[LINK] “Harper’s appointment of Walter Natynczyk to Canadian Space Agency raises eyebrows”

The National Post article regarding the appointment of Walter Natynczyk, formerly head of the Canadian military, to head the Canadian space agency, hits the right notes. The only thing I can say is that the Canadian Space Agency is so small that, frankly, even a militarized Canadian Space Agency wouldn’t be notable globally.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed the country’s former top soldier to head the Canadian Space Agency in a surprise move that has raised questions about whether the civilian program is about to be militarized.

On Friday, Harper announced that former chief of defence staff Walter Natynczyk will become president of the Montreal-based space agency on Aug. 6.

[. . .] The appointment was unusual on two counts: Natynczyk had a long career in the military before he retired last year and his background was from the army, not the air force; and some of the previous presidents of the space agency had been astronauts such as Steve MacLean and Marc Garneau.

Steven Staples, president of the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, said in an interview that he thinks the appointment sends a troubling signal.

“It’s about the militarization of space,” he said.

“We’re moving from having astronauts heading our space agency to having generals heading it. I think that people should be asking questions about what the future of our space agency is going to be. And is it going to be more about military uses than scientific exploration.”

Staples said the military has been increasing its spending in areas such as satellite technology, and it’s important to note that two things have now occurred: Gen. Tom Lawson, formerly Canada’s top officer at NORAD, is now Canada’s top soldier, and his predecessor, Natynczyk, has come out of retirement from the military to head the space agency.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bag News Notes takes a look at the images of the Turkish lady in red, she who has become an icon of the protests.
• James Bow thinks that Conservative protests that a Canadian MP who left his party should run for a by-election are disingenuous considering the numbers of times the Conservatives benefitted from defections themselves.
• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the awesome potential of the new WFIRST telescope, an infrared telescope, to detect planets. (It could pick up rogue planets, and analyze atmospheres.)
• Daniel Drezner has some things to say about the revelations of the NSA’s surveillance of communications.
• Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis notes that, for a country set on building dams, Ethiopia is still so rural and non-electrified as to not gain much immediate benefit from hydroelectricity save as exported power.
• Noel Maurer kind of approves of the Colombian Senate. (I suspect he’d still prefer to get rid of that country’s upper house, too.)
• Registan is unimpressed by a cliché-sounding profile of the Pashtuns.
• Transit Toronto’s Robert Mackenzie notes that tunnelling has begun for the Eglinton LRT.
• Window on Eurasia notes that some Russians have called for extending the draft to women.

[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.

[PHOTO] Civil defense siren, Dundas and Shaw

This civil defense siren, slightly relocated east to its current location at Dundas and Shaw, just across Dundas from the northwestern corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park, is one of the last sirens remaining and a noteworthy artifact of the Cold War. In 2007, the Toronto Star published an article by Leslie Scrivener about it and the few others left.

“It’s a neat thing to look at,” says Claire Bryden, referring to the air raid siren near the corner of Dundas St. W. and Shaw St., a remnant of Toronto’s age of atomic anxiety. The sturdy, horn-shaped siren rests on a rusting column on the property of Bellwoods Centres for Community Living.

Few of these Cold War relics, which would alert the population to an imminent nuclear attack, remain in Toronto. One siren resides atop the York Quay Centre at Harbourfront. Others, like the one on Ward’s Island, disappear when buildings get new roofs.

Today, no one claims ownership of the surviving sirens. Call the City of Toronto and they refer you to the province. Call the province and they refer you to the Department of National Defence. Call the Department of National Defence and they refer you to … the city.

But Claire Bryden is happy to take possession of the one at Dundas and Shaw. Bryden is executive-director of the Bellwoods Centres, which provide homes for people with physical disabilities. The air raid siren, overlooked for decades, suddenly became of interest during construction of a new building. Because it was in the middle of the Bellwoods Park House property, which straddles old Garrison Creek (now flowing through an underground culvert), the siren had to be moved or removed altogether. A new public path, part of a Discovery Walk daytime urban trail from Fort York to Christie Pits, will go through the property right where the siren was.

What to do with the towering artifact? “Rather than throw it away, we decided it’s a piece of historical memorabilia,” says Bryden, who recalls air-raid-siren practice in her childhood. “It gives character, and we don’t see too many around.”

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Crooked Timber’s Tedra Osell gives a very positive review of a monograph by Ari Kelman describing the long, complicated process of memorializing the United States’ Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1864.
• Daniel Drezner thinks that arguments the liberal world order hasn’t been working well post-2008 are wrong, not least because they rest on the assumption that things were going well before then.
• Eastern Approaches notes that political cohabitation in Georgia between President Mikheil Saakashvili and new Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and the Georgian Dream opposition isn’t working because the two sides are so divided on, well, everything.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan argues that lifting China’s one-child policy wouldn’t change fertility rates, which a) were declining before the policy’s imposition and b) are now as low as elsewhere in East Asia.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer writes about the Chavez-era changes to the Venezuelan military. His take? In general, these reforms, which include the entrenchment of a popular militia with links to Chavez’s revolutionary institutions and efforts at conscription, are confused.
• Torontoist’s Chris Riddell notes the multiple failed plans before the final, successful, 2006 plan to transform the Don Valley Brick Works into something.
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr, who on the Aaron Swartz case has generally been critical of the arguments made by his supporters, recommends to his readers the long articles he thinks provide the best overviews on the case. Controversy ensues in the comments and on Twitter.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the resurgence of Buddhism in Russia, especially in the traditionally Buddhist republics of Kalmykia and Buryatia, and its implications on links with Mongolia.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• At A (Budding) Sociologist’s Commonplace Book, Dan Hirschman wonders why “traditional” religions–to use the nomenclature–aren’t given respect. One answer might be related to the fact that practitioners of traditional religions are almost always minorities in their own countries.
• blogTO lists 12 different Mayan-apocalypse themed bar events around Toronto.
• Eastern Approaches notes the efforts of Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s desires to improve the quality of life in the Russian capital.
• Geocurrents observes the mining boom that is populating a desert stretch of Western Australia.
• The Global Sociology Blog crunches the numbers and notes the many ways in which the United States stands out among countries for its gun violence, and factors leading to said.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that, for relatively less developed countries, the investments of Communism in human capital and assorted subsidies did give many of these an advantage. (Turkmenistan, yes; Estonia, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, not so much.)
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer predicts rising gas prices and relatively low oil prices.
• Window on Eurasia notes problems integrating Muslim conscripts in the Russian army.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• The Burgh Diaspora’s Jim Russell takes issue with an American conservative’s criticism of an anti-fracking film as state propaganda for the United Arab Emirates. No, the oil/natural gas market doesn’t work that way.
• Crooked Timber’s Corey Robin wonders why Matthew Yglesias sees state repression–state policies, more broadly–as key to the problems of independent unions in China but not so in the United States.
• pauldrye‘s False Steps examines the abortive British effort in the late 1950s to build its own space launch vehicle.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan argues, in commenting on free speech laws outside of the United States, in that the repression of speech on grounds of potential harm to the community isn’t done from a consistent philosophical position. Thoughts?
• James Bow recounts his experience on the last trip of the Northlander train into northern Ontario. It does sound like it had a lot of potential for tourism and whatnot that went unexploited.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money shares links to commentary on China’s launch of its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.
• Maximos discusses Australia’s seasonal, El Nino-dependent, Lake George.
• Estonia as a Nordic nation, not that different from Sweden is the theme of the latest Itching for Eestimaa post.
• Eugene Volokh notes rioting in Bangladesh inspired by a Facebook image of a desecrated Koran that led to attacks on that country’s Buddhist minority.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Crasstalk’s MonkeyBiz wonders if Apple has jumped the shark and is just coasting on past achievements.
• Crooked Timber’s Henry Farrell takes issue with Tony Judt’s dismissal of Stephen King. A good case can actually be made that King, through his fiction, is something of a public intellectual–a left-winger, at that.
• Daniel Drezner partially retracted his criticism of Mitt Romney after that man was caught on video talking about displacing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute’s resolution into the indefinite future, but also wonders whether Romney is actually seen as a credible antagonist and leader. What good is a posture based on strength if that strength is disbelieved?
• Geocurrents has a post describing the confluence of environmental catastrophe and local autonomy in the Ogoniland district of Nigeria’s polluted, unstable, Niger delta.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money’s Robert Farley took note of a proposal in the Canadian media to modernize the Avro Arrow as a new-generation warplane. Wouldn’t work, of course.
• Language Hat notes the completion of a dictionary of Demotic, the ancient Egyptian written in the time of Rome.
• Using highly-detailed poll data, Patrick Cain wonders if, suitably and plausibly redistricted, Ontario might return a Liberal majority.
• Supernova Condensate notes that the discovery of exoplanets in the young Beehive Cluster suggests planets can form and remain in orbit of their star(s) even in densely-packed star clusters.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Crasstalk’s MonkeyBiz wonders if Apple has jumped the shark and is just coasting on past achievements.
• Crooked Timber’s Henry Farrell takes issue with Tony Judt’s dismissal of Stephen King. A good case can actually be made that King, through his fiction, is something of a public intellectual–a left-winger, at that.
• Daniel Drezner partially retracted his criticism of Mitt Romney after that man was caught on video talking about displacing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute’s resolution into the indefinite future, but also wonders whether Romney is actually seen as a credible antagonist and leader. What good is a posture based on strength if that strength is disbelieved?
• Geocurrents has a post describing the confluence of environmental catastrophe and local autonomy in the Ogoniland district of Nigeria’s polluted, unstable, Niger delta.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money’s Robert Farley took note of a proposal in the Canadian media to modernize the Avro Arrow as a new-generation warplane. Wouldn’t work, of course.
• Language Hat notes the completion of a dictionary of Demotic, the ancient Egyptian written in the time of Rome.
• Using highly-detailed poll data, Patrick Cain wonders if, suitably and plausibly redistricted, Ontario might return a Liberal majority.
• Supernova Condensate notes that the discovery of exoplanets in the young Beehive Cluster suggests planets can form and remain in orbit of their star(s) even in densely-packed star clusters.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• 80 Beats has more about the newly-sanctioned use of anti-retroviral drug Truvada to prevent HIV infection. Apparently it’s quite effective–75% efficacy in heterosexual couples which use it consistently, 90% among homosexual couples which do the same.
• Centauri Dreams considers how the next generation of space telescopes will be able to pick up the signature of water oceans on distant worlds.
• Eastern Approaches notes the exceptionally controversial (and possibly doomed) plan by the Czech government to compensate religious organizations for property expropriated under Communism.
• Geocurrents notes the substantial evidence of influence of Finnic groups on the culture of the Eastern Slavs–Russians particularly, but also Ukrainians and Belarusians.
• Language Hat remarks on a religious song of the Ainu making use of nonsense words.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders why people who watch China’s development of an aircraft carrier aren’t paying attention to the much larger and longer-established naval aviation programs–including aircraft carriers–of India.
• Registan’s Nathan Hamm comments on how Uzbekistan’s departure from a Russian-led security alliance signals Russian weakness in its immediate neighbourhood.
• Could elements like lithium be manufactured by black holes? Supernova Condensate speculates.
• Towleroad reports on the shameful decision of the Boy Scouts of America to continue keep non-heterosexuals out of its ranks.