[LINK] Some Friday links

• Over at Alpha Sources, Claus Vistesen argues that recent trends in trade and currency fluctuations suggest that Europe and Japan won't be able to replace the United States as the engines of the world economy. Instead, emerging economies of note like the BRIC countries and others like Turkey may take up that role.


• Meph at 'Aqoul places the Gibbons affair in the context of class and religious tensions in Sudan, arguing that the teddy bear charges constituted an attempt to mobilize international Muslim solidarity behind Sudan and strike a blow at ideologically-suspect upper classes. This failed, badly: "[T]the real perception is of a joke of a regime that really has no perspective. The frustrating thing is that in the absence of a closer examination of the aforementioned issues, Muslims are being portrayed as primitive grunting zealots. Again."


• Cabalamat's Phil Hunt goes after the eminently go-afterable Melanie Phillips. If only she was consistent in her claims and actions.


• Via Boingboing, news from Andrew Stroehlein at ReutersNet that the Chinese are very unhappy with the treatment of the teddy bear in the Gibbons affair, who is apparently a native of Guangzhou.

Condemnation also came from countries that have traditionally been closer to Khartoum in the recent past. After mass protests in Beijing in which the Sudanese flag was burned, China recalled its ambassador to Khartoum, and its foreign ministry issued an unusually harsh statement.

"This bear was born in Guangzhou, and we consider the actions of the Sudanese government an attack on all Chinese plush toys", it read. "The teddy bear must be released unharmed immediately."

A source within China’s permanent representation to the UN, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his country was drafting a new Security Council resolution that "would be so tough, it would make the Americans and the British seem like the champions of sovereignty". He said they wanted to give the UN/AU hybrid force for Darfur a revised mandate to "shoot anything that moves as long as it’s connected to the government."

But a police spokesman in Khartoum defended the state’s actions, saying, "This bear has committed a most serious offence. The Sudanese government must be firm in demonstrating that it can easily divert the world’s attention away from its failure to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and its continuing instigation of devastating chaos in Darfur.

• Centauri Dreams examines new ideas about how to manufacture working laser-launched solar sails, in the fictional tradition of Robert L. Forward.


• Joel at Far Outliers has posted some interesting excerpts from a study on a mixed language spoken in Japan's Bonin Islands in the generation after the Second World War.


• The Glory of Carniola links to an amusing 1970s-vintage audio guide to Slovenia's Postojna Cave.


• You read Francis Strand's How to read Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons, right? Good for you!


• Via Joe.My.God, news that US GLBT television broadcaster Logo is broadcasting a new reality dating show featuring MTF transsexual Calpernia Addams


• At Language Log, Geoffrey Pullum condemns the Sudanese government's misuse of language in the Gibbons affiar, while Bill Poser points out that Muhammud and its variants, while commonly used as personal names throughout the Muslim world, aren't used in Turkey.


• Alex Tabarrok posts a libertarian argument in favour of treating marriage like any other contract, in a return to what he identifies as the traditional pre-19th century view of marriage.


• Norman Geras touches upon the time-honoured question of how diasporas should relate to parent states in his criticism of the Israeli plan to recruit Soviet Jewish immigrants from Germany in order to avoid said immigrants' assimilation: "The encouragement of Jewish immigration to Israel shouldn't be undertaken in a spirit that would treat Jewish life elsewhere as intrinsically problematic."

[URBAN NOTE] They had to fall

Light flakes of snow, falling slowly, greeted me as I left my apartment. I understand that the snowfall was heavier later in the afternoon, but I think that the snow has stopped and suspect that, unlike last week's dusting, this snowfall might stay. It looks like my part of the northern hemisphere is finally on the wrong side of the solar system's snow line again.

[URBAN NOTE] Thórarinn Ingi Jónsson, idiot

Thórarinn Ingi Jónsson, an Icelandic student at Toronto's Ontario College of Art and Design, has recently managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble thanks to an "art project" that went horribly wrong, as Iceland Review explains.

Icelandic art student Thórarinn Ingi Jónsson caused quite a fuss in downtown Toronto this week when he left a phony bomb in an art gallery as part of an art project. The gallery was cleared and police closed streets in the city center.

“I created a sculpture from wood and paint that looked like a bomb at first glance. I then recorded two videos on a cell phone that show a blast,” Jónsson, who is studying at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, told Fréttabladid.

“The day I was supposed to show my final project I went to the gallery and placed the sculpture next to a bench with a note saying it wasn’t a bomb,” Jónsson continued. Then he went back to his class to show his artwork and only found out later how much trouble it had caused.

“I haven’t heard from the police but I spoke to the college’s lawyer before I started making the artwork,” Jónsson said, adding the Canadian media has been rather negative towards his work, saying it can hardly be categorized as art.

Jónsson is not bothered by the negative coverage. He explained his work was inspired by Marcel Duchamp who placed a toilet in an art gallery. Jónsson said his work is also a reference to modern times.

“This wouldn’t have been such a big deal before September 11, 2001. Everything has changed since then. The timing of the work is therefore important,” Jónsson concluded.

In an interview with Torontoist, Jónsson further explained his actions.

Yesterday at about 4 p.m., Jonsson walked into the ROM with the fake bomb inside a bag. Attached to the bomb was a note that read "This is not a bomb." Jonsson thought that the note meant he wasn't breaking the law: he had been advised by an OCAD Student Union lawyer before installing the piece, he says, against spreading false news, and told that he should not attempt to deceive people about the bomb's legitimacy. (That's why, for instance, one of the descriptions for the videos he later uploaded read: "Fake footage of the fake bombing at the Royal Ontario Museum capturing the fake moment of impact.") Though Jonsson intended to leave the pipe bomb outside of the bag out in the open in a "noticeable spot," "almost like a presentation," he says there were "too many people around," and he decided to keep the sculpture inside the bag, placing it on the right-hand side of the ROM's Bloor Street entrance with the declarative note visible on top.

"I went a bit down the street, as soon as I came out of the gathering," he told us, "and I dialed up the ROM and they asked for an extension and I hadn't really thought that far, so I typed in some random last name and I ended up reaching some girl at some office at the ROM and I simply told her: 'Listen there's no bomb by the entrance to the museum,' and then I hung up."

Jonsson went straight from the ROM back to school for 5 p.m. to give his presentation of his final piece, where he "revealed the extent of the project." People in his class, he says "were really impressed with the extent I went to." Worried that there was a possibility of legal action, he hadn't told his professors about the piece until the night it was installed.

When Jonsson got back home, he uploaded the videos he'd recorded earlier that day to YouTube (to an account that featured other videos––like the one of Osama Bin Laden on the roof of the World Trace Center watching as hearts pour out of the building and Bob Dylan's "The Man In Me" plays––that Jonsson says are "completely unrelated"). Then, he e-mailed the addresses of them to several news organizations.

"I didn't really expect it go so crazy."

Unfortunately for him, quite apart from forcing the cancellation of a CanFAR AIDS fundraiser that was being held at the Royal Ontario Museum that night, it looks like he has indeed managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble.

Jonsson, a third-year student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, was released after $33,000 was posted as a cash bond by three separate sureties. Jonsson is an Icelandic citizen and must surrender his passport to police within 24 hours of his release and reside with one of the sureties, who is a clinical psychologist and friend of the family living in downtown Toronto.

[. . .]

Toronto Police Det. Leslie Dunkley said the criminal charges Jonsson faces could land him up to four years in prison, if he’s convicted.

“It’s a very serious offence,” Dunkley said. “We take it seriously and we don’t want to encourage it.”

The judge imposed a publication ban on evidence presented at the bail hearing Friday morning.

As part of his conditions of release, Jonsson must also stay away from the ROM property, he cannot possess any explosive devices or imitations of explosive devices, he cannot possess illegal weapons and he must go to counselling as directed by his surety. One of the sureties, the wife of a retired Honorary Council of Iceland, posted $25,000 of the total.

The very best that can be said for Jónsson is that at least he wasn't into the sort of performance art that involved joking to airport security in the United States about his shoe bombs, and that Canada lacks a Guantanamo. (I'm honestly just a bit unsure as to whether the last might be a bad thing in this case.)