[BRIEF NOTE] Ethnocracy in Kirkuk

On Monday, Michael Totten made a subtly disturbing post. "Our Jerusalem" examines the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, located just south of the border between autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of the country. Kirkuk had a Kurdish majority before Saddam's rule, and the Iraqi Kurds want it back. Saddam's demographic maneuverings, however, created a much larger Arab population, through immigration and the displacement of Kirkuk Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan wants it back, reasonably enough. Unreasonably enough, they don't want all of its people.

The trouble with taking the city honorably is that they first want to kick out the Arabs moved there by Saddam Hussein. They don’t want to evict all the Arabs. As I’ve mentioned before, Iraqi Kurds have no interest in creating an ethnic-identity state. They only want to reverse Saddam’s Arabization campaign and make the city safe and secure as Erbil, Suleimaniya, and Dohok already are. Those Arabs who lived there before, those who are actually from there, are welcome to stay.

The Kurdistan Regional Government wants to financially compensate those Arabs who are asked to leave. Simply reversing one unfair population transfer with another isn’t right, and the Kurds know it. They might not even care about this at all if Kirkuk weren’t a playground for terrorists. But it is a dangerous place and there are no easy answers. The aftershocks of Saddam’s divide-and-rule strategy are still explosive.

Why am I reminded of those posters on soc.culture.baltics who, when asked how the newly independent Baltic States should deal with Soviet-era Baltic Russian immigrants, simply say that there are plenty of trains heading east to the Russian Federation? Not to worry, Totten assures us, the Kurds aren't engaging in vengeance, why they're trying to attract Arab Christians to Kirkuk: "They don’t care about race, and they don’t care about religion. They are concerned strictly with numbers and security. It's just that some groups are more trusted than others. Arab Christians will never join an Islamist jihad, as everyone knows. And the Kurds trust Arab Christians not to join the Baath either." As you might remember, Iraq's former foreign minister Tariq Aziz was not only a Christian but a member of the Baath party.

The Baltic States were sensible enough, after initial shocks, to deal with the Soviet-era immigrants as potential members of their society. Here's hoping Iraqi Kurdistan is smart enough to follow suit.

[BRIEF NOTE] A Future Homeopathy

The problem with homeopathy is that there doesn't seem to be much of a way for substances diluted to infinitesimally small quantities to exert any noticeable effect on the human body, never mind the law of similars. Frankly, to me it sounds about as plausible as Maseru Emoto's thesis that thinking nice thoughts at water molecules will make them crystallize into perfectly symmetrical forms.

All this might change if nanotechnology came to full fruition. Imaging drinking a potion with a very few nanobots programmed to seek out and destroy (or, perhaps, transform) damaged human cells or invading viral and bacterial organisms. One wouldn't drink a huge quantity of these nanobots for the simple reason that they're too powerful--one might as well be a heroin addict injecting a huge quantity of pure heroin in one's veins.

The big if, of course, is the plausibility of such an advanced nanotechnology ever coming about. Still, it's an interesting thought.

[NON BLOG] The Insufficiency of Razors

There's nothing wrong as such with my stubble growing into a five o'clock shadow, I suppose, but at 2 o'clock in the afternoon?

[BRIEF NOTE] Jovovich, muse for our times

Starting in embryonic form with 1997's The Fifth Element and continuing through to this year's interesting-looking Ultraviolet, Milla Jovovich managed to secure for herself a comfortable enough position as a sexually attractive and hypercompetently lethal nymphet. The 21st century's la belle dame sans merci, it seems, knows how to fire automatic weapons with fearsome accuracy.

[LINK] More on Tokelau

Jonathan Edelstein comments on the recent Tokelauan referendum. One major problem, he observes, is that the 66% majority might have set the bar too high.

[A] majority of the Tokelauans obviously want a more arm's-length agreement with New Zealand, in which they will remain under the larger country's protection but have greater freedom to protect their domestic culture. Given the 60 percent support for autonomy, New Zealand is now in the politically awkward position of holding onto a territory where the majority of the population wants to decolonize. This isn't a particularly comfortable position to be in, especially with other partial Pacific decolonizations as precedent, nor does New Zealand want to hold any colonies against the will of their people. I wouldn't be surprised to see agitation for another referendum with a 50 percent threshold, and I wouldn't be at all shocked if it started soon.

Of course, given the exclusion of the Tokelauan diaspora from the referendum and the fact that 30% of the voters abstained, this may be easier said than done. I can't help but think that Tokelauans have better and more important things to attract their attention, but then I come from a country addicted to existential constitutional questions itself. Who am I to speak?

[BRIEF NOTE] Shel Silverstein Surprises

1. I had no idea that Shel Silverstein had died in 1999.

2. I had no idea that Shel Silverstein had written "The Ballad of Lucy Gordon".

[BRIEF NOTE] The End of the Call Centre Dream

This morning on CBC Radio One's The Current, Anna-Maria Tremonti interviewed Jacques Poitras, a journalist for CBC New Brunswick whose series "India Calling" examined the threat posed by Indian competition to New Brunswick. Under then-Premier Frank McKenna in the 1990s, New Brunswick sought to attract call centres, citing a low-wage educated workforce and good telecommunications as reasons for North American companies to invest. The call centres, in McKenna's vision, would serve to catalyze an information sector into existence in New Brunswick, the call centres serving to attract software designers and computer manufacturers. At this point, India appeared with a much cheaper work force with significantly higher educational levels--according to Poitras, many of the workers have post-graduate degrees--and much better terms of business. Poitras convincingly argued that there simply isn't any competition between India and New Brunswick, and that New Brunswick's only hope is that Indian companies might want to establish front offices in New Brunswick. Even French-language call centres risk being undermined by competition from Francophone Senegal.

This whole episode is Atlantic Canadian economic history, iteration x. Will things ever change?

[URBAN NOTE] Little Italy

I got out early from work today thanks to an expected shift change, and was able to get outside in time to enjoy the last couple of hours of today. It was warm, feeling almost like a day in early spring with just a faint chill in the air. It was a perfect time, I decided, for me to venture forth in the grey light of evening into another district of downtown Toronto. I've a regrettable tendency towards conservatism, hanging out on the Yonge and Church streets that I've known ever since my first visit to Toronto four years ago, by the Queen Street West I've lived near for the past couple of years, and more recently on Bloor. Today, I decided that it was just silly that Toronto's Little Italy is so close to my home and yet so unvisited. So, at the corner of Church and Carlton I boarded a streetcar headed westbound on College.

If Portugal Village finds its axis along Dundas Street, Little Italy does the same along College street. This area of the western downtown first became a locus for Italian immigration early in the 20th century, reaching its glories after the Second World War. Even though it began to transform shortly thereafter, as new waves of Italian immigrants settled elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area while suburbanization created large Italian-Canadian pockets like the town of Woodbridge in suburban Vaughan, Little Italy has retained its sentimental value as the historical nucleus of the Italian-Canadian community, at least for the more than four hundred thousand Italian-Canadians of the GTA.

As the streetcar headed west, I watched the notable sights: Women's College hospital, Queen's Park, the southern perimeter of the University of Toronto, the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto public library system with its engrossing children's literature and science fiction collections, Chinatown on Spadina, Kensington Market and the hostel where I stayed in April 2003. I didn't have Wikipedia and its definitions of Toronto neighbourhood boundaries handy, and chose to disembark as soon as I saw a sign, in my case Little Italy Dental Practice at 536 College Street.

I walked west along College. To my perhaps-superficial gaze, Toronto's Little Italy isn't so much Italian-Canadian as it is well-off. Most of the buildings have immacculate sleek modern facades, the sort with the new perfect paint jobs and the sidewalk-to-rooftop glass windows framed either in chrome or in wood veneer. In all honesty, despite placenames like Johnny Lombardi Way and remnants of the old neighbourhood like the appetizing-looking Il Centro Del Formaggio (578 College), Little Italy seems to be becoming another upscale Toronto neighbourhood. This process might be best exemplified by the Vespa dealership at 554 College Street. More, Italy's ascension to First World status has combined with new waves of immigration, from first Portugal and Vietnam then Latin America, to produce an ethnic shift in the west of the neighbourhood, with Vietnamese-owned pharmacies and Lusophone salsicharia restaurants.

There's still plenty of places to see, though, and the atmosphere of the neighbourhood remains atmospheric. Little Italy has stores like Balfour Books (601 College), brightly lit with cracking linoleum tiles, slow-rotating fans, art and architecture and philosophy, and Dragon Lady Comics & Paper Nostalgia (609 College) with an impressive collection of comic books and posters that produced the dust that bit into my sinuses as soon as I entered. I passed by Vivoli (665 College), a very upscale restaurant that I remember mainly because I was parked outside it to watch the neighbourhood's Good Friday procession last March with the then-boyfriend. I missed the inconspicuous entry of El Convento Rico (750 College) the first time I passed by it; I'll have to end up going there one day.

[ISL] "Why Iceland and not Newfoundland?"

Over at the Head Heeb, I've got a new post up comparing and contrasting the 20th century histories of the island nations of Iceland and Newfoundland, and the reasons for their remarkably different performance. The good news is that Iceland's success is finally being replicated in Newfoundland; the bad news is that it took so long, and at such a price.