[PHOTO] Heading off into a winter night

Heading off into a winter night
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I like this picture of a hard-packed snow trail leading into the wintertime depths of Christie Pits park: what lies beyond?

[LINK] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams suggest that the latest research into the question argues convincingly that a hidden star--a red or brown dwarf, likely--doesn't exist within two light-years of our planetary system, and wonders if impending space probes might discover remains of Theia, the proto-planet that collided with the Earth billions of years ago and so created the moon.


• Far Outliers' Joel examines how Ethiopians, subjects of the only African state to remain uncolonized, saw a Japan that stood as the chief representative of a modernizing non-white world. In addition, the blog explores the novelty of the nation-state and the exclusion of ethnic Germans from post-Weimar Germany.


• Hunting Monsters blogs about Puntland, an autonomous government in northeastern Somalia most famous as a base for piracy, as well as Moldova's Russophone and Russophile Transnistria.


• The Invisible College's Mel O'Brien comes out in favour of a vigourous prosecution of the remaining Nazi war criminals.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer examines the troubles facing the Greek economy, on the verge of recession thanks to blows to tourism and the shipping industry.


• Gideon Rachman compares the mass protests in Georgia and Thailand.


• Slap Upside the Head examines the outrage of a Polish politician that the Poznan Zoo hosts a possibly gay elephant.


• Towleroad shows how, as if in compensation for the above silliness, the Polish government is inviting a New York gay couples whose wedding photos were once used in a homophobic campaign to Poland, for what may be a stereotype-breaking visit.


• Torontoist reports on the controversial Virgin Radio ads in Toronto's TTC stops--since pulled--that have featured radios as suicidal jumpers.


• Window on Eurasia examines how immigration to Moscow is creating ethnic neighbourhoods in a once-homogeneous city, and writes about the (Eastern Orthodox) Moscow Patriarchate's efforts to create a powerful Orthodox Christian lobby in the European Union.

[URBAN NOTE] That controversial Virgin Radio suicide ad

Continuing a theme from today's link post, while I was walking west on Harbord Street on this glorious evening, I ran into one of the Virgin Radio ads that so angered the TTC.

A Virgin Radio suicide ad
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

The Globe and Mail's Jeff Gray has the story.

An irreverent ad for local Virgin Radio 99.9 FM that depicts a radio about to commit suicide by leaping onto the TTC's subway tracks is being pulled from the city's transit shelters after the chairman of the transit agency complained.

"That ad was not amusing," Adam Giambrone, chairman of the Toronto Transit Commission, said yesterday. "I don't believe Torontonians would find that ad funny. ... Suicide is a serious issue."

Rebecca Shropshire, a spokeswoman for station owner Astral Media Radio, said the ads had been up for about two weeks with just two complaints, but that all were being removed yesterday at the city's request.

"It wasn't intended to make light of suicide. It was intended to frame up a piece of social commentary about whether traditional media still have a place in the world," Ms. Shropshire said.

The ad campaign for the recently relaunched pop radio station depicts radios in various settings appearing to contemplate suicide, with the tagline, "Give your radio a reason to live."</blockquote<

[URBAN NOTE] This beautiful Toronto day

The WeatherBug add-on to my Mozilla Firefox tells me that the temperature outside is a balmy 21.0 degrees Celsius, and it certainly feels like this. This morning it was bright and clear, but by this afternoon it blossomed into the first good day of the year, the radio reporting people wearing shorts as they lounged on patios in the beautiful sun. Even now, stuck in the evening, there's barely a cool breeze to be felt. Below is a picture that, hopefully, gives you an idea of just what things are like outside.

A Virgin Radio suicide ad
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

[LINK] "Yonge and Bloor condo nears critical deadline"

The news from the National Post about the travails faced by Bazis International, builders of a planned 80-story condo locaTED SQUARELY IN THE HEARTOF Toronto at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor streets, isn't necessarily encouraging.

Developer Bazis International is on the second extension of its "condition date" to start building a planned 80-storey condo tower called One Bloor, a massively popular project that, upon its launch in late 2007, had buyers camped outside the sales office for a week.

But the bulldozed lot still sits empty, and on June 15, Bazis enters a 31-day period during which it can serve notice to buyers that it is cancelling construction. At that point, deposits would be refunded.

Mark Cosman, a commercial real estate lawyer, signed up to buy a one-bedroom unit at One Bloor before the sales office even opened. "Bloor and Yonge, it couldn't be any better," he said. "Centre ice in the city of Toronto."

But with the fate of the project in doubt, Mr. Cosman-- like many buyers -- has become increasingly concerned about his investment.

"Now, if I could get out, from a legal perspective, I would," he said.

The holdup in construction is linked to the failure of U. S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, which was helping finance the project. With Lehman in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, the money that would have helped finance the condo is also tied up in court.

If Bazis does not give cancellation notice during the 31-day period, the purchase agreements become binding. Yet if the construction launch still lags, it becomes a much more difficult process for buyers to recover their deposits.

Maybe we could build a park there after all.

[BRIEF NOTE] So, to hell with the automotive industry in Ontario, then

Grand. Chrysler Canada looks like it may yet collapse, and why? Blame the workers, it seems.

Senior executives of Chrysler LLC took the extraordinary step Friday of sending a letter to employees urging them to support the company “at a crossroads” in its history by agreeing to major reductions in benefits.

“Let me be clear, our negotiations are about saving Chrysler Canada,” chairman Robert Nardelli and president Tom LaSorda said in the letter to employees, ahead of a resumption in negotiations on Monday.

“Without labour concessions Chrysler Canada's manufacturing operations will not survive long-term,” the letter said.

The letter caps a week of growing public pressure on the Canadian Auto Workers union to agree to $19 worth of cuts in benefits to help the auto maker meet a federal government requirement that it slash its labour costs to $57 an hour to match those of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc.

[. . .]

The Chrysler letter comes on top of comments by Fiat SpA chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne that his company will walk away from a deal to save the no. 3 Detroit auto maker if the CAW and the United Auto Workers don't agree to more concessions.

The unions don't seem very interested in this.

Over a quarter century of bargaining with Chrysler LLC, the Canadian Auto Workers union has won a pack of benefits and special compensation for car factory employees the average industrial worker in Canada might only dream of -- reimbursement of a portion of out-of-province health care bills, child care subsidies, even partial payments of lawyer fees.

Now, the union’s leaders face a stark choice: Give up many of those perks they won through legitimate bargaining and risk losing jobs anyway with an automaker struggling to sell cars. Or hold hard to those gains and risk contributing to Chrysler’s demise.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, CAW President Ken Lewenza denounced the federal government and Chrysler for making "painful" demands on his members based on misleading financial information. And he suggested the union is prepared to let Chrysler fall into creditor protection, from which it might not recover.

"We will work to defend the interests of Canadian autoworkers," Mr. Lewenza said, arguing his union has a track record of making Canadian auto plants competitive. "If Chrysler or any other company goes into bankruptcy protection (an increasingly likely prospect, given the stalemate with bondholders in the U.S.), it will not be because of us."

[. . .]

n his statement, Mr. Lewenza called Chrysler’s letter "offensive" and accused the automaker of wanting to inflict long-term damage on the credibility and influence of the CAW, Canada’s largest private sector union.

"The past week has seen an unprecedented and outrageous series of attacks on Canadian autoworkers and their union. One after another, business executives and political leaders, working clearly in tandem, have lined up to denounce the CAW’s role in the auto restructuring process, and to demand that we accept up to $19 per hour in concessions or else face massive job losses and economic dislocation," Mr. Lewenza said.

Never mind the existence of European and Japanese car companies with superior efficiencies, within and without North America. With BRIC countries coming up with inexpensive vehicles like the Tata Nano, any automotive industry is going to have to innovate radically in order to survive. If Chrysler doesn't, well, creative destruction always works, with Ontario coming off the poorer, but what can be done.

I wonder: Toronto's peripheral communities, places like Oshawa and Ajax and Oakville, depend heavily on the automotive industry. If it self-destructs and these communities end up collapsing economically, might Toronto yet come to resemble the European urban pattern of a prosperous core and an impoverished periphery?