[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Acts of Minor Treason’s Andrew Barton photographs the ever-changing and increasingly condo-ized intersection of Queen Street West with Dufferin.
• James Bow points to a McDonald’s in Scarborough that appears for all the world to be abandoned. (Suburbia can be a wasteland.)
• Centauri Dreams notes that astronomers have ingeniously managed to determine the characteristics of the atmosphere of exoplanet GJ3470b, a hot Neptune closely orbiting a red dwarf.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that South Asia was repopulated by migrants from Africa after the Toba volcanic explosion.
• GNXP takes a look at some interesting genetic analysis of Caribbean populations.
• Joe. My. God. notes, with others, the irony of anti-Castro Cuban-American Marco Rubio defending the same homophobic policies that Castro would have advanced.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money does not think that internships can be defended.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen and The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer both note that Honduras seems interested in charter cities. The latter doesn’t think much will come of it.
• Elsewhere at The Power and the Money, Noel Maurer observes that Colombia is actually a very close ally of the United States and sees, in the relationship of Brazil with an Ecuador that has tried to harass Brazilian companies, the birth of a Brazilian hegemony in South America.
• Torontoist notes that ambitious plans for expanding St. Lawrence Market North have been sharply downgraded.
• Window on Eurasia notes an Uzbek writer who argues that the death of the Aral Sea will affect even upstream countries in Central Asia like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, whether directly through environmental catastrophe or indirectly through regional tensions.

[URBAN NOTE] “Piecing together the story of three missing men from Toronto’s gay village”

Andrea Houston’s Xtra! article noting the disappearance of three queer men of South Asian heritage over the past several years from the Church and Wellesley area–Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi, and Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan–makes for worrisome, and sad, reading. While Navaratnam was out, Faizi and Kayhan were both married heterosexually with children, in the closet. This may have left the latter two vulnerable.

Being “out-ish,” especially for some new Canadians, is not uncommon. People who come to Canada from homophobic countries often take years to venture out of the closet, if they ever do, he says. “It’s all part of the process,” he adds.

Faizi has a similar family situation to Kayhan. His sister-in-law Nijiba tells Xtra that his family is very worried. She knew nothing about the connection to the Village. She says Faizi has a wife and two daughters who live in Mississauga.

[. . .]

Harris says police have done an extensive background search on Navaratnam, including accessing “numerous judicial authorizations” to try to determine his whereabouts, such as immigration, but have discovered no leads from that.

“The key connection for us is that all three disappeared from the Church and Wellesley area, they have family and friends who are concerned about them, and everything that we’ve done from the onset, there is nothing that tells us where these three people are,” she says.

[. . . El-Farouk] Khaki says police should continue to expand the search by looking at cold cases and outstanding missing-person reports, in Toronto areas outside the Village and beyond. If these three men are indeed connected, Khaki says, it’s important for investigators to understand the cultural sensitivities and discrimination that explain why men like Kayhan and Faizi live double lives. With that in mind, it’s possible other missing-persons cases could be connected as well.

“I don’t think it’s problematic that police are looking at all possibilities, but I think they need to cast their net a little bit wider,” he says. “Start looking to see if other people have been reported missing from other areas. If there’s people connected to this community and also living closeted lives, the person who reports them missing could change how it is investigated.”

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw takes a look at the pictures indicating extensive use of tear gas against protesters in Istanbul.
• In a guest post at Centauri Dreams, Larry Klaes takes a look at a 2011 anthology of papers examining the dynamics of spacefaring societies (ours and others’), Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society.
• Crooked Timber’s Chris Bertram, visiting Brazil’s preplanned capital of Brasilia, starts a discussion about planned cities.
• Eastern Approaches notes the breakdown of the current coalition government in the Czech Republic.
• Geocurrents examines two Stalin Second World War-era ethnic cleansings, the first of the Volga Germans (now largely resettled in Germany) and the second of the Crimean Tatars (now largely returned to their Crimean homeland within Ukraine).
• Normblog’s Norman Geras wonders why many elements of Communist culture remain cool, despite its linkages with oppression.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer takes a look at mass transit in Colombia’s capital of Bogotá, noting that the current light rail system isn’t the best imaginable but is the best possible given the politics.
• Gideon Rachman notes the politics of green space, including parks, as exemplified by the Istanbul protests.
• Technosociology’s Zeynep Tufekci argues that online-driven protests do all fit a certain style.

[PHOTO] Celebrating the rising of Christ by St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church

On the 5th of May, as my father and I were standing on the southeastern corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park waiting for the next Jane’s Walk to begin, a crowd came out of the adjacent Saint Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church–a church I had photographed and written about back in 2009–to gather at the corner. As we watched, the dozen women and girls gathered recited the Paschal greeting: Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес!

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bag News Notes profiles a now-vanished New York Times photo essay, one detailing children residing as restaveks with Haitian families who are–or are not?–servants.
• Centauri Dreams considers how the New Horizons probe might detect subsurface oceans on Pluto.
• Daniel Drezner thinks that applying bad analogies to contemporary international relationships can unduly prejudice the contemporary world, and wonders if the impending construction of the world’s tallest building in China signals the end of the Chinese boom.
• Eastern Approaches notes the continued political strike in Poland over in-vitro fertilization.
• Geocurrents’ Asya Pereltsvaig profiles the deportation of Soviet Koreans from their Pacific homeland to Central Asia in the late 1930s, and notes echoes of this deportation in the music of Soviet Korean singer-songwriters.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan profiles the cat family tree.
• Language Hat links to a blog post demonstrating how Hittite was recognized as an Indo-European language.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley recommends against Canada’s purchase of F-35 fighters as unhelpful for Canada’s likely missions in the Arctic.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer wonders if secure property rights really are as essential to economic growth as some have suggested.

[LINK] “Canada expelling Eritrean diplomat for using consulate for fundraising”

The National Post‘s Stewart Bell reports that the Canadian government has reacted to the Eritrean government’s continued shaking down members of the Eritrean diaspora for money to fund the Eritrean military by expelling the Eritrean consul-general (located in Toronto, apparently). Good.

As recently as Monday, the head of the mission, Consul Semere Ghebremariam O. Micael, denied that. “I was collecting before and I stopped collecting,” he insisted in a telephone interview. “It’s not a problem.”

But the evidence showed otherwise and on Wednesday the Canadian government ordered Mr. Micael’s expulsion over his persistent efforts to use the consulate to violate a United Nations military embargo.

[. . .]

“I think it had to happen. The consulate was warned and ignored the warning,” said David Matas, senior legal counsel to the Eritrean-Canadian Human Rights Group, which had complained to Foreign Affairs and the RCMP about the consulate.

While pro-government Eritrean-Canadians have paid willingly, others called it extortion and the UN has reported that “threats, harassment and intimidation against the individual concerned or relatives in Eritrea” were used to extract tax payments.

“The people who were being victimized were Canadian dual nationals and permanent residents,” said Mr. Matas, a Winnipeg lawyer. “It was essential that the government of Canada stand up for Canadians being victimized on Canadian soil by a foreign government.”

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Burgh Diaspora’s Jim Russell notes that Canadians don’t migrate that much within their country in response to economic stimuli.
• Collide-a-scape’s Keith Kloor wonders why an ostensibly pro-science city like Portland, Oregon, has taken fluoride out of its water.
• Geocurrents notes the rapid fall of fertility rates in Turkey and Iran.
• Itching in Eestimaa’s Palun wonders about future multilingualism in Estonia.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley wonders what would have become of Japanese admiral Isoruku Yamamoto had he lived to the end of the Second World War.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution disagrees with Paul Krugman on the prospects of the Portuguese economy.
• The Numerati’s Stephen Baker is conflicted about Flickr’s upgrading, not least since they make all his photos available to everyone.
• Strange Maps produces a map where the Dakotas were divided differently, west-east along the Missouri River.
• Van Waffle describes, with photos, how a picture of an exotic pigeon inspired a beautiful shawl.
• Window on Eurasia notes that Circassians are unhappy with Russia.
• Alexander Harrowell notes that once-progressive David Goodhart is now using the language of far-right fascists to describe migrants and immigration.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw wonders whether the real problem with the attempted Nelson Mandela photo op wasn’t that it took advantage of a man in ill health but that it did so badly.
• What does it mean, Daniel Drezner asks, that almost all transactions one’s likely to encounter in China–even ones that would be handled electronically–are handled in cash? (A lack of trust in the banks, perhaps?)
• The issue of anti-Semitism in Hungary as it hosts the World Jewish Congress is tackled at Eastern Approaches.
• A Fistful of Euros’ Edward Hugh is skeptical about Shinzo Abe’s inflationary experiment in Japan, since–he argues–shifting demographics are pushing Japan towards deflation and economic decline.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money places the recent catastrophe in Bangladesh in perspective. Clothing manufacturers have almost always made use of easily-exploited, marginal, and–literally–disposable labour.
• Registan notes that, after the arrest of two Kazakhstani students in Boston for complicity with the younger Tsarnaev brother after the fact, people are now looking at Islam in Kazakhstan. (It’s historically quite placid, FWIW.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Eugene Volokh reacts to a report finding a disturbingly high level of support for honour killings in many parts of the Muslim world.
• Window on Eurasia reports that Tajikistan is trying to limit the abuse of its migrant workers in Russia by stationing diplomatic personnel to greet and guide new arrivals.
• Wonkman makes the case for the utility of labels in referring to people, since they can legitimately help guide and identify them. (He’s talking about GLBT/queer identities, but I think the principle is portable.)

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bag News Notes comments on the attempts to link Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Canadian jihadi William Plotnikov.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster writes about the search for planets of brown dwarf stars.
• Daniel Drezner writes from Seoul about the challenges and questions facing Korea.
• Two recent noteworthy posts at Geocurrents include one mapping political divisions in Venezuela and another mapping income and growth in India.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money’s SEK argues that the story of out NBA star Jason Collins will matter inasmuch as people will pour over his differences from his straight twin to try to support their beliefs about sexual orientation (mainly bad beliefs).
• Torontoist reported on the Saturday commemoration of the Battle of York in the War of 1812 and the more contemporary Khalsa Day parade of Sikhs in Toronto.
• The Volokh Conspiracy blogs about the changing demographics of Jews worldwide.
• Window on Eurasia quotes a Russian analysis placing the Tsarnaev brothers in the context of Chechen migrations across Eurasia in the 20th century.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell expands on the thesis expounded in the Guardian comparing the patterns of mistaken belief involved in the theory that vaccines cause autism with the support granted to austerity by economists now.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• The Burgh Diaspora writes about the linkages between population and economic change.
• Centauri Dreams examines the discovery of stellar parallax and its use to determine the distance to the stars in the 19th century.
• The Dragon’s Tales examines computer models of the settlement of the Americas. The model of migration across Beringia remains intact, while transpacific migration can’t be excluded but can’t be supported by evidence, either.
• Eastern Approaches chronicles the ongoing ferment in Slovenia and the Czech immigrant history in Texas.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh warns that the seemingly inevitable slow-motion economic slide of Spain, trapped in the Eurozone and with an aging workforce, may be echoed more broadly.
• Language Hat comments on the NHL’s Punjabi-language broadcasts.
• Normblog’s Norman Geras assesses the moral implications of factories in Bangladesh in the light of the recent disaster (1, 2). More subtle and useful responses than a reflex action of shutting them down are needed.
• Torontoist details historical patterns of neglect of the site of Fort York.
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Eugene Volokh notes a court ruling in Israel which allows Jewish women to pray in front of the Western Wall without being arrested.
• Window on Eurasia notes the ruralization of Dagestan’s cities as the local Russian population leaves and rural migrants arrive, and the transition in Chechnya in the past decade towards a centralized and hierarchical culture under Kadyrov.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes UKIP’s desire to not bother researching and developing policy options on its own but rather borrowing them from established think tanks.