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May. 27th, 2015
Facebook's Darina is to thank for sharing this article about the Buzludzha Monument, an abandoned Communist-era edifice located on top of the historically important Bulgarian mountain of the same name.
There are more photos of this site at the article, and plenty of YouTube videos. The Economist had a good five-minute clip.
Tucked away in the Bulgarian mountains lies a rather strange sight, which at first glance could even be mistaken for a UFO.
It’s actually the Buzludzha Monument, an iconic symbol of the communist world that has sadly been forgotten about and left to crumble.
Located approximately 200 kilometres from the capital city of Sofia, it was built in the 1970s as a tribute to the creation of the socialist movement in Bulgaria. It was quite the construction feat, costing approximately $11 million and involving 600 workers over seven years.
It was used as the headquarters for the Bulgarian Communist party for eight years, before being abandoned and left to languish.
But in the decay comes a haunting beauty, making it an intriguing site for adventurous travellers.
There are more photos of this site at the article, and plenty of YouTube videos. The Economist had a good five-minute clip.
Towleroad and Joe. My. God. let me know that Greenland is the latest jurisdiction to approve same-sex marriage. From EDGE Boston:
Ever think of Greenland as a wedding destination? After today you can add it to your list.
Depending on which statistics you believe, between 2,000 and 5,000 Greenlanders are now free to marry whomever they love. JoeMyGod reports that Greenland's parliament voted unanimously Tuesday to approve same-sex marriage in the arctic nation.
"Google Translate has a bit of difficulty with Danish," JoeMyGod notes. "But our resident international expert, JMG reader Luis, advises us that Greenland's Parliament has just voted unanimously to adopt Danish laws legalizing same-sex marriage and gay adoption. "
Located in North America, Greenland, which has a population of roughly 57,000, is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Denmark since 2012, but until Tuesday it had yet to reach Greenland. While the Danish government controls Greenland's foreign affairs and defense, the country has been self-governing on domestic policy since 2009.
Christopher Rowland has a stirring essay at Open Democracy about the importance of William Blake, as a philosopher of politics and as a literary figure (if, admittedly, after his death). I wish I engaged more with him; I wish I was more like him.
William Blake (1757-1827) lived most of his life in London, with a short spell on the Sussex coast, during which he was charged with sedition because of what he said to a soldier and for which he was put on trial. His life spanned the turbulent years that saw the independence of the American colonies and the French Revolution, both of which inform his prophetic understanding of history.
Blake’s two prophecies, America and Europe, were ‘prophetic’ not because Blake sought to predict what was going on—indeed they were written following these events. Rather, he sought to plumb the depths of the historical and social dynamics which were at work in them. He was part of a tradition of radical non-conformity in English religion, with different ways of reading the Bible.
In many ways Blake is an obvious choice of someone whose life’s work was to link ‘the personal and the political,’ but his work for justice and equality in the world was less through political activism or a practice which seeks to bring about societal transformation, and more about the intellectual task of changing hearts and minds. His Descriptive Catalogue of 1809 indicates that he wanted to make a pitch for a role as a public artist. But his exhibition met with the derision of the only reviewer of the exhibition (Robert Hunt), who disdainfully dismissed it as a “farrago of nonsense ... the wild effusions of a distempered brain,” and Blake as “an unfortunate lunatic.”
This initiative on Blake’s part not only shows his sense of vocation but also the difficulties which attended the reception of his work. His illuminated books are as challenging today for the reader or viewer as they were when they were first published, and there will be many who continue to react like Hunt. But this complexity only underlines the difficulty of the interpretative tasks Blake undertook as he explored relationships to the past, and the cul-de-sacs which can so easily attend the journey of personal and political transformation.
Throughout his work he remained committed to the following task as expressed in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.” Arguably, all of Blake’s works are designed to facilitate the process of change in the individual and in society. Transformation is key to everything he undertook.
Transitions Online featured at the beginning of April suggesting that talk the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, last remnant of German East Prussia, has an especially notable regional identity is fundamentally flawed. Kaliningrad is as Russian, I would suggest, as Alaska is American, or for that matter as East Prussia was German.
The topic of a “Kaliningrad identity” has been played up before. A recent article in New Eastern Europe magazine focuses on the “Riddle of Kaliningrad.” The author credits Kaliningraders with “a strong regional identity” which, he says, can become a framework for political mobilization, namely when the inhabitants feel that the interest of their Oblast have been disregarded. One may wonder to what extent this analysis is accurate.
There is no doubt that the Kaliningrad Oblast has always been somehow special. The German Ostpreussen was split up between Poland and the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II. The renaming of its former capital, Koenigsberg, to Kaliningrad was only one of myriad toponymic purges in the Oblast, all meant to minimize the previous cultural presence. Massive resettlement from several Soviet republics worked to set up a Soviet melting pot. And what could be called a local version of the Benes decrees rid the land of the remnants of German inhabitants, ensuring there was no societal continuity between populations. During the Soviet era interest in the German past was generally discouraged, though it could not be erased completely. Buildings, cobblestone roads, orchards, and even household items remained behind as numb witnesses of the city’s “other” past. Everyday observations on whether, for example, one lived in a “German” brick house or a Soviet concrete apartment block were (and still are) commonplace.
The post-Soviet period saw a resurgence of interest in the Koenigsberg identity, owing in no small part to the influx of German tourists. Many of them came to see the ancestral land they may have left as small children. They were prepared to consume the Koenigsberg narrative in the form of souvenirs and tourist services. And immediately the specters of both German revisionism and a sort of Kaliningrad independentism arose. Political ideas of a “Baltic republic” existing separately from the Russian Federation remained utterly marginal. But the specific “Europeanness” that made Kaliningrad somehow distinct from the rest of Russia was a theme played on multiple sides. Vladimir Putin's engagement of the “Old Europe” in 2005 included a triple visit, together with Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, to Kaliningrad. It was apparently for this occasion that the Kaliningrad State University was officially renamed after the philosopher Immanuel Kant, thus emphasizing continuity with the European heritage of Koenigsberg through the name of one of its most famous citizens.
[. . . A]pparently, importing European goods was not the same as importing European values – or the EU's stance on political issues of the day, for that matter. A poll taken in April 2014 by the Kaliningrad Monitoring group indicates that 88 percent in the Oblast supported the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol. The same poll revealed that the number of those who admit separating in any way from Russia as a possibility fell to the historical minimum of 3 percent. The fanciful idea of a joint EU-Russia jurisdiction over Kaliningrad has also been marginalized (2 percent compared with 12 percent in a similar poll taken in 2003). As the sociologist Aleksei Vysotskiy argued, the Kaliningraders finally admitted that Kaliningrad Oblast was “an ordinary administrative unit of the Russian Federation” which according to him has always been the situation anyway.
Writing for the South China Morning Post's The Hongcouver blog, Ian Young argues that Vancouver's real estate market is uniquely unaffordable to new entrants largely because of the impact of wealthy investors. Vancouverites and other West Coasters, thoughts?
One position states there’s nothing particularly unusual about Vancouver’s housing situation. Yet this He doesn't have a million either.neglects the fact that the city’s unaffordability is now globally exceptional, exceeded only by that of Hong Kong.
Foreign money might be a factor, concede some, but it must similarly influence other markets, right? Not really – since immigration data demonstrates that the influx of rich immigrants to Vancouver (80 per cent of them Chinese) is unmatched by any other city in the world, at least in terms of wealth-migration schemes that clearly define asset benchmarks.
Others seek to frame unaffordability as inevitable, since Vancouver is a city of limited land supply. But plenty of other cities are in the same boat: New York and Singapore spring to mind. Both are expensive cities, but Vancouver has left them in the dust in terms of unaffordability. If Vancouver (price/income ratio 10.6) could achieve the affordability of New York (6.1), or Singapore (5.0) I’m betting that Eveline Xia would be dancing down Main Street.
Surely Vancouver has always been unaffordable? A quick check of the stats will show that as recently at 10 years ago, Vancouver’s price/income ratio was in dancing territory, at 5.3.
[. . .]
An exceptional cause must be found for an exceptional situation, and for Vancouver, that can be found quite easily in wealth migration, which exploded in the past decade.
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In the Toronto Star, Allan Woods reports on the controversy surrounding plans to make Montréal's famous Sainte-Catherine street into a more pedestrian-friendly corridor.
It was once Canada’s Fifth Avenue, the frontline of the retail sector in what was known a century ago as the country’s commercial metropolis.
Standing sentry were department store giants like Ogilvy, Birks and Scroggie, which turned Montreal’s then-residential Ste-Catherine Street into the country’s pre-eminent shopping district. Nearly 100 years later, with the retail shopping sector in turmoil, downtown stores losing business to suburban supermalls, and aging infrastructure that is starting to fail, Montreal is getting a rare chance in the life of a metropolis as it prepares to remake a major artery almost from scratch.
As this city braces for the official plan to be unveiled later this week by Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, there is excitement about the possibilities but also trepidation for those who make their livelihoods running Ste-Catherine Street bars, boutiques and restaurants.
[. . .]
Before Montreal's Ste-Catherine Street was the city's major retail artery, it was primarily a residential area. In the remake of the street, seen here at Metcalfe Street in 1898, city officials say they want to bring back some of the greenery that has been lost to urbanization.
[. . .]
The plan to be announced this week could revolutionize what is an already iconic — through fairly traditional — downtown strip. The city has collected nearly three dozen submissions from individuals and associations with options such as doing away with street parking, installing heated sidewalks to melt winter snow, making extra space for patios and commercial kiosks, and even designating car-free zones to turn a shopping district into a pedestrian paradise.
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A few days ago, the Toronto Star featured the article "Midtowners battle the rise of the midrise" by Manisha Krishnan. This examined the plight of midtowners near Yonge and Eglinton faced with possible real estate depreciation.
Would that we all owned such inexpensive property in Toronto. blogTo noted the mockery online, as did the CBC. I do agree to a certain extent with this, but I also agree with a Facebook friend that in Canada's culture, with its aspirations to property ownership, depreciating house prices could well mean relative poverty. The extent to which this culture of ownership is a good thing is entirely open for debate, and yet does not seem to be discussed.
A group of midtown Toronto residents has banded together to fight what it’s dubbed “density creep,” amid a push for midrise development citywide that shows no signs of abating.
The Density Creep Neighborhood Alliance formed in response to a proposed townhouse development on Keewatin Ave. near Mt. Pleasant Rd., north of Eglinton Ave. E.
The group of about 50 neighbours claims the project — a four-storey, 80-unit building that will replace eight properties from 200-214 Keewatin Ave. — will ruin their stretch of million-dollar homes set on deep, private lots.
“I’m really concerned about my property value going down,” says Lisa Goodwin, 49, a stay-at-home mother of two who has lived in a four-bedroom dwelling on Keewatin Ave. for 19 years.
“Right now all the houses are $1.1 to, say, $2.2 (million) but they’re looking at putting in places that are only $500,000.”
Would that we all owned such inexpensive property in Toronto. blogTo noted the mockery online, as did the CBC. I do agree to a certain extent with this, but I also agree with a Facebook friend that in Canada's culture, with its aspirations to property ownership, depreciating house prices could well mean relative poverty. The extent to which this culture of ownership is a good thing is entirely open for debate, and yet does not seem to be discussed.
Science-fiction author David Mack, known especially to readers of Star Trek novels, posted yesterday on his blog an excellent extended analysis of the story of Mad Max: Fury Road. He makes the argument that this film is exceptional, not only for the character of Imperator Furiosa, but for the way it builds its story.
Excellent stuff. I really must go see this one myself.
mperator Furiosa towers above most other action-movie heroes because her character and the story of Fury Road subvert a longstanding, worn-out Hollywood action-movie paradigm—but not the one you might think. The real genius of Fury Road isn’t that its hero is a woman. It’s that the hero is the one actually driving the story in the first place.
Furiosa’s prominence in the movie has been making some “men’s rights activists” (MRAs) apoplectic, leading them to complain the Mad Max franchise was hijacked for a feminist agenda, that they were tricked by cool explosions and a freak with a flame-throwing electric guitar into watching a feminist manifesto in which Max has been emasculated. They’re at least partly wrong.
A key factor in what’s perplexing the MRAs is that Imperator Furiosa is the protagonist and hero of Fury Road, but here’s the catch: she is not the movie’s main character. Max Rockatansky (played by Tom Hardy) is not a sidekick in Fury Road, contrary to this post by Rob Bricken on io9. Max is undeniably Fury Road’s main character, its point-of-view character. He is the only character to whose inner life we are privy; he is our narrator. That said, it is true he is neither the protagonist nor the hero of Fury Road, but these aren’t bad things. They aren’t even uncommon in movies.
Excellent stuff. I really must go see this one myself.