In David Lam Park in Yaletown. Spring of 2020.

 

Meet the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity Ensuring "Democracy" in a Neoliberalized World Order

 

https://americaneveryman.com/2018/05/12/meet-the-transatlantic-commission-on-election-integrity-ensuring-democracy-in-a-neoliberalized-world-order/#more-43797

With more than 20 critical elections taking place in the next two years in the U.S., Mexico and Europe and with public sentiment running high against austerity, privatization and deregulation of Big Business, the neoliberals have decided to use the “Russia hacked us” story as cover for putting together an operation to ensure democracy doesn’t fail them again like it did in 2016.

“The Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity will aim to “fill a void in transatlantic coordination, identifying and plugging gaps and raising awareness from governments to citizens; and it will look into the level of risk exposure across Western countries and ask how technology can address the problem,” according to the news release.” CNN

The Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity has been formed with the expressed purpose being to develop systems that will produce “safer” election results for the entrenched powers that be.

More than 20 elections in North America and Europe over the next two years will provide ‘’fertile ground’’ for interference like that seen during the U.S. presidential election in 2016, former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters Friday in Washington. Bloomberg

The commission’s cast list looks like a who’s who of career neoliberal sycophants who just happen to be out of work and have lots of time on their hands. They will hold their first meeting in mid June at the Orwelllian-named Copenhagen Democracy Summit and from there they will decide how best to make sure America, Mexico and Europe “vote the right way” in upcoming elections.

Michael Chertoff – co-chair – former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary
Anders Fogh Rasmussen – co-chair – former NATO Secretary General
Felipe Calderon – former Mexican President
Nick Clegg – former U.K. deputy prime minister
Joe Biden – former U.S. Vice President under Barack Obama

This democracy-killing commission was first conceived by Joe Biden who called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the whole “Russia hacking” thing and is being funded by various sources, not the least suspect of which being the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Microsoft.

“Biden will attend the first commission meeting in Copenhagen in June as part of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit. Both efforts are funded through the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. Biden told me that the commission will work toward finding best practices and policies among the United States and its European allies to thwart subversive measures by Russia and any other countries that may want to interfere.” Washington Post

“The group aims to conduct studies on how to better reduce risks to elections from Russian cyber threats, including looking at new technologies, and share their findings with governments. Microsoft Corp. is providing the commission with technical expertise and $300,000 in funds. Rasmussen said other ‘’seed’’ funding has come from his consulting company, and the group will continue to raise money to back its work.” Bloomberg

Gee. I wonder if Microsoft will win the contract to produce the software for the hackable voting machines and if Michael Chertoff’s company will get the money to actually build the faith-based voting machines. Gee. I wonder.

The Alliance of Democracies was founded by pure neoliberal globalist Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who played a key role in the destruction of Libya (for French and British business interests) and on his “about” page, he makes his neoliberal economic agenda quite clear.

“The Alliance of Democracies Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2017 by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO Secretary General and former Prime Minister of Denmark. The Foundation is dedicated to the advancement of democracy and free markets across the globe and runs three programs:”

One of the things the Alliance does is set up new businesses in nations we brought “democracy” to like Libya:

“The program supports successful entrepreneurial projects in emerging democracies and post-conflict areas,”

Josh Rogin over at the CIA’s Washington Post (which promises at the top of each page to kill democracy in the darkness cast by it’s shadow) makes it very clear why this commission of neoliberal globalist hacks has been formed. All you have to do is read between the lines.

“Russian interference is not new, but it is more aggressive and widespread than ever. By now there is evidence that the Russian government interfered in Brexit, the most recent French presidential election, the Catalonian independence vote in Spain, and even the recent Italian elections through a mix of propaganda, illicit funding and complex social media manipulation meant to promote Russian interests and sow chaos in democratic political systems.

Closer to home, there are signs Russia is interfering in upcoming elections in Mexico. Before the next U.S. presidential election, in 2020, which Biden may be involved in, there will be 20 major elections in European Union and NATO countries.

“You have a lot of examples of the Russians trying to stir up dissatisfaction, spur nationalism, in an attempt to weaken the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Rasmussen said.” Washington Post

Where ever a vote turned out to go against the neoliberal globalists’ agenda, THAT is where Russia interfered. That’s basically the gist of it.

But look at that quote from Rasmussen. “Spur nationalism” and weaken the confidence that the citizens have in their neoliberalized nations. That pretty much says it all right there, doesn’t it?

Josh Rogin gets it. That’s why he gets the big bucks working for the CIA… uh… I mean… the Washington Post:

“Absent that, Russia will continue to undermine our democratic systems, spur instability and fuel nationalism on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum.” Josh Rogin

Absent some new means by which to undermine real democracy, people will undoubtedly vote in their own interests and against the One Party neoliberal globalist system that is struggling to keep itself afloat in nations where citizens are still allowed a vote. Hence, the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity has been formed and tasked with developing new ways to… how did Rasputin Rasmussen put it?

‘’I have no doubt that (we) and also other (neoliberal globalists) will continue to destabilize democratic societies,’’ Rasmussen said. ‘‘(So we) will (continue to) develop more and more sophisticated methods (to ensure the ignorant public vote the RIGHT WAY)” Bloomberg

Review of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”

 

https://theredphoenixapl.org/2010/11/01/review-of-%e2%80%9cthe-shock-doctrine-the-rise-of-disaster-capitalism%e2%80%9d/

Every once in a while, a book comes along that sets the liberals on fire. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is one such book. This volume has been hawked by such national liberal pundits as Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. There has been such a buzz over this book in the past two years that it behooves us to write a review of it. Overall, the writing style is quite friendly to those of us who are not political scientists. It is, so to speak, an easy read. The historical research that went into the book is respectable (for the most part). Naomi Klein’s title refers to the “shocking” ways in which unregulated free markets have been applied to many countries throughout the world, and how “disaster capitalism,” or capitalism that is a disaster for working people, has been put in power.

From the coup in Chile to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the “shock therapies” used in Poland, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and even the US and UK, this book lays out quite completely the pattern used by the Friedmanite capitalists of the Chicago School from their rise in the 1970s to their mastery over the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s and their control of WTO and GATT today. Overall, the pattern is the same between these different occurences in different countries at different times. It is a form of imperialism, which as we know is the necessary expansion of capitalism to capture more resources and more markets. Unless capitalism constantly expands it is subject to collapse. Klein is correct about this. That said, there are severe flaws with the ideology expressed in the book.

The “Shock Doctrine” of “Disaster Capitalism” Applied

The Friedmanite model of capitalism requires three things: social spending cuts (or even better the absence of a social support system), deregulation and extensive tax cuts for business ventures and the wealthy. In the instance of Chile and the Latin American countries (Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia) the start was a coup of the more independent-minded capitalist governments that pursued the European social-democratic style. The first to be subjected was Chile, which had elected Allende, and it was deemed prudent by the Nixon Administration to support a coup by Pinochet and to radically alter the Chilean state. According to Klein, the only way to successfully pull this off was through extreme psychological and cultural shocks to knock down the resistance of the Chilean people to these so-called reforms.

Klein mentions many of the “shocks” of the Chilean coup, such as tanks seizing government buildings, military police arrests, disappearances, murders and torture—all of which was developed by the CIA under the MKULTRA program and resulted in the creation of the “KUBARK” manual.* Pinochet, being a general who had no schooling in economics, needed economic experts. These were provided by Chicago School of Economics graduates, both Americans and Chileans. Even before the coup, they devised an economic plan called “the Brick” which called for the destruction of the Chilean social programs, massive tax cuts, deregulation and the removal of protective tariffs. The results of these political shocks, economic shocks and later shocks to individuals through torture as Klein’s “shock” metaphor goes, were economic disasters for the Chilean workers and massive profits for the capitalists in America and the Chilean bourgeoisie.

The “Shock Doctrine” at Home

Next in line were Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. Over the course of time, these methods were refined and redefined for use in so-called democratic countries like the US and UK. According to Klein, “Thatcher-ism,” as it was called in the UK, was pulled off by starting a war with Argentina over an archipelago in the South Atlantic called the Falkland Islands. Thatcher was able to use the war to whip up patriotic sentiment to enable her to bust unions and radically revise the social structure of the UK in the name of an “Ownership Society.” People thought that was a phrase coined by George W. Bush—the former President isn’t that smart, quite frankly.

In the United States, high rates of interest imposed by the Federal Reserve (also known as the Fed) were putting economic pressure on America. It was during this time that Ronald Reagan began his campaign of union-busting, starting with the air traffic controllers.

International Implications

During the 1980s expansion of the Freidmanite “shock treatments” in the developing world were imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. They demanded privatization, social austerity and deregulation as conditions to give loans, which were usually take out to pay debt incurred from previous loans for economic development. The end result of course, was a disaster for the working people of Africa and Asia.

In the 1990s, the “shock doctrine” was expanded to Eastern Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact states. The prime examples—Poland and Russia—were exposed to so-called shock therapy almost immediately. In 1990, the Solidarity group were used by the West to call for privatization, deregulation and asset sales from the Polish state-operated infrastructure. Naomi Klein does her best to whitewash Solidarity, using frivolously high numbers for their membership and neglecting to mention their ties to the West, instead portraying them as victims. Russia followed much the same pattern as Poland, although at an accelerated rate. This netted huge profits for Western capitalists and worsening conditions for the Russian and Polish workers.

Friedman-ism also worked its way into the People’s Republic of China, which was already undergoing the construction of a capitalist society under Deng Xiaoping. Deng’s policies of course had the result of growing inequity in China, and also an increase in unemployment, as capitalism, in order to maximize profit, requires the presence of surplus labor to drive down wages. There were also severe cuts to the social programs in the PRC at the time.

This leads us to Klein’s next subject – the use of pressures for deregulation by the West to cause capital flight in the so-called “Asian Tigers,” namely South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia. These societies had extremely high tariffs, huge public infrastructure in state-capitalist companies as well as in social goods like education. By pushing for the deregulation of their capital controls, the Asia Crises was engineered by the WTO and the IMF.

Modern-Day “Shock Doctrine”

All of this leads to the final frontier for capitalist penetration, namely, the economies of the Middle East and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. In the Middle East these states, usually with large oil reserves, did not have loans to pay off and were mistrustful of foreign influence. To the superpowers, the only solution was invasion and occupation by an outside force. What better outside force than America, which spends more on its military than anyone else? There was only one problem—the American people did not want to start a war. In short, a “shock” to the system in the United States was necessary and the bourgeoisie was more than willing to allow the plans of Osama Bin Laden to go through, since it would open up opportunities for the military-industrial complex and the creation of a new market – “Homeland Security Solutions.” Needless to say, Bin Laden was more than willing to oblige, and the outsourcing of everything from cooking and military construction to companies like Halliburton went through unabated.

As we mentioned, there are deep flaws to this book. Naomi Klein seems to believe that a form of capitalism can be devised which is not a “disaster” for working people when capitalism by its very nature is contradictory to the interests of all those who lack capital. Throughout the book, the author repeatedly hammers home her view that Keynesian capitalist economics is some how better for working people. Such a view is patently untrue. Regulated capitalism, which is the basis of Keynesian economics, as we know, only places rules and regulations on a system imposed by and supported by the very people who have the means to destroy, subvert and work against those very regulations. Keynesian economics is at best a temporary solution to a crisis in capitalism which will be replaced eventually by the most abusive forms of capitalism precisely when the capitalists think they can get away with it.

Indeed, despite the bourgeois liberal-leaning of Naomi Klein, and despite her whitewashing of social democracy and Keynesian economics, she has managed to show that that the current War on Terror is nothing more than the latest manifestation of imperialism, which must ultimately culminate in one of two outcomes: capitalist dictatorship or socialism.

10 Must-See Buildings of the Modern Era

 

https://www.thoughtco.com/top-buildings-of-the-modern-era-177106

Every era has its giants, but when the world moved out of the Victorian age, architecture reached new heights. From soaring skyscrapers to dramatic innovations in engineering and design, 20th century modern architecture transformed the way we think about building. Architecture enthusiasts the world over have picked these top ten buildings, naming them the most beloved and revolutionary structures of the recent past. This list may not include the choices of scholars and historians — you can read expert opinions in books like the 2012 Phaidon Atlas. These are the people's choices, important architecture from around the world that continues to awe and influence the lives of ordinary citizens.

1905 to 1910, Casa Mila Barcelona, Spain

Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi defied rigid geometry when he designed Casa Mila Barcelona. Gaudi was not the first to build "light wells" to optimize natural sunlight — Burnham & Root designed Chicago's Rookery with a light well in 1888 and the Dakota apartments in New York City had an inner courtyard in 1884. But Gaudi's Casa Mila Barcelona is an apartment building with a fanciful aura. Wavy walls seem to undulate, dormers spring from the roof with a comical array of chimney stacks dancing nearby. "The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God," Gaudi has asserted.

1913, Grand Central Terminal, New York City

Designed by architects Reed and Stem of St. Louis, Missouri and Warren and Wetmore of New York City, today's Grand Central terminal building in New York City features lavish marble work and a domed ceiling with 2,500 twinkling stars. Not only did it become part of the infrastructure, with roadways built into the architecture, but it became a prototype for future transportation hubs, including the one at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.

1930, The Chrysler Building, New York City

Architect William Van Alen lavished the 77-story Chrysler Building with automotive ornaments and classic Art Deco zigzags. Soaring 319 meters / 1,046 feet into the sky, the Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world...for a few months, until the Empire State Building was finished. And the Gothic-like gargoyles on this Art Deco skyscraper? None other than metallic eagles. Very sleek. Very modern in 1930.

1931, The Empire State Building, New York City

When it was built, the Empire State Building in New York City broke world records for building height. Reaching into the sky at 381 meters / 1,250 feet, it rose above the newly built Chrysler Building just blocks away. Even today, the height of the Empire State Building is nothing to sneeze at, ranking within the top 100 for tall buildings. The designers were architects Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, who had just finished the Reynolds Building — an Art Deco prototype in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but about a quarter of the height of New York's new building.

1935, Fallingwater - The Kaufmann Residence in Pennsylvania

Frank Lloyd Wright fooled gravity when he designed Fallingwater. What seems to be a loose pile of concrete slabs threatens to topple from its cliff. The cantilevered house is not really precarious, but visitors are still awed by the improbable structure in the Pennsylvania woods. It may be the most famous house in America.

1936 - 1939, Johnson Wax Building, Wisconsin

Frank Lloyd Wright redefined space with the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin. Inside the corporate architecture, opaque layers of glass tubes admit light and create the illusion of openness. "Interior space comes free," Wright said of his masterpiece. Wright also designed the original furniture for the building. Some chairs had only three legs, and would tip over if a forgetful secretary did not sit with correct posture.

1946 - 1950, The Farnsworth House, Illinois

Hovering in a green landscape, the Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is often celebrated as his most perfect expression of the International Style. All the exterior walls are industrial glass, making this mid-century home one of the first to meld commercial materials into residential architecture.

1957 - 1973, The Sydney Opera House, Australia

Maybe the architecture is popular because of the special lighting effects every year during the Vivid Sydney Festival. Or maybe it's the feng shui. No, Danish architect Jorn Utzon broke the rules with his modern expressionist Sidney Opera House in Australia. Overlooking the harbor, the venue is a freestanding sculpture of spherical roofs and curved shapes. The real story behind designing the Sydney Opera House, however, is that building iconic structures is too often not a smooth and easy road. After all these years, this entertainment venue is still a model of modern architecture.

1958, The Seagram Building, New York City

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson rejected "bourgeois" ornamentation when they designed the Seagram Building in New York City. A shimmering tower of glass and bronze, the skyscraper is both classical and stark. Metallic beams emphasize the height of its 38 stories, while a base of granite pillars leads to horizontal bands of bronze plating and bronze-tinted glass. Notice that the design is not stepped like other skyscrapers in NYC. To accommodate an "international style" of modern design, the architects built the entire building away from the street, introducing the corporate plaza — the American piazza. For this innovation, the Seagram has been considered one of the 10 buildings that changed America.

1970 - 1977, The World Trade Center Twin Towers

Designed by Minoru Yamasaki, New York's original World Trade consisted of two 110-story buildings (known as the "Twin Towers") and five smaller buildings. Soaring above the New York skyline, the Twin Towers were among the tallest buildings in the world. When the buildings were completed in 1977, their design was often criticized. But the Twin Towers soon became a part of America's cultural heritage, and a background for many popular movies. The buildings were destroyed in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Local Choices

 Local architecture is often the people's choice, and so it is with San Francisco's TransAmerican Building (or the Pyramid building). The 1972 futuristic skyscraper by architect William Pereira soars in beauty and certainly defines the local skyline. Also in San Francisco is Frank Lloyd Wright's 1948 V. C. Morris Gift Shop. Ask the locals about its connection with the Guggenheim Museum.

Chicagoans have a lot to brag about in their city, including the Chicago Title & Trust Building. The beautiful all-white constructivist style Chicago skyscraper by David Leventhal of Kohn Pedersen Fox is not the first building visitors think of in Chicago, but the 1992 structure brought postmodernism to downtown.

The locals in Boston, Massachusetts still love the John Hancock Tower, the reflective 1976 skyscraper designed by Henry N. Cobb of I. M. Pei & Partners. It's massive, but its parallelogram shape and blue glass exterior make it seem light as air. Also, it holds the complete reflection of the old Boston Trinity Church, reminding Bostonians that the old can live nicely next to the new. In Paris, the Louvre Pyramid designed by I.M. Pei is the modern architecture the locals love to hate.

Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas is the pride and joy of the Ozarks. Designed by E. Fay Jones, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, the chapel in the woods may be the best example of modern architecture's ability to innovate within a valued historical tradition. Built of wood, glass, and stone, the 1980 building has been described as "Ozark Gothic" and is a popular wedding venue.

In Ohio, the Cincinnati Union Terminal is most loved for its arch construction and mosaics. The 1933 Art Deco building is now the Cincinnati Museum Center, but it still takes you back to a simple time when there were big ideas.

In Canada, Toronto City Hall stands out as the citizens' choice for moving a metropolis into the future. The public voted down a traditional neoclassical building and, instead, held an international competition. They chose the sleek, modern design by Finnish architect Viljo Revell. Two curved office towers surround a flying saucer-like Council chamber in the 1965 design. The futuristic architecture continues to be breathtaking, and the entire complex at Nathan Phillips Square remains a source of pride for Toronto.

People around the world are proud of their local architecture, even when the designs are not by locals. The 1930 Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic is a Mies van der Rohe design filled with modern ideas for residential architecture. And who would expect modernism at the National Parliament building in Bangladesh? The Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban in Dhaka opened in 1982, after the sudden death of architect Louis Kahn. The space Kahn had designed became not only the pride of a people, but also one of the greatest architectural monuments of the world. The people's love of architecture should be listed at the top of any chart.

The Discovery Of Moses (1892) and The Little Shepherdess (1892) by Paul Peel.

 

Persona 4 Golden - Review

 

All that glitters is not gold, but surely some of it is! See how the hit PS2 RPG stands and shines on the PlayStation Vita!

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - Movie Review

 

https://www.alternateending.com/2013/05/these-are-the-voyages-there-be-whales-here.html

I shall open with a claim that is non-standard, and probably a bit daft: I think that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the film out of all 12 Star Trek features that comes closest to the spirit of the TV show it's based on (okay, so Star Trek: Insurrection probably comes even closer, but for a much more dubious reason. ETA: And now that there are 13 Star Trek features, I have to give some credit to Star Trek Beyond). "Are you mad? The time travel comedy with culture-shock jokes and whales? Is closest to the original series?", I could almost imagine you sputtering, if I thought you were an insane person who challenged the sanity of a blogger by shouting at your computer screen. Or if I didn't expect you to understand rhetorical gambits.

But yes, that's exactly the one I'm referring to, and I think I can make it stick. Firstly: The Voyage Home is the only Star Trek movie where nobody dies (onscreen), and is the first in four tries that ends with the "hurray!" feeling that so many episodes of the show did: no dead Spocks, no exploded starships, just a big happy send-off. Secondly, comedy wasn't as rare in the TV series as it is in the movies: there were only two outright comic episodes that I can immediately recall, but the comic byplay between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was much more an integral part of all but the most arch, serious episodes than it is in most of the films that aren't trying to make an active point of it; and the specific nature of the humor in this film bears quite a resemblance to the scattered moments of comedy in "The City on the Edge of Forever" (a time-travel episode that is largely not funny at all) and the overarching comedy in "A Piece of the Action" (one of the two overt comic episodes, set in a planet modeled after '20s gangland Chicago).

Thirdly, and this is actually the most important part, The Voyage Home is a message movie unlike anything that the other eleven films even thought about touching, and that's something that happens a lot in the TV show; it being one of the most touching elements of Gene Roddenberry's rose-colored worldview that he could use his sci-fi adventure show not merely to comment on society (a privilege of science fiction above nearly all other genres), but to actively agitate for improving society. How many episodes of Star Trek were nothing but little morality plays in disguise! Frequently not even that much disguise; the planet of half-white, half-black people warring with the half-black, half-white people leaps to mind, what I'd refer to as an allegory about racism if the word "allegory" didn't imply at least a surface-level attempt to hide the subtext.

So yes, The Voyage Home is the environmentalist Star Trek movie, the plea to stop and think about what we're doing to our planet: subjecting to the wrath of an alien probe 300 years hence that will destroy us for making humpback whales go extinct. Which, in a long line of profoundly silly bits of scientific nonsense peddled by the Star Trek franchise over nearly half a century, I'm not certain if anything is quite as boldly loopy as "a race of alien whales is in communication with terrestrial whales, and that is what whalesong is for". But the film means it so darn earnestly, and there had to be some way of getting us back to the Earth of 1986. Anyway, the film's environmental themes are woven into the script so cleanly, and tied so tightly in with more message-neutral dramatic concerns, that even at is most overt, the film never feels like it's giving up storytelling in order to lecture us. Take note, Stanley Kramers of the world! You can get just as much mileage and a whole lot more entertainment out of a laugh line like "Judging by the pollution content in the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the latter half of the 20th Century" as you can from breast-beating monologues.

Anyway, The Voyage Home: after the events of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the crew of the late U.S.S. Enterprise merely waits on the rehabilitation of the resurrected Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to head back to Earth and face trial for their acts of insubordination and sabotage; but as they idly cool their heels on Vulcan, Earth is under a strange kind of attack from a strange alien probe, a huge black cylinder with a small blue protuberance uttering an otherworldly noise and blanking out power in every station and ship it passes. Having set up shop above Earth's atmosphere, the probe is now vaporising the oceans, turning the planet into a cloud-locked hell. As the Enterprise crew returns on their commandeered Klingon Bird of Prey, they're able to determine that the probe's message is in fact identical to the songs of humpback whales, and from there it's easy to deduce that the probe is searching for a species that has been extinct for two hundred years. Obviously, then, the best solution is to go back to the 20th Century, when such animals were reasonably plentiful and bring a mating pair back to the 23rd Century to communicate with the alien vessel; obviously. But once arrived in Starfleet's future hometown of San Francisco in the film's release year of 1986, just getting around in a wholly alien culture proves to be challenge enough, to say nothing of using primitive technology to repair their horribly damaged ship (trips through time aren't a cakewalk, you know), and to build an enclosure for the whales that, at this point, haven't yet been found.

Given its reputation as a fish-out-of-water comedy, broadly accessible to just about anybody (a reputation that made the film the highest grossing in the series, and the only one to break $100 million in box office receipts, until 2009's Star Trek; adjusted for inflation, it's still the series' third-highest grosser, and likely to remain that way), it's a little shocking to realise how long it takes until The Voyage Home finally warps to 1986, or starts to be funny. A full quarter of the movie is dedicated just to setting things up on Earth and re-introducing the characters - poorly; this might be the first Star Trek movie that baldly requires you to have seen at least the preceding two movies if not the whole show to have even vaguest idea of what's going on with this talk of katras, and mind-melds, and large portions of the first and third-act narrative. And this at least has the benefit of moving quickly and getting the stakes escalated fast. Almost too fast, and too escalated, perhaps, for the series' most self-consciously comic entry. But I am not one of the movie's five credited writers (including Nimoy, and Nicholas Meyer, the latter returning the franchise's bosom after being offended at the mere existence of The Search for Spock), and they undoubtedly would not care about my opinion.

Frankly, the 23rd Century parts of the movie are fine, nothing more, though Nimoy's directing is a great deal more focused than it was in the last film. It's quite apparent that what the filmmakers cared about most, and what they expect us to care about the most, was the central time-travel comedy; time-travel comedies being big business in the mid-'80s, what with the previous year's Back to the Future and all. And to the film's immeasurable credit, the 1986 sequences are all pretty great. Funny as heck, with its humor rooted (like nearly all great humor is) in the truth of the characters: funny to see Spock badly mangling an attempt to swear and use slang like a human, funny to see whiz-bang engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan, easily the best he is in any of the features) being sniffy and superior about 20th Century technology; funny to see Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) being the same way about medicine. Some of the jokes are lost to the Cold War; the bit about Chekhov (Walter Koenig) asking in battered English, "Where are the nooklear wessels" isn't nearly as clever when you have to remind yourself that a Russian asking about nukes in '86 would have a much different connotation than in the 2010s.

The other, much less predictable reason that the 1986 material works is that it finally solves - for the only time in the film series - the consistent problem that Star Trek had with its ensemble: giving them all something to do. It's still, unquestionably, driven by Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock, hunting for whales and getting entangled with a local marine biologist (Catherine Hicks) - whom Kirk, in best Kirk fashion, promptly starts to hit on (the only time that happened in the movies, really, until the younger, sexier Kirk of the reboot). But every single character has at least one small chance to shine, to get a little comic moment all their own, even if it's just a few well-timed reaction shots in Uhura's (Nichelle Nichols) case.

Nimoy, as director, is on much surer footing here: his instinct to let his castmates feel their way into the script rather than demanding they hew to it pays off substantially better than in The Search for Spock, and he's infinitely better at shaping comic moments than tragic ones (the shape of the rest of his limited directorial career bears that out). The tender moments that are here still work, but they're mostly Spock's own moments, suggesting that Nimoy was better at acting that kind of emotion than bringing it out in others.

Anyway, there's not much room for sincerity; The Voyage Home is consciously a lark, trivialising its world-threatening conflict, ending with the happiest conclusion of any of the movies that point, and cramming in broad laughs along the way. Happily, its also a completely effective and well-made lark, a bit flimsy to be legitimately counted as "great" Star Trek, but aware enough of its characters and their attachments to each other and the audience that it's completely, undeniably "fun" Star Trek.

Now listening to Chrono Trigger by Yasunori Mitsuda and Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin...

 

Spider-Man 3 (2007) - Cool Peter Parker Scene (5/10) | Movieclips

 

Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) enjoys his newfound confidence and exhibits a new spring in his step.

Your friendly neighborhood web-slinger is back, only this time his sunny outlook has become partially overcast in the third chapter of director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man saga. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco return to reprise their roles from the previous two installments, with Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, and Bryce Dallas Howard making their first appearances in the series as Flint Marko (aka Sandman), Eddie Brock (aka Venom), and Gwen Stacy, respectively. Peter Parker (Maguire) has finally leaned to walk the middle ground between being the superhero that his city needs and the man that Mary Jane (Dunst) loves. All is well in New York City until one night, as Peter and M.J. sit gazing at the stars, a falling comet streams across the sky and crashes into the ground close by. But this isn't any ordinary shooting star, and upon impact the mysterious space rock is split open to reveal a shape-shifting symbiote with the power to overtake anything that it comes into contact with. Later, as Harry Osborn (James Franco) acquires his late father's flying board, engineers a powerful new Goblin outfit, and takes to the sky to avenge dad's death, the mysterious space sludge infects both Peter's Spider-Man suit and ambitious street photographer Eddie Brock (Grace). Peter's strange new suit gives him a newfound sense of power as it gradually overpowers his personality, and he discovers that escaped convict Flint Marko was in fact the man responsible for the death of Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). Unfortunately for Peter, Marko has recently acquired the power to morph at will and quickly completes his transformation into the dreaded Sandman. As the Sandman gives in to his darkest criminal instincts and the slithering space symbiote transforms Eddie Brock into the nightmarish fanged villain known as Venom, the citizens of New York City must once again call on Spider-Man to fend off destructive forces that are far too powerful for the likes of mortal man.

Just finished watching Beasts Of The Southern Wild (2012) and The Beguiled (2017)...

In the West End in Vancouver. Spring of 2020.

 The West End is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, located between the Coal Harbour neighbourhood and the financial and central business districts of Downtown Vancouver to the east, Stanley Park to the northwest, the English Bay to the west, and Kitsilano to the southwest across the False Creek opening.

The definition of the "official neighbourhood" of the West End, according to the city, is the area west of Burrard Street, east of Denman Street, and south of West Georgia Street. Historically the term originated and remains used by Vancouverites to refer to everything from Burrard Street to Stanley Park, including the Stanley Park Neighbourhood west of Denman Street and the Coal Harbour Neighbourhood. Coal Harbour Neighbourhood is officially designated as west of Burrard and to the north of West Georgia, although the newly built areas between West Pender Street and the waterfront are expressly "Coal Harbour" and not considered part of the West End.

Like all of Vancouver, the West End was originally a forested wilderness. The area was purchased in 1862 by John Morton, Samuel Brighouse, and William Hailstone, three men known as the "Three Greenhorn Englishmen," or just the "Three Greenhorns," owing to the belief that the naive men paid too much for the remote land. The men had plans to establish a brickworks on the shore of Coal Harbour, and their land claim was originally staked with the hopeful intent of mining for porcelain clays, but the grade of clay was not fine enough for that use. When those plans failed (a lack of transportation being a key factor) they sold a good portion of the area, by then known as the Brickmaker's Claim, to Victoria investors who in turn tried to promote its development as New Liverpool. The only thing that happened with that scheme was a subdivision plan registered with the Land Titles office in New Westminster. Another name used for the property was the Brighouse Estate (Brighouse as a name came to refer to a particular part of Richmond, where "Greenhorn" J. Morton also owned property). One of the partners, observant that brick was a valuable building commodity despite the abundance of timber in the region, moved the brick-clay operations to Sumas Mountain, establishing the community of Clayburn, now a neighbourhood of Abbotsford.

Later, with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, with its terminus at nearby Coal Harbour, the West End became Vancouver's first upscale neighbourhood, home to the richest railroad families. Many of these families lived along Georgia Street, known at that time as "Blue Blood Alley" for all the posh mansions built there. Later mansions (including the Davie mansion) were built in then remoter areas of the West End as the financial district's land values displaced the high-toned residences. This role was ultimately dropped with the increasing vogue for the upscale Shaughnessy neighbourhood, and as middle-class housing of various kinds began to fill out the West End. As the city grew, the West End became a transitory place for new arrivals from elsewhere in Canada, the United Kingdom, and later for immigrants from other countries, establishing a tradition of diversity. Following World War II, a significant German commercial community emerged along Robson Street, giving birth to the nickname Robsonstrasse, a name still occasionally used in marketing despite the loss of its original meaning.

The West End is bordered by downtown on the one side, Stanley Park on the other and by water on two. The West End is home to a mixed population, old and young, of Canadians, immigrants and international transient residents. Like other downtown neighbourhoods, the West End is very densely populated. It is adjacent to the downtown core business and financial districts, with traffic calmed streets punctuated by concrete islands, sidewalk barricades, and mini-parks and many residential heritage buildings including The Manhattan, The Beaconsfield, The Beverly and The Queen Charlotte.

Close to 45,000 people of all ages, incomes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations live in the West End. The age group of 20–39 years consistently ranks the largest at 48%, followed by 40-64 at 34%, 65+ at 13% and under 19 at 6%. Containing 7.4% of the City's population, the West End welcomed 14% of new Vancouverites between 2001 and 2006. The West End is also home to Western Canada's largest LGBTQ community. Vancouver's gay village, called Davie Village, is centred primarily on Davie Street between Burrard and Bute.

The share of single-parent families in the West End is about 12%, compared to 17% for the City of Vancouver. Statistics also show that the West End is home to many children — the downtown peninsula now has more children than traditional family neighbourhoods such as West Point Grey or Kerrisdale. Lord Roberts Annex offers kindergarten to grade 3. The student population of Lord Roberts Elementary School (k-grade 7) represents 43 countries and 37 languages. King George Secondary School (grades 8-12) celebrated 100 years in 2014.

West End residents have been very active in shaping their neighbourhood and maintaining its liveability. In the 1970s, residents banded together to calm traffic that was using the neighbourhood as a shortcut between downtown Vancouver and the suburbs of the North Shore, across the Lions' Gate Bridge. They also staged a successful, yet destructive "Shame the Johns" campaign to rid the West End of the sex work that was then visible in the neighbourhood. This campaign was formed by a group of politicians called the Concerned Residents of the West End (CROWE), prominently containing cisgender white gay men, who aided in the formation of a 1984 injunction granted by then-B.C. Supreme Court Justice Allan McEachern. This injunction banned sex workers from working west of Granville Street, which forcibly displaced them away from the relative safety and community support of Davie Street. Following this, they were forced into Yaletown, then Mount Pleasant, where they were repeatedly protested by "Shame the Johns vigilantes", down East Broadway, and eventually into the Downtown Eastside, where already vulnerable sex workers are more open to violence and abuse than ever before. These displacements were a worsened repetition of the early erasers that happened on Dupont and Alexander Street. Further, this displacement largely targeted transgender, two-spirit and First Nations women, replicated the colonial practices and dispossession of land from the Musqueam, Burrard, and Squamish First Nations. Today, groups such as the West End Citizens Action Network, the West End Residents Association and West End Neighbours continue to be actively involved in keeping the West End liveable, leaving this history largely erased.

The West End is particularly famous among visitors for Robson Street. It was historically known as the Robsonstrasse, for the postwar period when it was a hub for immigrants from Germany, and was home to owner operated boutiques, schnitzel houses and other bistro-style dining establishments until the 1980s when the transition to the current fashionable shopping and dining area stretching from Burrard Street to Jervis Street, began. Many restaurants and shops can also be found along Denman Street closer to Stanley Park, and Davie Street between Burrard and Jervis streets.

Numerous parks and beaches can be found throughout the West End including Alexandra Park, Cardero Park, Nelson Park, Stanley Park and Sunset Beach. These parks range in size from 0.22 hectares (Morton Park) to over 406 hectare (Stanley Park). A portion of the Stanley Park Seawall promenade runs along the waterfront from Burrard Bridge to Ceperly Park.

The area is also known for English Bay Beach, a large park on English Bay which is thronged during the annual Celebration of Light fireworks display each year mid-summer. St. Paul's Hospital, one of Vancouver's largest and oldest health facilities, sits at the neighbourhood's eastern edge on Burrard Street.

Community Centres in the West End include the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, West End Community Centre, Coal Harbour Community Centre and Barclay Manor. Depending on the centre, they offer swimming pools, gyms, fitness centres and an ice rink, as well as many meeting and all-purpose rooms for rent.

The West End is not to be confused with the West Side (which denotes the western half of the non-downtown part of Vancouver city to the south) or West Vancouver ("West Van"), a separate municipality. (Conversely, and to the confusion of some, "East Van," "the East End," and "the East Side" all denote East Vancouver.)

On November 4, 2015, The Canadian Institute of Planners announced winners of its fifth annual Great Places in Canada contest. A jury of seven professional planners named the West End as the Great Neighbourhood. Juror Jaspal Marwah MCIP, RPP stated that "the West End makes it easy, safe and inviting for residents to walk and bike to work, to access thriving local businesses and to explore Vancouver's beaches, trails and Stanley Park. Transit access, traffic calming, street furniture, treed promenades, pocket parks and public spaces reflect a thoughtful approach to place-making. Home to the city's LGBTQ community, the West End's density is evenly matched by its diversity of residents, and by a strong commitment to creating an inclusive community that prioritizes affordable housing."

 

Brutalism and the newly independent African states, A case study: The Kenyatta International Convention Centre

 

https://3rdworldarchitecture.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/brutalism-and-the-newly-independent-african-states-a-case-study-the-kenyatta-international-conventional-centre/

The Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) is one of the greatest examples of Brutalist architecture in Africa. The building is an important reflection on the countries feelings as a newly independent country. The choice of architectural style, brutalism, is important. Brutalist architecture wanted to escape from all architectural conventions and to create truly modernist architecture that could be applied to buildings universally around the world.

So what is brutalism, let start by looking at the etymology of the word. Although many people think brutalism comes from the English word brutal the word actually comes from the French term béton-brut, meaning raw concrete. The word brutalism was coined by British architecture critic Reyner Banham. Hence raw concrete is one of the most important features of brutalism. Although concrete had been extensively used in buildings in the 20th century it was almost always covered and hidden by some other material in the facade. Brutalism wanted to show concrete as it was, the honesty of the building is an important idea in brutalist architecture. The building unapologetically showing what it is. A building must be honest and people should be able to ‘read’ the building’s structure from the outside. Brutalism was also conflated with equality and can be seen as one of the most important architectural styles of communist countries. Brutalism wanted to build a world of equality and egalitarianism, this meant doing away with historical and cultural backgrounds.

Brutalism wanted to show what concrete could do and to be bold in its use. Concrete is interesting for a number of reasons, the most important being that it takes the shape of the mould in which you place it, this makes it incredibly versatile. Furthermore, concrete can be used for structural and non-structural parts of a building. This means that concrete is just as useable to create a non-structural wall or an ornament as it is in creating the structural parts of the building. This meant that there did not need to be a distinction between materials used for structural parts of the building and materials used for ornamental or functional parts of the building, it could all be done in concrete. Brutalism can be seen at its base as an experiment in what concrete can do and how it could be used.

Brutalism became an architectural experiment in medium but also a political and social experiment. In the west, brutalism became the go-to style for large social housing projects, like Robin Hood Gardens, and large public institutions, like the Boston city hall.

Brutalism had its heyday in the 1960’s and 1970’s right around the same time as many African nations were become independent, like the DCR (1960), Kenya (1963), Nigeria (1960) and Zambia (1964). These newly independent countries needed to build new buildings for there institutions and put their countries on the world stage.

African leaders needed an architectural style that showed how modern these countries were but also shows their independence from their former European oppressors. This required an architecture style that did not follow European conventions of architecture and a style that pushed away from all that had come before, brutalism was the perfect fit.

One such building is the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi.

The KICC is named after the first president and father of the nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. In the 1960’s Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and his party, KANU wanted a new party headquarters in the centre of Nairobi. The party wanted a small four-story building and asked Norwegian architect Karl Henrik Nøstvik and Kenyan Architect David Mutiso to design a building.

During the design process, the IMF/World Bank choose Nairobi to host a large conference, this required a large new convention centre to host the largest conference ever to be held in Africa. The event would take place in 1973 and the KANU headquarters was chosen to host the venue. The 4 story building turned into a 28 story building with more than 200,000 square meters of space. The building’s new design needed to not only capture the new Kenya but show what a post-colonial Africa was capable of.

The new design had three main structures, a tower, plinth and auditorium. The building’s design is supposed to reflect a closed (the auditorium) and an open flower (tower). This idea is created by the cone shape roof of the auditorium and the inverted cone at the top of the tower. The building is therefore emblematic of the country blossoming into a free independent state. Nøstvik and Mutiso wanted the building to reflect Kenyan design principle and were inspired by traditional mud huts. This is where the round shapes in the building come from and also the brown colour of the building.

The building can be seen as a brutalist structure because of its use of raw concrete, most notably in the plinth. The ramps are very reminiscent of the galleries in the Robin Hood Gardens in London. The grand monumentalism of this ramp, which acts are the main entrance to the building makes the building feel gigantic. Another brutalist feature of the building is that the construction and use of the building is visible from the outside. The auditorium is clearly visible from the outside. The building is honest in its constriction not only in the exterior but also in the interior of the building, where raw concrete is also extensively used.

The building’s three main structures (tower, plinth and auditorium) are not only a separation of functions but these three structures are also visually split, most notably between the plinth and the auditorium. The joint between these two structures is formed by a glass entrance to the auditorium. The auditorium is held up by thin ‘n’ shaped concrete arches. This leads to a very clear visually division between plinth and auditorium.

The KICC is one of the many examples of brutalist architecture in post-colonial Africa. Other notable examples are the Central Bank of Kenya also in Nairobi, La Pyramide in Abidjan, the independence Arch in Accra and Kariakoo Market in Dar es Salaam. All these buildings wanted to push away from there European colonial pasts and show what post-colonial Africa would look like. Although brutalism fell out of favour across the world in the 1980’s the style forever embodies post-colonial Africa.

Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow

 

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/545

Inextricably linked to all the most important historical and political events in Russia since the 13th century, the Kremlin (built between the 14th and 17th centuries by outstanding Russian and foreign architects) was the residence of the Great Prince and also a religious centre. At the foot of its ramparts, on Red Square, St Basil's Basilica is one of the most beautiful Russian Orthodox monuments.

Brief synthesis

At the geographic and historic centre of Moscow, the Moscow Kremlin is the oldest part of the city. First mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1147 as a fortification erected on the left bank of the Moskva river by Yuri Dolgoruki, Prince of Suzdal, the Kremlin developed and grew with settlements and suburbs which were further surrounded by new fortifications - Kitaigorodsky Wall, Bely Gorod, Zemlyanoy Gorod and others. This determined a radial and circular plan of the centre of Moscow typical of many other Old Russian cities.

In 13th century the Kremlin was the official residence of supreme power - the center of temporal and spiritual life of the state. The Kremlin of the late 15th – early 16th century is one of the major fortifications of Europe (the stone walls and towers of present day were erected in 1485–1516). It contains an ensemble of monuments of outstanding quality.

The most significant churches of the Moscow Kremlin are situated on the Cathedral Square; they are the Cathedral of the Dormition, Church of the Archangel, Church of the Annunciation and the bell tower of Ivan Veliki. Almost all of them were designed by invited Italian architects which is clearly seen in their architectural style. The five-domed Assumption Cathedral (1475–1479) was built by an Italian architect Aristotele Fiorvanti. Its interior is decorated with frescos and a five-tier iconostasis (15th–17th century). The cathedral became the major Russian Orthodox church; a wedding and coronation place for great princes, tsars and emperors as well as the shrine for metropolitans and patriarchs.

In the same square another Italian architect, Alevisio Novi, erected the five-domed Church of the Archangel in 1505-1508. From the 17th to 19th century, its interior was decorated by wonderful frescos and an iconostasis. In this church many great princes and tsars of Moscow are buried. Among them are Ivan I Kalita, Dmitri Donskoi, Ivan III, Ivan IV the Terrible, Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich Romanovs.

The Cathedral of the Dormition was built by Pskov architects in 1484–1489. Inside the cathedral some mural paintings of 16th–19th century have been preserved and the icons of Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek are part of the iconostasis.

In 1505-1508 the bell tower of Ivan Veliki was built. Being 82 metres high it was the highest building in Russia which became the focal point of the Kremlin ensemble.

Among the oldest civil buildings of the Moscow Kremlin, the Palace of the Facets (1487–1491) is the most remarkable. Italian architects Marco Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solario built it as a great hall for holding state ceremonies, celebrations and for receiving foreign ambassadors. The most noteworthy civil construction of the 17th century built by Russian masters is the Teremnoi Palace.

From the early 18th century, when the capital of Russia moved to St. Petersburg, the Kremlin mainly played a ceremonial role with religious functions. By the end of the century the architectural complex of the Kremlin expanded with the Arsenal reconstructed after the Fire of 1797 by Matvei Kazakov. The Senate was built in 1776–1787 according to the plans of the same architect as the home of the highest agency of State power of the Russian Empire - the Ruling Senate. Today it is the residence of the President of Russia.

From 1839 to 1849 a Russian architect K.A. Thon erected the Great Kremlin Palace as a residence of the imperial family which combined ancient Kremlin buildings such as the Palace of the Facets, the Tsarina’s Golden Chamber, Master Chambers, the Teremnoi Palace and the Teremnoi churches. In the Armory Chamber built by K.A. Thon within the complex of the Great Kremlin Palace, there is a 16th century museum officially established by the order of Alexander I in 1806.

Red Square, closely associated with the Kremlin, lies beneath its east wall. At its south end is the famous Pokrovski Cathedral (Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed), one of the most beautiful monuments of Old Russian church architecture, erected in 1555–1560 to commemorate the victory of Ivan the Terrible over the Kazan Khanate. In the 17th century the cathedral gained its up-to-date appearance thanks to the decorative finishing of the domes and painting both inside and outside the cathedral. The construction of Red Square was finished by the late 19th century together with the erection of the Imperial Historic Museum (today the State Historical Museum), the Upper Trading Rows (GUM) and the Middle Trading Rows. In 1929, , Lenin’s Mausoleum, designed by A.V. Shchusev and an outstanding example of the Soviet monumental architecture, was finished.

Criterion (i): The Kremlin contains within its walls a unique series of masterpieces of architecture and the plastic arts. There are religious monuments of exceptional beauty such as the Church of the Annunciation, the Cathedral of the Dormition, the Church of the Archangel and the bell tower of Ivan Veliki; there are palaces such as the Great Palace of the Kremlin, which comprises within its walls the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin and the Teremnoi Palace. On Red Square is Saint Basil the Blessed, still a major edifice of Russian Orthodox art.

Criterion (ii): Throughout its history, Russian architecture has clearly been affected many times by influences emanating from the Kremlin. A particular example was the Italian Renaissance. The influence of the style was clearly felt when Rudolfo Aristotele Fioravanti built the Cathedral of the Dormition (1475-79) and grew stronger with the construction of the Granovitaya Palace (Hall of the Facets, 1487-91) by Marco Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solario. Italian Renaissance also influenced the towers of the fortified enceinte, built during the same period by Solario, using principles established by Milanese engineers (the Nikolskaya and the Spasskaya Towers both date from 1491). The Renaissance expression was even more present in the classic capitals and shells of the Church of the Archangel, reconstructed from 1505 to 1509 by Alevisio Novi.

Criterion (iv): With its triangular enceinte pierced by four gates and reinforced with 20 towers, the Moscow Kremlin preserves the memory of the wooden fortifications erected by Yuri Dolgoruki around 1156 on the hill at the confluence of the Moskova and Neglinnaya rivers (the Alexander Garden now covers the latter). By its layout and its history of transformations (in the 14th century Dimitri Donskoi had an enceinte of logs built, then the first stone wall), the Moscow Kremlin is the prototype of a Kremlin - the citadel at the centre of Old Russian towns such as Pskov, Tula, Kazan or Smolensk.

Criterion (vi): From the 13th century to the founding of St Petersburg, the Moscow Kremlin was directly and tangibly associated with every major event in Russian history. A 200-year period of obscurity ended in 1918 when it became the seat of government again. The Mausoleum of Lenin on Red Square is the Soviet Union’s prime example of symbolic monumental architecture. To proclaim the universal significance of the Russian revolution, the funerary urns of heroes of the revolution were incorporated into the Kremlin’s walls between the Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers. The site thus combines in an exceptional manner the preserved vestiges of bygone days with present-day signs of one of the greatest events in modern history.

Integrity

From the date of including the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square on the World Heritage List all the components representing the Outstanding Universal Value of the property are within its boundaries. The territory and the integrity of the World Heritage property have also remained unchanged. Within its boundaries the property still comprises all the elements that it contained at the date of nomination. The biggest threat, however, is unregulated commercial development of the adjacent areas.

Authenticity

The history of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square is reflected in the archival documents of 12th–19th century, for example in medieval chronicles, cadastral surveys, estimated construction books, painted lists, inventories, foreign notes and in graphic matters such as manuscripts, chronicles, plans, drafts, engravings, lithographs, sketches of foreign travelers, paintings and photographs. These documents are exceptionally valuable information sources. Comparison of the data received from archival documents and those obtained in the process of field study gives the idea of authenticity of  the property and its different elements. This comparison also serves as the basis for project development and for the choice of the appropriate methods of restoration that may preserve the monuments’ authenticity.

On the border of the ensemble a number of monuments destroyed in the 1930s were reconstructed according to measured plans.

Protection and management requirements

The statutory and institutional framework of an effective protection, management and improvement of the World Heritage property “Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow” has been established by laws and regulations of the Russian Federation and the city of Moscow.

According to the decree of the President of RSFSR of 18 December 1991 № 294, the Moscow Kremlin was included among especially protected cultural properties of nations of Russia - the highest conservation status for cultural and historical monuments in Russian legislation.

“Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow” is a Cultural Heritage Site of federal importance. State protection and management of federal sites is provided by Federal Law of 25.06.2002 № 73-FZ “On cultural heritage sites (historical and cultural monuments) of nations of the Russian Federation”. The federal executive body responsible for protection of the cultural property is the Department for Control, Supervision and Licensing in the Cultural Heritage Sphere of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.It is in charge of all methodological and control functions concerning restoration, usage and support of cultural heritage sites and the territories connected.

The World Heritage property is situated in the urban environment of Moscow. The city policy regarding cultural heritage protection and town-planning regulation is the responsibility of Moscow City Government, represented by the Department of Cultural Heritage, the Department of Urban Development and the Committee for Urban Development and Architecture of Moscow. In 1997 the boundaries of the protective (buffer) zone were approved in order to preserve the property, and to maintain and restore the historical architectural environment as well as the integral visual perception of the property.. There is a need to ensure the creation of an appropriate buffer zone and to develop close liaison between all stakeholders, including the Moscow City authorities, to ensure that constructions around the property do not impact adversely on its Outstanding Universal Value.

The World Heritage property is used by the following organizations: FGBUK (Federal Government Budgetary Institution of Culture), the State Historical and Cultural Museum-preserve “The Moscow Kremlin”, the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation and OJSC “GUM Department Store”.

#FuckGoogle+ Fuck You Google

 

Tao Hongjing (456-536)

 

https://goldenelixir.com/taoism/tao_hongjing.html

The Taoist master, alchemist, and pharmacologist Tao Hongjing was born in 456 near present-day Nanjing. He served in various positions at the courts of the Liu Song and Qi dynasties until 492. In that year he retired on Mount Mao (Maoshan), the early seat of Shangqing or Highest Clarity, a Taoist tradition based on meditation and visualisation techniques. The retreat he built on the mountain remained the centre of his activities until his death in 536.

After his initiation into Taoism around 485, Tao set himself to recover the original manuscripts, dating from slightly more than one century before, that contained the revelations at the basis of the Shangqing tradition. Tao authenticated and edited those manuscripts, and wrote extended commentaries on them. This undertaking resulted in two works completed in ca. 500, the Zhengao (Declarations of the Perfected) and the Dengzhen yinjue (Concealed Instructions on the Ascent to Perfection, only partially preserved). These and other works make Tao Hongjing into the first systematizer of Shangqing Taoism, of which he became the ninth patriarch.

During his retirement on Mount Mao, Tao Hongjing also worked on the Bencao jing jizhu (Collected Commentaries to the Canonical Pharmacopoeia), a commentary on the earliest known Chinese pharmacopoeia, the Shennong bencao (Canonical Pharmacopoeia of the Divine Husbandman). The original text contained notes on 365 drugs. To these Tao added 365 more, taken from a corpus of writings that he refers to as "Separate Records of Eminent Physicians." Tao's arrangement of the materia medica was innovative. He divided the drugs into six broad categories (minerals, plants, mammals, etc.), and retained the three traditional classes of the Shennong bencao only as subdivisions within each section. In a further group he classified the "drugs that have a name but are no longer used [in pharmacology]." Tao's commentary discusses the nomenclature, notes changes in the geographical distribution, and identifies varieties; it also includes references to the Taoist "Scriptures of the Immortals" (xianjing) and to alchemical practices. With the exception of a manuscript of the preface found at Dunhuang, the Bencao jing jizhu is lost as an independent text, but has been reconstructed based on quotations in later sources.

Since the establishment of the Liang dynasty in 502, Tao enjoyed the favour of Emperor Wu (r. 502-549), on whom he exerted remarkable influence. Shortly later, he began to devote himself to alchemical practices under imperial patronage. His main biographical source, written in the Tang period, has left a vivid account of these endeavours. Along with scriptural sources they testify the importance of alchemy within the Shangqing tradition, which represents the first known instance of close links between alchemy and an established Taoist movement.

Now reading Freezing Down by Anders Bodelsen...

 

Now listening to The Dark Crystal by Trevor Jones and About Last Night by various artists...