monuments of war – Grozny, originally uploaded by dziadek.mroz

Urban Renewal and Partial Amnesia in Chechnya:

This is the year, according to an order from a president whom few dare to disappoint, that the architectural scars of war in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, will be removed. That the order has nearly been fulfilled is a feat.
…
Grozny today is less a battlefield than the renovated seat of a new police state within Russia’s borders, led by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the republic’s young and exceptionally violent president. And Mr. Kadyrov, a Chechen who has professed loyalty to the same Kremlin that many of his fellow Chechens fought for more than a decade, has decreed that by Dec. 31 his capital will bear no more of the marks of war that made Grozny worthy of its name.
As the makeover nears completion, and at a pace recalling the fear-driven public works of Stalin’s time, Grozny’s new look summons questions. The ruins are vanishing. How will the city remember the forces that destroyed it?

It just happens that I’m working on a paper discussing issues congruent with rebuilding cities after crises. There are usually two main groups: the Rebuilders and the Memorialists. The Rebuilders want to rebuild the city as expeditiously as possible, no matter that the underlying cause of the destruction was while Memorialists want a lighter tough, believing that the destruction should remain a memorial to the crisis, a living testament to the horror. Generally, the larger the destruction, the greater chance the Rebuilders have of winning.
You can see examples of both sides throughout history following major destruction caused by war: New York City on September 11th, where rebuilding as a sign that the terrorists hadn’t won and Dresden, Germany in World War Two where many historic buildings were rebuilt. Almost every great disaster which envelops major sections of the urban fabric are rebuilt (see Nagasaki or Hiroshima, Tokyo or Berlin). Where Memorialists generally are able to persuade the populace that less is more, is in smaller scale crises and destruction. The Oklahoma City National Memorial or Gettysburg National Military Park are an example of memorializing horror, instead of rebuilding.
Editorializing, in the case of Chechnya, it is clear that the rebuilding is being done to paper over the human rights violations against Chechens by Russian troops. This is perhaps the primary reason Rebuilders have their way: the victors generally want to write history, and buildings are lasting testaments to the victor’s glory.

Vote!, originally uploaded by plemeljr

Talking over pizza and beer last night, how un pro-American of us, my friend the foreign national asked why election day wasn’t a bank holiday to let people vote. No one in the room could figure out why, with all of the platitudes about voting being an American tradition, election day wasn’t a federal holiday to allow all Americans to vote.
This became clearer when I read today’s NY Times, Safety Concerns Eclipse Civic Lessons as Schools Cancel Classes on Election Day:

School officials and parents across the nation are turning an increasingly critical eye on the time-honored tradition of voters’ casting ballots in the gymnasiums and hallways of neighborhood school buildings while classes go on as usual just a few yards away.
Citing a litany of safety concerns, many officials are opting to keep youngsters home on Nov. 4, Election Day.

You would think that allowing everyone the day off to celebrate democracy would make sense. But as (I think) Big Media Matt had discussed, America’s right to vote stems not from a positivist position, but rather from a negative definition of who cannot vote (women, slaves, etc). The historical accident of allowing only white men who owned land voting rights has trickled down through the years into a rag-tag series of more inclusive and permissive voting rights; resulting in strange accident of pundits, the elite and conventional wisdom poo-poohing the lack of voter turnout every election when there are structural barriers to voting for large segments of the population.

http://www.guba.com/f/root.swf?video_url=http://free.guba.com/uploaditem/2000955184/flash.flv&isEmbeddedPlayer=true
via Kottke.

it’s happening in soledad, originally uploaded by cee-dub

Buy the T-Shirts as well.

Happy Friday, from the illustrator Blend Tool.

Sarah Palin thinks only small towns are Pro-America:

In order to clarify comments GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin made last night at a Greensboro, N.C., fundraiser about it being in a “pro-America” area, the campaign issued a slightly more detailed version of the pool report that came out yesterday.
The upshot? Washington, D.C., is neither “real America” nor “pro-America.” Other parts of the nation? It’s unclear, but if you live in a small town, you’re probably patriotic from Palin’s point of view.
“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe” — here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers — “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”

Besides having a husband who was a member of a pro-secessionist Alaska political party, Sarah Palin needs to get a grip. If Palin really believes that only those who live is small towns are Pro-American, then she needs to grow up. Because if what she says is true, there aren’t may Pro-Americans in America according to the chart below, illustrating Urban v Small Town America:

We are all Anti-Pro-Americans now.
This type of rhetoric is corrosive to our democracy and is inherently evil. Please, stop.
You should also read my thoughts about New York City as 51st State, when we aren’t being a Pro-America area.

So says the right wing:

GRANT: Let me ask you this question, since you are aware of patriotic symbols. Maybe you don’t know the answer. I’ll be frank. I don’t know the answer to this one, but what is that flag that Obama’s been standing in front of that looks like an American flag, but instead of having the field of 50 stars representing the 50 states, there’s a circle? Would someone please tell me what that is? Is the circle —
CALLER: Well, I thought it was our new flag.
GRANT: — the “O” for Obama? Is that what it is?

Oh wait, he was standing in front of the Ohio flag in Toledo.
You can’t make this up.