Preoccupations of a Great Leader

I’m not talking about Justin Trudeau. He’s not a leader let alone a great leader. I’m referring instead to the Hillary and Bill Clintons, the Bush Family,  Donald Trump and Melania and Ivanka family.  These are like the kings and queens of old.  Putin and Xi Ling are like them as was King Henry and Churchill and so many of the leaders of history, like Constantine and Ataturk.

They shared in common an appreciation for the land where they lead and the people of the land.  Today we attribute this to the aboriginals but it’s universal. The Scottish people identified with Scotland.  Not as a nation but as a place. Like Indians and Chinese and Nepalese do. Just like Kenyans and Chileans.  They identify with the slant of the sun, the taste of air , the mountains or valleys , the waterways , the accent of the people, their tribal associations.  We think of the song lines of the Australian aboriginals but these are true of all the tribal people and the clans that followed and the people that lived under all the great political associations that used these originals relationships to strive for bigger and better things. The family company becomes the corporations. The corporation continues to look to authority of the original individual and family that began the firm.  Identification with these large groups gives meaning to lives.  But fundamentally it’s where we are born and where are people are from. 

The great leaders of the world identified with the land and the people they lead.  Next they worried a whole lot about living long and well.  The longevity of a leader isn’t always that great.  Lieutenants, lowliest of military leaders, were dying in minutes coming off helicopters.  Snipers always try to kill the leader.  Assasins go for them too.  A great leader has great enemies.  Look at Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama if you don’t like the idea of looking at Mr. Stalin and Mr. Hitler. The latter lost whereas the former two survived their rule.  The winner writes history.  The world is continuing to live according to the military leaders of WWII, England, America, Russia, France and China.  

The great leader knows his or her survival depends on the survival of his land and people. So great leaders have always focussed on defence. Sometimes like Israel’s Ben Gurion, a great leader can not only protect it’s borders and hold onto it’s land and people, He canexpand it’s defensive perimeter to greater advantage and protection.  The son of a wealthy father is expected to hold the father’s gains but too often in that microcosm it’s rags to riches in one generation then riches to rags in the next 2 or 3.  This issue of maintenance of wealth not increasing wealth but just holding on takes an enormous effort by a leader.  There is a constant struggle for domination.. Even the Dalai Lama’s peace loving people couldn’t stand up to the murdering unevolved communist thugs of China  who invaded Tibet. China, that running dog imperialist, invaded , colonized Tibet  and genocides his people.  China just keeps right on doing it too. The red hair of the Irish came from the constant invasion of Ireland  by the Vikings have the red hair genes, and happily raped and stole, even though the editors of Huffington Post say that’s not nice.  That’s been going on forever. Raids and pillage and theft. Rape is popular especially with the religion of peace. All of the Middle East was Christian or Zoroastrian before today’s religion of peace. White farmers are being butchered daily in the enlightened South Africa.

Of course the “ better sort “ don’t do this but their proxies might..  It’s strategy and tactics and takes enormous time and energy. Most of information is sought to protect against rebellion or invasion.  This is why it’s called ‘intelligence’.  Our autoimmune systems work in the same way and require a tremendous amount of the body’s time and energy. Just maintaining the status quo isn’t easy.  It’s not necessarily natural either. Neutrality may be desired but the Nazis, Communist aetheists, pagans  and countless religious radicals and their religions of the day haven’t been keen to leave well enough alone if there’s gold and land to be had along with virgins and slaves. All Utopian seekers are even more disastrous and wasteful than the real politic sort. 

The great leaders can’t be smoking dope all day or doing opium or getting drunk in the morning. They can’t be living in the brothels or living a profligate life. Even Justin Trudeau has minders who ensure their puppet shows up relatively present despite the great number of occasions he’s acted and looked like he’s still recovering from a night of debauchery. He’s not a great leader.  Great leaders must have self control in action though as we saw with the great leader Krushchev they can really act a part when they need to. Unfortunately Trudeau can’t even act. Reagan could at least do that. 

 All great leaders historically have played their cards close to their chest because the world stage, politics and law, is a gambler’s game.  It’s all smoke and mirrors.  The great leader is a diplomat has the capacity to mobilize his own people. While in other fields of endeavour ‘transparency’ is the best, not in war, not in gambling.  Perhaps not in the pseudowar of diplomacy and sales even.  There’s a whole lot of drama and sleight of hand.  Mr. Chrétien, one of Canada’s great leaders, concealed his immense intelligence so as not to alienate the common man.  Unfortunately Trudeau has alienated all men and most women by not concealing his immense stupidity.

A great leader is busy and working and on call. He’s 24/7 at the helm. I don’t know where people get the idea that these people are living it up and walking on easy street. Even Trudeau a mere puppet whose been replaced wherever his handlers could do it with cut out dolls, has to maintain a tough schedule which has obviously been so overwhelming that he’s had more holidays scheduled than any leader I can think of. They’re probably mental health days in his case but they are exceptional.  By contrast great leaders must show up and be meeting and greeting and discussing and arranging and stroking this ego and putting down that ego every day of their reigns.  They’re constantly hounded too like celebrities without the benefit that celebrities have of just having to be pretty idiots at times.  The best of celebrities are like great leaders who are always working the room.  It’s not a pretty task. It’s not an easy task. It’s not a whole lot of couch and tv time.

The lower classes by contrast have a lot of down time. They go to work and they come home and they have time off. The greatest time for many was medieval so called dark age days when people did the same thing their father and grandfather did and the bar was pretty low except for taxes, disease and war.  Malthus times.  But there was job security and the wives didn’t leave you for lesbian lovers and the kids didn’t burn down the schools. It really once wasn’t so bad because there was that much change. Right now Canadians even those designated as in poverty have a higher standard of living than most of our earth’s population. The thousands of dollars which even a person on disability here can have and make is more than billions will ever have. There’s upward mobility here which is simply not possible in countries as corrupt as Haiti where the Clinto billions disappeared mysterious as so much money goes missing in that other great Banking Bermuda Triange, Pakistan. 

It really helped too in th peen days if your job was to plant things and you had a hundred IQ then planting things was satisfying. Today with the advent of computers and competition with robots and every other person on the planet in the great internet connection if your IQ is only 100 you may not have a job. Then in the west at worst you have couch time and tv land and drugs are cheap like alcohol and there’s a great social net. Not like Muslim countries where there’s still a crazy demand for productivity and thefts are dealt with by cutting off limbs. The aetheists camps would also put you in a far harder place than where ever you were if you didn’t pull your weight. The Gulag wasn’t Auschwitz but it ranked right up there with all other slave labour work camps. Great leaders have to deal with this tendency of lots of folks to be disagreeable and slackards. The communists have killed millions , though they favour killing smart people, whereas in the west the tacky media gets upset with a policeman uttering a bad word.  There’s little comparison.  On it’s worst day the western democracies have mass demand for entry whereas the countries most people are coming from have really bad leaders and really corrupt systems and people can’t get out of the deadly neighbourhoods fast enough.  

Great leaders have to deal with these problems. They also have to get people to give them money to deal with the problems. They’re the original go fund me where the buck stops.  The English and French leaders back in Napoleon’s day were always having trouble raising money for their wars.  Now they can’t get enough people on board to lynch tobacco company boards while in Canada Trudeau spent millions to put an ice rink on parliament hill when there’s a frozen river next door where thousands skate every year and have for hundreds of years. It’s one of the problems of having leadership that don’t care for their people and their land or even know it. Great leaders have to have their ear to the ground and it’s not easy.  

Before the puppet Trudeau was crowned because his Uncle Castro had his way with his mother who got the Trudeau name to wed the west with the east to allow Pierre to raise Quebec up and finally pay back that bastard Wolfe who beat Champlain, leadership required some sort of training and experience and education.  In the days of the original dolphins the school was the dinner table.  In 17th century Europe, in the days of chilvary.everyone was playing war and your future allies would be your playmates. It’s marvellous to see the sons of the Queen of England being taught war and leadership in the military.  Those are two great leaders to be with lovely wives who have the great intelligence of Melania and even some of the shrewdness of Mrs. Obama.  

I say this because the destruction of a society comes with the belittling of the leadership. You could argue against the man, like I do with Mad King George the III and  Justin Trudeau, but I don’t negate the leadership.  I am ashamed as a Canadian of my fellow Canadians who are so ill educated and ill experienced that they should have been taken in by a dynastic ploy of the lowest order in a democracy where meritocracy is supposed to rule. But now it’s all about fake news and denying the good and undermining the ‘position’.  This was what Hitler did. It’s what Lenin did before them. They strategically undermined the rule of law, the structure of the society and wanted not to overthrow an individual but rather they wanted a revolution. Nothing serves a revolution better than to have King George III as a ruler of the opposition.  Justin Trudeau has not only ruined the reputation of Canadians leadership hard earned by the likes of Chrétien, Mulroney and  Harper but within Canada itself there’s a willingness to chuck parliament itself because despite opposition Andrew Scheer being better than Trudeau by a long shot he’s not ‘great’.  Indeed Canadian leadership is rather anemic despite the amazing land we have with the amazing people.  Sadly testosterone is declining as fast as the feminists kill babies . 

I like great leaders.  It’s not a job I want. I like the couch, Hagen daz and walking around in a ripped t shirt and underwear. I’d rather spend time with the my dog than XiLing. There’s no time for that with great leaders. They’re in the fray. They’re not on vacation. They’re doing a tough job.  The actual work that Trump or Clinton did was the same relatively speaking. The number of decisions made in a day whether right or wrong is huge.  I, like 90% of the rest of the country have an easier job than the great leaders. We might not eat as well and we won’t get to order a nuclear strike or shut down a drug dealer so our jobs are likely less exciting by a long shot but even if we have a dozen children around us with in-laws and such it’s not the circus that Moscow, London, Washington or Paris  is on any day.  I don’t doubt that these guys are working, unlike Trudeau who always appears like he’s a tad too wasted, and the dog ate his homework’s.  By contrast , these great leaders are doing a hell of a job.  They have perks.  They love their children.  Just as we all saw the love of the Obamas for their little ones we see the pride in Trump for his daughter Ivanko and his brilliant boy Baron.  They clearly feel good about the future they’re making for their children.  They have family and they get to wear nice clothes and ride in nice vehicles travel and see really neat inventions.  They get to know a whole lot of secrets which even PBS doesn’t tell us.  I’m not saying there aren’t perks but the great leaders work for them.  

Muslim Migrants and "Terrorist Deniers"

I’ve been reactive to the ignorance I’ve perceived around the Muslim migrant issues.  I have been ridiculed, verbally abused and maligned, bullied and called names such as Racist and Islamaphobe because I’ve expressed concern. I have been told by many of my friends that they are afraid to speak up because of the bullying.
1. I’m using this time to learn about Islam.  I have the privilege and honour to know many Muslims who have been friends, mentors and teachers. However, these have generally been highly educated upper middle class people who are not representative of the “masses’.  Given there are billions of Muslims I’ve been learning the divisions of the Muslim religion.   I’m appalled that the CBC journalists and Liberal leaders who are so quick to label everyone other than themselves racist don’t seem to know the different between Sunni, Shii, Ismaeli and Suffi. CBC, instead of doing a piece on Ataturk the Secular Muslem who created Turkey out of the Ottoman Empire continues to ignore the fears of modern Istanbul inhabitants about the Moslem Brotherhood. Were CBC to be journalists of a world calibre they would know these thing but instead being ignorant would quite likely label all Turkey’s muslims ‘racist’ because right now Turkey is struggling to maintain it’s secular Ataturk state against the encroachment of the Muslem Brotherhood.
2.  The Liberals, so called ‘leftists’ and repressive are encouraging war by calling all discussion of Islam ‘hate speech’ and “islamophobia’.  Here in Canada people who use the word ‘terrorist’ are at risk because ‘freedom of speech’ is no longer part of daily discourse. If a person says a Muslim person raped a teen ager he is considered ‘racist’.  But it’s equally alright to talk about the ‘White Christian Terrorists’ presently defending the Constiution in Oregon. This will naturally cause war which seems the aim of the west as it has chosen sides and is attacking those who raise valid concerns. This ‘favouritism’ in the Liberal is like a parent who chooses one kid arguing over another rather than truly being moderate and learning more than ‘side choosing’ and ‘blaming’. The ‘blaming’ of the Liberal Media of ‘whites’ and the ‘west’ and ‘ancient history’ is ‘hate speech’.  It’s not contributing to identifying those groups of Muslims, the radicals and the fundamentalists who quite frankly hate western women and gays.  They would kill them.  We as Christians acknowledge that the Westboro Baptists are ‘extreme’ so we can all get along and don’t have to call each other racist for thinking that the United Church of Canada or Methodists or especially Mennonites aren’t particularly frightening.
3. Sociologists know that if you move large masses of migrants into any nation there will be all manner of social problems. Denying this is dangerous.  Merkel, Obama and Trudeau are by their definitions ‘Social Deniers’. ndeed if the Merkels cabal in Germany had prepared the German people for Sharia Law many of the abuses of the Germans could have been planned for.  Part of the vetting and acceptance of Migrants could well have hinged on accepting only those who accepted that men and women have equal status before the law and violence against women and gays is unacceptable in western Christian countries.  It’s no different than telling barbarians to not shit in the living room. There’s nothing ‘racist’ about expecting everyone to follow the laws.  However, Leftist Liberals don’t want this. They want to have a law for them and their ‘designated victim’ statuses and a law for the rest.  Right now they choose Palestinians over the Jews whereas last decade the flavour of the month was Jews over the English.
4.  Trudeau introduced the idea of accepting ‘all refugees’ to Canada to a large degree regardless of their criminal or mental illness history.  Prior to Trudeau immigration had preferences for the educated and those who would be needed in Canada.  It’s like Nigeria opening it’s doors to American immigration only to be shocked that Red Neck Klu Klux Klan start killing the blacks of Nigeria.  This is the state of affairs with citizens and their governments here.  Canada and Canadians and Americans have always been more accepting of immigration and refugees and foreigners than most countries represented by the barbaric United Nations. The true racism in most countries of the United Nations is difficult to access in it’s entirety because most countries in the United Nations don’t have civil rights and  have state injustice beyond anything Americans and Canadians can conceive of.
5. Donald Trump would not be saying no to Immigrants is Obama wasn’t ignoring terrorism and unwilling to call terrorists terrorists and blaming ‘gun laws’ on terrorism rather than facing the risks to americans of an un vetted large scale immigration from where ISIS reigns.  Further, Obama ignoring Americans who are legal workers has encouraged ‘illegal’ immigrants.  My friends who are ‘legal’ immigrants are offended by this ‘favouritism’ of criminals. It’s the same as my objection to Trudeau smoking dope without consequences, indeed he has a large reward, when my friends have suffered horrendously for minor indiscretion. I appreciate his desire to decriminalize marijuana laws but it still burns me that there are two laws, one for the elite like Trudeau and one for the rest of us.  My ‘legal immigrant’ friends want to be paid back the $10,000 they paid to get into the country because now there are a whole bunch of ‘illegal immigrants’ who are being ‘pardoned’ and not being required to pay.  I want my friends and I to be paid the millions compensation by the state that the marijuana laws caused us the people us to lose,  since the elite were rewarded for their drug abuse and criminal behaviour.  So criminals are being rewarded all the time these days.  That’s the attraction of Donald Trump.  The left wing liberals and democrats don’t seem to believe the laws they make for everyone else should apply to them.  This is the corruption that is killing the west.
6. Canada had 10’s of thousands of Muslim Immigrants before Trudeau.  Trudeau created the anti muslim sentiment by the way he behaved.  He was disrespectful of peoples concerns after the Charlie Hebdo killing, after ISIS beheadings, the tens of thousands of school girls gang raped in Rotherham and across Europe, the increasing videos on the internet of Muslim gang violence against the europeans who were offering them sanctuary. No one wants to give to someone who ‘bites the hand that feeds them”.  No one wants to let a person who doesn’t know where to shit have free range of their kitchen and living rooms and bedrooms.  The ideologically driven rigid Trudeau was the worst authoritarian dictator unresponsive to the majority of Canadians now expressing concerns about “timing’ and ’numbers’.  People said ’slow down’ and suddenly liberals were calling them Racists.  The mature reasonable folk who are Canadians with many moslem, jewish, Christian, and Hindu and Sikh and atheist friends were being accused by these apparatchiks Stalins and their judgemental dictatorial media representatives of being something they simply were not.  Christians collectively aren’t racists and Canada is mostly a Christian country.  Muslim countries persecute Christians every day.  Today Christians were beheaded . No Muslim is being beheaded in Canada today. Don’t lie.  Stop fabricating false comparisons.The Crusades were the 'defence' against Caliphate Muslim invasions a thousand years ago.  Today a Muslim Terrorist group invaded Christian territory and killed Christians.  Today.  Now.
7. My Muslim friends are concerned about Trudeau’s ignorance about Muslims and the Middleeast. Does he want 'honour killing' here in Canada.  Liberals objected to the laws against 'barbaric practices' which were put forward by Moslem and Indian women.  They were called racist for objecting to the removal of the 'clitoris' of girls.  By contrast 'circumcision' done properly is a small slice along the outer lips of the glans major.  Upper class moslems accept the later whereas lower class Muslims promote the further.  Jews and others 'genitally mutilate' boys, i.e. circumcision but it would be a wholly different thing if boys had their penis's removed rather than just a tag of foreskin. But the Liberals by contrast are promoting 'barbaric practices' which the enlightened of these cultures escaped to Canada to get away from.  The further fact is Sunni Muslems have killed a whole lot of Shii Muslems and all mainstream Muslems are frankly very cautious about radical Muslems because Radical Muslems kill more Muslems than anyone else.  So why is Trudeau so apparently stupid?  Is this why so many Canadians are objecting to the lack of education in the Canadian school system because the teachers seem so ignorant about history, geography and reading, writing and arithmetic but promote all manner of ideology like the worst Imans of the east.  Why can’t CBC journalists do their homework and become knowledgeable about Muslims instead of creating divisiveness with ignorance.  Why is Obama not listening to Muslims? Why do the Liberals want war.  Because this is the way Hitler started WWII. It's also the justification that Stalin used to invade many eastern countries.  Then it was ‘race’ and ‘culture’ whereas now it is ‘culture’ and ‘religion’ . Ironically the old ‘racism’ hate slur continues to be bandied about. Yet lots of buddhists are 'brown' and no one objects to 'brown' race 'Buddhists' immigrating to Canada.

8. There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. There are a whole lot of in between Muslims.  If the leadership of my country and the news wasn’t so ignorant we would not have to stoop to their level of discussion.  Right now Muslims are being allowed to pray in our school whereas Christians are not.  What better way to start war!
9.That frankly is the concern of all us peaceniks, that Trudeau and Obama and Merkel are two faced actors who are representative of the Elite who make the most money and have the most power through war.  The UN is a nation of war lords and I frankly don’t want more government because we’ve all seen the hundreds of millions killed by the totalitarian communist atheist central government empires.  Before that we had the WWI war to end all wars between Western war lords while in the east and middle east they had their own sets of wars by war lords.  In all these wars it’s not the Elite that lead but us the people.  So if Muslim migrations are for the benefit of the people, for assimilation and integration rather than creation of ghettos and sharia law states then great. But so far here in Canada Trudeau and the Liberals have been little better than Merkel and her cabal of ideologues. One asks then how many Canadian women will be gang raped and how many of us will be caught in terrorists bombs and how many gays will be killed before Trudeau is less arrogant than his famously arrogant father.

Taksim Gezi Park Riots, Istanbul, Turkey

My guide Mehmet Tetik pointed out Gezi Park when he first showed me Taksim Square.  I was more interested in the incredible monument to the truly amazing Ataturk one of history’s greatest soldiers and visionaries, a true statesman.  Ataturk was Turkey’s first president.
“This was where the riots occurred between the police and developers and students. Did you not see it in the news,”
Indeed, yes ,  I had. I’d followed the BBC filming of this, amazed at the numbers of people involved and the police with tear gas cannons.  “That was here!” I said somewhat.
Mehmet nodded.  I felt like I was at the site of modern history, a place like that in Berlin where the wall came down. Mehmet had been showing so much ancient history and yet here I was being showed in passing a bit of history of my own time. We walked on to the main street of New Town.
The park was so serene today with locals and tourists, women, children and old people enjoying this little oasis of green and tranquility in the midst of a bustling noisy city centre.

I thought of the urban developer I knew who studied what he described as ‘third spaces’. I remember him telling me that crime and discord could be directly related to the lack or presence of ’third spaces’ in a city.  A third space is different from the ‘first place’ or ‘home and the ‘second space’ or workplace in a city.  The third space were these other spaces that were the ‘anchors of community because they facilitated and fostered broader creative interaction. Oldenberg in his famous book, “The Great Good Place’ articulated this all. Obviously Gezi Park was just such a third space.
The Istanbul Modern Art Museum had an amazing black and white video of the Gezi Park riots.
My new friend, Deborah, a college professor, living hear Taksim Square had been kind enough to walk me through the conflict.  “The students were there but it was these politicians who couldn’t be arrested that were instant heroes as they stood before the bull dozers."
“It wasn’t radicals. Tens of thousands of ordinary people came out. There’s no other green space in Beyoglu like Gezi Park.  There was a sense that this government was like the bulldozers here so it was as much a metaphor.  There’s tremendous fear now about the government’s perceived destructiveness. Everyone loved Ataturk and Turkish people want democracy but there was a feeling that Turkey was becoming a police state. The Gezi Park Riots were at the centre of all this.  Then suddenly the police left, it was over and today we still have this park.  People saw this as a sign that the government could still hear the voice of the majority and wasn’t deaf as people had feared. “
We sat in a cafe enjoying coffee.  Some men came up wanting to interview us about the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. Deborah said how sad she was at  the loss of life and the tragedy of it all. I, typically , answered their questions with more vehemence.  “I don’t think murdering innocent people can be justified.  I think the murderers are just common criminals, sociopaths and psychopaths who have a desire to kill and use religion or whatever else is handy to justify their lack of civilization or social maturity.”  Deborah said she thought the young men had difficulty with translating words like “psychopath’ and ‘sociopaths’.  They did look a little befuddled after I’d spoken.
Gezi Park really was a lovely place. Deborah and I talked about our pasts and what had brought us to Istanbul.

Trici Venola - Drawing on Istanbul

It was a delight to meet Trici, first in New Town then next at the Crimea Memorial near the Galata Tower in Istanbul.
“I mostly draw in the winter because I’m so busy guiding in the summer.’  We’d been invited  for lunch with Father Ian and others from the Christ Church.  A continuation of the normal after church coffee and tea.  I loved the area that Trici walked me through. “They often don’t realize that once you destroy something old you can never make it old again.'
It’s been Trici's passion to record the out of the way ancient bits.  “They want to put up a high-rise parking lot complex in this area but it’s full of old ruins.  As well it’s a vibrant community of cafe’s  where artists and locals congregate.  The idea of a flashy modern hotel complex is right out of sync with the community.  Yet shiny, new and big is where the new money is so it may well go ahead.”
I’d heard often of this conflict between developers and community.  Were it not for the whole “heritage” movement cities around the world would be destroyed by modernity no different than they’d been destroyed by alien invaders.   It’s a different twist of Joni Mitchell’s famous song, “ they paved paradise to put up a parking lot’.
I so enjoy England’s Prince Charles insights into urban planning in this regard.  He's been at the forefront of the heritage movement. It’s all a matter of balance.  It’s obvious too that Turkey’s first president Ataturk understood the importance of history. The concern is with the leaderships today who often lack the genius and vision of yesterday's greats.
As tourists we don't need to travel from the new world to the old world to see fancier hotels and parking lots.  Indeed I challenge anyone to show me a more modern and beautiful city than my own Vancouver.  There the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright are as important to architecture as the preservation of the skyline laws are to old Istanbul.
The very best portrayal of 'developer arrogance and insanity' is in Douglas Adam's "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the Vorgon's destroy our planet earth  to put up a faster intergalactic space way!
I loved Trici’s drawings. She showed me a 13th century byzantine church that was now a car wash.  The owner of the car wash loved his location, the natural beauty and history and Trici’s love for this.  As a result famous artists and entertainers, she guided were brought to this shrine. There’s a wonderful irony this former baptismal site is now a thriving car wash.
Along the way we saw  amazing graffiti art. This was truly poetic ‘art’ and not the all too common doggerel graffiti  that really benefits from whitewash. But who decides what is ‘art’ in the street? I don’t think it should be left to ‘ city maintenance’ workers.  Would they recognize a Banksy?
Trici as well as guiding teaches drawing in Istanbul, combining her love of the city and her joy of drawing.

Instanbul Military Museum

The Instanbul Military Museum held a lot of history. There were the weapons of armour used through the years but also large depictions of the various pivotal battles in the Ottoman Empire. I finally understood the layout of the Gallipoli battle thanks to the models.  The Mehter Military Band performance was sensational.

Mehmet II conquered Constantinople

Horse armour.

China’s Great Wall built to keep Turks out.

Mail turkish shield. Other shields from India.  Then a room with reconstruction of the military college where Ataturk attended.

They had Canada’s Ross Rifle on display along with other famous rifles.


Canons and mortars and machine guns and reconstruction of the hamman in the military college.

Reconstrustion of the assassination..

Taksim Square - Istanbul's New Town

Mehmet Tetik my guide (www.turkishguides\tetik) took me to Taksim Square, the New Town of Istanbul. I believe Beyoglu is the other name for this district. It was where the people of Istanbul demonstrated to save the park, a third space green area which I would agree deserved saving from being turned into a parking lot or some such abomination.  Taksim Square is named after the water distribution site for the area.
In the centre is a monument to Ataturk.  On one side it shows him leading the fight for Independence.  After WWI when Turkey lost to the Allies, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938)a turkish military officer lead the fight against  Allies to establish Turkish War of  Independence.  The Sultan fled the country to die in poverty in ?Saudi.
In his early life Kemal had been part of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 which reversed the 1878 suspension of the Ottoman Parliament, restoring. His military career was particularly distinguished with command of armies of the Ottoman Empire.
After the Turkish War of Independence he became the first president. As a great statesman e campaigned for political, economic and cultural reforms.  He modernized Turkey into a secular nation state. The second side of the great statue shows Ataturk as this peace time leader.Under his leadership thousands of schools were built primary education was given free and women were given equal civil and political rights.
 



The new town is similar to other modern cosmopolitan cities where the shops of the international corporations are prominently displayed. Around it are the 5 star restaurants like Four Seasons.  There are also several reasonable four star and even three star restaurants in the area.  A convenient shuttle bus goes to and from the airport. Mehmet explained that the main street had previously been where the leading Europeans lived.
The Opera House is in Taksim Square.I asked Mehmet if opera was very big in Turkey and he replied "Live theatre is most important to Turkish people.  Don't get me wrong, Opera and Ballet are loved here too but it's the Live theatre that's most appreciated in Turkey."
 Today the consulates of the major European countries are represented.  The largest Catholic Church in Istanbul is here too.  The only evidence of really distinctively local phenomena were the street musicians. It was like a very big Robson Street Vancouver on steroids. A particularly gifted pair were playing what Mehmet said was mostly Kurdish music.  Otherwise it was all very upscale, safe and friendly reminding me of  similar areas in Moscow, Manhatten, Amsterdam or even Honolulu.  There’s a global homogenization in the distribution of the goods. No question the goods are fine and desired but the fashion distribution has developed this universality to it .  I liked New City very much but I preferred Old City for it’s history.  I suspect when I was younger I’d definitely gravitate towards this happening place.






In an Armenian Church there was a lovely dove descending above the door.
The British Consulate was a grand staid building behind a very large wall.


Saint Anthony Church was the largest Catholic Church in Istanbul on Istiklal Avenue, Beyoglu district, with a Christmas manger outside and a Christmas tree.  It was very festive outside and worshipful inside. I bought a candle and prayed.  I liked the atmosphere and thought my Catholic friends would very much like this church as I did. It is dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua and was built in 1912. The original St. Anthony of Padual church was built in 1725 by the Italian community of Istanbul.  Around the church today there are apartments buildings that were part of the complex. This style of building is called Venetian Neo Gothic. Pope John XXIII preached for 10 years in this church when he was the Vatican’s representative to Turkey. He was called the ‘turkish pope’ because he became fluent in Turkish and expressed his love for Turkey and the City of Istanbul.