{"id":1269,"date":"2009-12-23T15:04:30","date_gmt":"2009-12-23T15:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2009-12-23T15:04:30","modified_gmt":"2009-12-23T15:04:30","slug":"no-monopoly-on-cultural-vandalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1269","title":{"rendered":"No monopoly on cultural vandalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In case anyone was under the impression that cultural vandalism, such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/content\/Conference_Set_On_Rebuilding_Afghan_Buddha_Statues\/1873900.html\">blowing up of historical monuments<\/a> that happen to stand in the way of someone&#8217;s ideology, is the monopoly of Islamic fanatics, think again. The other day, Georgia&#8217;s (the country&#8217;s, not the US state&#8217;s) democratically elected president ordered the destruction of a Soviet-era monument, ostensibly to make room for a new parliament building. Unfortunately for him (not that I care) and for two innocent spectators (that I do care about) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/content\/Georgian_President_Blasted_Over_Monuments_Demolition\/1910056.html\">the demolition was botched<\/a>, and flying concrete killed these two people, a mother and her 8-year old daughter. As to the memorial&#8230; I may not have too many fond thoughts about the Soviet Union and the Red Army, but few things are less controversial than a memorial dedicated to a victory over fascism and the glory of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War&#8230; in which, incidentally, some 300,000 Georgians also happened to have lost their lives.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1269' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In case anyone was under the impression that cultural vandalism, such as the blowing up of historical monuments that happen to stand in the way of someone&#8217;s ideology, is the monopoly of Islamic fanatics, think again. The other day, Georgia&#8217;s (the country&#8217;s, not the US state&#8217;s) democratically elected president ordered the destruction of a Soviet-era <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1269' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-politics","category-40-id","category-25-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}