[PHOTO] Looking west at Christie

Looking west at Christie
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

The Christie TTC station opens itself up to some interesting vistas.

[LINK] "Iran, la défaite culturelle"

Fabio Lo Verso's article in the Swiss Le Courrier (trans: "Iran culturally defeated") makes the very important that no matter what happens to the current Iranian ferment, in the long run the Islamic Republic is doomed to faqilure in the face of the cultural changes that it--if it didn't instigate--can't control.

Plus de la moitié des Iraniens sont nés après la révolution de 1979. Les ayatollahs ont-ils imaginé une seconde ne rien céder à cette vague générationnelle, comme s'ils étaient seuls à bord?
C'est oublier – ou mépriser, c'est selon – les profondes mutations intervenues au sein de la société iranienne. Il suffit d'en citer une: la chute du taux de fécondité, conduisant le pays à crever le plancher symbolique de 2,1 enfants par femme. Vu sous l'indicateur démographique, l'Iran serait plus «européen» que la Turquie, qui frappe depuis longtemps aux portes de Bruxelles. Un comble. Rêvant d'une grande nation peuplée par 120 millions d'habitants – soit 50 millions de plus qu'actuellement –, le président Ahmadinejad doit trouver ces statistiques plutôt saumâtres. Les démographes considèrent l'effondrement de la fécondité comme une «révolution» des mentalités. Depuis une trentaine d'années, elle semble tracer en Iran une voie modernisatrice.
Que se passe-t-il réellement sous les yeux (fermés?) de la caste théocratique iranienne? A l'évidence, le pays échappe à ses «gardiens». Pour les opposants, en majorité des femmes, les voies de fuite passent par le web, cette «oeuvre de la modernité» abhorrée par les régimes autoritaires. Dans un élan convulsionnaire, Téhéran a coupé les communications internet. Un interdit que les manifestants ont facilement contourné au moyen du microblog Twitter. Comme dans les pires dictatures, la chasse aux cyberdissidents est ouverte. Quant aux manifestants tombés dans la rue, gageons que le mouvement de protestation n'aura pas trop de peine à en recruter de nouveaux dans les arrière-boutiques des café internet surveillés par les bassidji. Pour les ayatollahs, la victoire politique se solde par une défaite culturelle.

My translation is below.

More than half of Iranians were born after the 1979 revolution. Did the ayatollahs imagine for the second that they wouldn't concede anything to this generational wave, as if they were the only people around?
This forgets--and despises, true--the profound changes occurring within Iranian society. Just to mention one: the fall in fertility, leading the country below symbolic floor of 2.1 children per woman. From a demographic indicator, Iran is more "European" than Turkey, which has long strike out at the gates of Brussels. An attic. Dreaming of a great nation populated by 120 million people - or 50 million more than present-, President Ahmadinejad has to find these statistics rather unhappy. Demographers consider the collapse in fertility as a "revolution" in attitudes. Over the past thirty years, it seems to show a modernizing Iran.
What it really under the eyes (closed?) of the Iranian theocratic caste? It is clear that the country is moving beyond its custodians. For opponents, mostly women, the means of escape is through the web, this "work of modernity" abhorred by authoritarian regimes. In a convulsion, Tehran has cut off Internet communications. Demonstrators easily circumvent this via the microblog Twitter. As in the worst dictatorships, the hunti for dissidents is public, but as the demonstrators pour from the street, we can bet that the protest will not have too too many problems recruiting new ones in the back of coffee shops monitored by internet Basiji. For the ayatollahs, their political victory will lead to a cultural defeat.

[LINK] "Aux origines du phénomène migratoire algérien"

Nadia Agsous's article at oulala.net, the first of a series, examines the beginnings of Algerian immigration to France. It's a fascinating story.

Les déplacements de la population algérienne de la colonie vers la métropole remonte à la fin des années 1870 soit quelques années suivant le débarquement des troupes coloniales françaises en Algérie. Issue principalement de la région de Kabylie, cette migration est essentiellement provoquée par le bouleversement de la structure économique et sociale algérienne. En effet, l’imposition du système colonial avec son lot d’expropriations et de dépossessions foncières au profit des colons a engendré la déstructuration de l’économie traditionnelle algérienne, d’une part. Et d’autre part, l’appauvrissement et la paupérisation des paysans algériens. « De l’état pastoral et patriarcal, où il n’y avait ni riches, ni pauvres, la société algérienne, déchue de ses bases économiques et brisée dans ses structures internes tendait à se stratifier selon une autre hiérarchie : multiplication du nombre des petits propriétaires et fellahs, sans terre, transformations de ces derniers d’abord en khemas (métayers) puis en ouvriers agricoles », écrivent A. Sayad et A. Gillette.

[. . .]

Les émigrés de cette première génération qui venaient de Kabylie étaient essentiellement concentrés « dans les mines et les usines du Nord-Pas de Calais, dans les raffineries et les ports marseillais et dans les entreprises parisiennes ». Ces hommes étaient des « émissaires délégués par leurs familles et par le groupe pour une mission précise, limitée dans le temps », analyse A. Sayad. Et selon M. Harzoune, « les communautés villageoises ont maîtrisé la noria des migrations, organisant les départs et les retours qui intervenaient généralement après un court séjour en France ». Ainsi, les hommes qui traversaient la mer pour vendre leur force de travail en France « étaient sélectionnés par le groupe selon les principes de l’habitus paysans ». De ce fait, l’émigration prenait « l’aspect d’une entreprise collective, décidée et programmée par la communauté paysanne ». Et étant essentiellement « contrôlés » par le groupe et « soumis » au monde paysan, ces déplacements étaient « ordonnés », « provisoires » et « limités dans le temps parce que limités dans –leurs- objectifs ». Ils avaient pour mission et pour fonction de « sauvegarder et de soutenir l’ordre paysan et de lui donner ainsi les moyens de se perpétuer en tant que tel ».

Here's my English translation.

The movement of population of the colony of Algeria to the mainland began in the late 1870s, a few years after the landing of French colonial troops in Algeria. Issuing mainly from the region of Kabylie, this migration was mainly caused by the disruption of the economic and social structure of Algeria. Indeed, the imposition of the colonial system with its share of expropriation and dispossession of land to settlers led to the disintegration of the traditional economy of Algeria on one hand, and on the other hand caused the impoverishment and the impoverishment of Algerian farmers. "In the pastoral and patriarchal state, where there was neither rich nor poor, Algerian society, deprived of its economic foundations and broken in its internal structures tended to stratify according to another hierarchy: increasing the number of small fellahs and owners, landless, transformations of the latter first into Khemais (sharecroppers) and then farm workers," write A. Sayad and A. Gillette.

[. . .]

The first generation of emigrants who came from Kabylia were mainly concentrated "in the mines and mills of the Nord-Pas de Calais, in refineries and the ports of Marseilles and in Paris businesses." These men were "emissaries delegated by their families fora specific, time-limited mission, limited in time," says A. Sayad. M. Harzoune said, "The village communities have mastered the flux migration, arranging departures and returns that generally occurred after a short stay in France." Thus, men who crossed the sea to sell their labor in France "were selected by the group according to the principles of peasant habits." As a result, emigration took "the appearance of a collective enterprise, decided and planned by the peasant community." And being essentially "controlled" by the group and "subject" in the farming world, these movements were "ordained", "provisional" and "limited in time because of their limitedobjectives." They had the mission and function of "protecting and supporting the farmer and giving the grioup the means to perpetuate themselves."

[LINK] Michael Jackson is dead

Via absinthe_dot_ca.

Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead today after paramedics found him in a coma at his Bel-Air mansion, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.

Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda told The Times that paramedics responded to a 911 call from the home. When they arrived, Jackson was not breathing. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda said.

I'm so sorry for the man.

[LINK] "Drumming Up Black Awareness"

Over at Inter Press Service, Marcela Valente takes a look at the mysterious history and current identity of the Afro-Argentines.

Black peoples’ presence and contribution to national culture have been systematically denied by official historiography. There is also a widespread perception that there are no people of African descent in Argentina, where 97 percent of the population describe themselves as white.

However, the latest scientific research has shown that more than half of the population has at least one Amerindian ancestor, and that the average genetic structure of the Argentine population contains a European contribution of around 78 percent, an indigenous contribution of between 16 and 19 percent, and an African contribution of between 2.5 and four percent.

In 1810, when the territory that is now Argentina ceased to be a colony of Spain, black people made up 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires, and in some provinces they were the majority, as in Córdoba in the centre, Catamarca in the west and Tucumán in the north.

This very significant population, descended from Africans brought over as slaves in colonial times, was decimated when black soldiers served as cannon fodder in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay virtually devastated Paraguay, which lost one million of its then 1.3 million people.

The yellow fever epidemic that killed off about eight percent of the population of Buenos Aires, apparently introduced by soldiers returning from the war, caused ravages particularly among Afro-descendants, who lived in overcrowded conditions without any sanitation.

Other sources indicate that the very high death toll among men ensured that widowed and single Afro-Argentine women would marry white men, thus assimilating into the populatino of a country that was becoming increasingly populated by European immigrants.