Hitler's was a product of the social disintegration of the times (as predicted by Keynes) Hitler's appeal to the Germans lay in the fact that he delivered. He revitalised industry and hence employment, repudiated Versailles, restored national pride, got rid of people that the populace did not like, improved the rights of workers, organised regular holidays for them and generally improved the lot for the average German. For the poor family man, the tradeoff in civil liberties was worth it if his family were not going to starve. After Hitler, the streets were safer, there was work, the nation had a renewed pride and a sense of optimism prevailed. The traditionalist response to Hitler was to turn the clock back, to the way things were. Faced with a failing old world and the promise of a working new, people abandoned the old, enthusiastically. Of course, any pact with the devil will end badly, but most people live a day to day existence and only a very few could see the inevitable end of Nazism.

What I'm trying to get at is that is the old world had festering sores and Conservative attempts to turn the clock back to the way things were will re-open those same sores. All was not right in "ye days of old" despite what traditionalists preached. Conservatives then, need to re-appraise traditional society and work out where they went wrong with regard to the management of it. What Conservatism needs, if it is to survive, is to ditch traditionalism and embrace dynamic Conservatism, a Conservatism that does not deny the truth.

A classic example of this was G.K. Chesterton. No man who has ever read Orthodoxy can accuse Chesterton of being anti-Christian or Anti-West. Still, this passage at the end of What's Wrong with the World is hardly traditionalist:

I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization.[Ed:]

Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.

That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.

– What’s Wrong with the World (1910).

The old world was sick and needed fixing, despite what the traditionalists said. The few conservatives who were doing some thinking, like Chesterton, were ignored by both the traditionalists and the radicals. The rest they say is history.

Soweto travel guide for dummies

Just in case you are contemplating how to work your hand signs on the streets; to come through to the Store to get the best out of Concept of clothing & lifestyle. Or the 1st Sunday of the month; to dance & sing along to angels of melodies. Might sound magical; it probably has been for a lot of people who have been to the promised!

Hand signs are & have been a way of communication amongst human & animals at large! If that person can’t hear you: throw a hand sign.... no matter the situation! A gesture or feelings can be expressed by using, just hand signs to show what we mean! So you can use your hands to travel from point A to B or Z (maybe if you really lucky). In other countries; they have just 1 sign to prove their street cred! Well, here we got lots of signs to get just about everywhere in the country & I think it was very creative of us to actually come up with such cool hand signs; fit for kings & queens of the streets!

so if you've never been here, this'll probably be what you'll be travelling in & couple of ways how to get you to us from different parts around the Soweto & Joburg city:

Transport!

Squantaquanta aka Quantum. wich you will most likely to get on the streets of Jozi or kasi!

this means you going to Soweto from Joburg or you going to Joburg from Soweto! same sign morning & night. Mofolo; Dube, Diepkloof, Phiri, Mapetla, Zola, Emdeni!

this one will take you around Joburg & to another taxi rank there; where there's other taxis to more places you can ever imagine! if you in Soweto it will take you to Chris Hani Hospital(the biggest hospital in the southern hemisphere)& to its biggest taxi rank in the world!

this is local! it does not mean you are a local, but you're local: in & around Joburg City! in & around Soweto!

model: the finger of itjo!!!!

Soweto Sunday

get your hair did!

round up with the lord G.O.D

singing for the love

never mess with Sowetans on a Sunday! if you have a friend there, chances are they up in arms praising till the sun goes down!

YEDP Wrap up 2011.

At the Copa, Copacabana

Music and passion were always the fashionAt the Copa....they fell in love

On Tuesday the 16th of August I had the greatest pleasure of attending the felix & slink 2011 YEDP party. I have been anticipating this event all year and put it on my calendar as a "must attend" social event. This is the second year that felix & slink have hosted the event and as an attendee at last years launch, can I just say that the event went from mediocre to mind blowing and one giant leap. Initial impressions as I walked out onto the balcony of the Queensland State Library was that I had been teleported from Brisbane to New York. This gig was smart, sophisticated and stylish and I had to resist all temptations to break out into a Cha-Cha mid -conversation with people.

This event was the perfect opportunity to rub shoulders with some of Brisbane's best in the industry, and its not every day that opportunities like this arise. Congratulations felix & slink for paving the way for Brisbane. I challenge any agency, model management company or local fashion label to throw a soiree like this one, because Brisbane needs it .... badly!