[PHOTO] Streetcar loading, Bathurst TTC station

The outside loading area for streetcars at the TTC's Bathurst station is screened off neatly by well-trimmed hedges, a neat iron fence, and--out of sight, to left--the Ed and Anne Mirvish Parkette named after the founder of Honest Ed's and his wife.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Crooked Timber reports on a recent study demonstrating that, as a rule, regime change--foreign interventions aimed at replacing a government--don't work.


• Geocurrents traces southern African support for Gaddafi to that region's very late, and very contested, decolonization, in which Gaddafi was actually on the side of the angels.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley wonders whether the American sale of bunker buster bombs to Israel represents bad American policy or incompetent American policy.


• Livejournal's James Nicoll makes the point that, contrary to the claims of some, there's vastly more exploration of more targets in space that in the Apollo era in the 1970s. It's just robotic.


• Slap Upside the Head is rightly unimpressed with a farmer's market in Ontario that removed a transgendered worker because it was "family-friendly".


• Spacing joys of cycling in Vancouver and the travails of cycling in Toronto.


• Towleroad comments on how African-American Philadelphia Flyer Wayne Simmonds, was alleged to have directed a homophobic slur at famously gay-friendly player Sean Avery just days after Simmonds received a racially-motivated slur. (The NHL chose not to investigate.)


• At Understanding Society, Daniel Little analyzes the advertising industry in the context of the Frankfurt School's notes on capitalism's transformation of every relationship.


• Wasatch Economics' Scott Peterson is quite displeased with anti-sprawl activists who prevent the expansion of communities into farmland, even rural communities which really can't densify.

[URBAN NOTE] "I know Hazel McCallion and you, sir, are no Hazel McCallion"

A scandal involving a possible conflict of interest involving Hazel McCallion, mayor since 1978 of Toronto's western neighbour city of Mississauga, seems to have ended. No one cares.

The inquiry probing the possible violation of conflict of interest rules by longtime Mississauga, Ont., Mayor Hazel McCallion has found that she had a "real and apparent conflict of interest."

The City of Mississauga judicial inquiry report by Justice Douglas Cunningham ruled that McCallion was inappropriately involved in a failed $14.4-million land deal between the city and World Class Developments, a development company partly owned by her son, Peter McCallion.

The report states that people "fortunate enough to enjoy friendships" with the mayor have reaped benefits from those ties, and that the popular mayor's actions raise "significant concerns."

Cunningham, who wrote the report, said he made his findings with a "measure of regret" because of McCallion's "unique history of public service" to Mississauga. In fact, he said he was hopeful his recommendations would "enjoy her personal support."

The report found that reforms are necessary at the provincial level and recommends changes to Mississauga's Code of Conduct, the Conflict of Interest Act and the Municipal Act, as well as an enhanced role for an integrity commissioner.

"It is clear that Mississauga, and indeed all Ontario municipalities, requires a better ethical infrastructure," concluded the report. Economic transparency will serve to "protect the public interest by removing possibilities for members of council to discharge their public offices in their pursuits of private interests."'

I've written in the past about Toronto's neighbour, a fast-growing city--one of the largest in Canada, now--that, as Gertrude Stein said of her native Oakland, has "no there there". Lacking much by way of a single downtown (or even a collection of downtowns), an integrated municipal transit infrastructure, or much of a local mass media, Mississauga is a preeminently suburban and exurban city built in the context of low public spending. How low? The city's infrastructure--roads, particularly--is fast-aging.

But do the people of McCallion's city mind? No. In the last election, McCallion was elected with 76% of the vote. She is, simply put, outstandingly popular, a grandmother figure whose competent administration of a city with few visible costs and whose directness makes her a politician everyone loves. Talking on CBC Radio this afternoon, even, McCallion presented her involvement as motivated by her desire to help her city develop further, by putting a hotel and conference centre complex near the very large Square One mall. You know what? I buy this; I could, at least.

And you know what? Rob Ford so wants to be Hazel McCallion. He had some of the elements, to be sure--man of the people, "straight talker", concerned with local economic development. There have been intermittent signs that the two have been courting each other discreetly, McCallion saying Ford was on the "right track" last year (but not recently). But Toronto is not Mississauga, with the former city's own urban/suburban divides, and Ford, whatever else he may be, lacks McCallion's politic touch. The recent controversy over the Don Portlands prove it. Ford will be lucky to be a one-term mayor.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On the import of Serbia's abdication of power to homophobic thugs

Belgrade's gay pride parade has been cancelled, as the Serbian interior minister wanted so as to avoid harm coming to the police the way that they did last time, when anti-gay protesters rioted and attacked--among others--the police. There have been six arrests of potential hooligans, but Belgrade's mayor Dragan Djilas would have banned the gay pride parade himself.

“It allegedly aims at showing differences and waking up tolerance, but it always causes the opposite. Xenophobia has increased in Serbia after last year’s parade,” the mayor pointed out.

“If you are a homosexual, that’s your right and nobody should harass you because of it, but you won’t gain anything with a walk,” he said and insisted that it was important to come out with an idea how to make our society more tolerant and expressed belief that the only way to do so was through dialogue and concrete actions.

Đilas stressed that Serbia currently had much more serious problems than the Pride Parade, pointing out that Serbs were unable to walk freely in a part of its territory.

“Today you have a situation that you cannot walk around a formal and official part of Serbia’s territory, in Kosovo and Metohija. Somebody gets killed over there just because they are Serbs and we live with it,” he pointed out and added that it could not be expected to have such situation in one part of the country and completely different in the other.

The Belgrade mayor rejected accusations that the Pride Parade was cancelled because of the upcoming elections.

“Do you really think that somebody out there is thinking whether there will be more votes if the Parade is held or banned, and the elections are in April of next year? That has nothing to do with it,” he explained.

GLBT rights in Serbia have experenced very slow progress and in fact some sustained regression, liberalization in the autonomous northern province by Vojvodina in 1978 being followed by its recriminalization in 1990 when Vojvodina fell back under direct rule of Milosevic's Serbia. Balkan Anarchist Alan Jakšić's overview of homophobia in the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia excluded, on account of its rather less eventful history) suggests that the nationalism of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, perhaps particularly in a Serbia that cut itself off from degenerate foreign cosmopolitanisms and was cut off by the outside world, too, is key. Gays are foreign; heterosexuality is hegemonic.

With regards to gay rights issues specifically, the solidarity demonstrated by LGBT activists around the world, including those in Balkan countries, is perceived by far-right advocates and supporters in the Balkans as evidence of some kind of "concerted effort" by gays and other "sexual deviants" within a well-funded international "gay lobby" to infiltrate society, influence it to its detriment by "promoting" homosexuality as a natural and normal part of everyday life (something that they wholeheartedly reject), and even seeking equal rights with married straight couples, thus encouraging moral "decadence" and "degeneration" throughout society! (Read here (homophobic article) and here in Serbian.) But most "conclusive" of that suspicion of all, more so than those "provocative" gay rights activists within those various LGBT organisations active in Balkan countries, are: one, the human rights activists, who detail discrimination and attacks against LGBT people and speak up for their rights, as they are particularly suspected of being linked to and funded by liberal Western sources; and two, pro-EU liberal politicians in the region, who want their countries to follow the course of "Euro-Atlantic integration", who likewise defend gay rights activists' "freedom of expression" et al., and likewise are suspected of being linked to and funded by liberal Western sources themselves. Such support from human rights activists and pro-EU liberal politicians "confirms" the far-right's suspicion that there is detrimental foreign influence present in their countries, that "promotes" the toleration of "immorality" as something perfectly acceptable, and in so doing could undermine the fabric of society in their countries completely!

[. . .]

Apart from "provocative" pro-gay websites, it's not difficult to find homophobic graffiti, posters and stickers on the walls of many buildings, containing hostile messages like: „Marš Pederi iz Srbije!“ ("Poufs, get out of Serbia!"); or morbid ones like: „Beogradom krv će liti, gej parade neće biti!“ ("[Through] Belgrade blood will pour, the gay parade will not be [held]!"). Other than messages on walls, among the far-right, Nazi-saluting crowd of protestors that gathered round to intimidate the small number of marchers during Split's recent gay pride mentioned above, there was one particularly threatening taunt being jeered at them: „Ubij, ubij, ubij pedera!“ ("Kill, kill, kill the pouf!"). But what is more shocking than the messages that are seen and heard in the region is how a lot of ordinary straight people in those countries consider the violent counter-protestors as the "good guys" in these stories, rather than the LGBT marchers, who bravely venture out to openly express a fundamental part of their personal identity.

[. . .]

You will also find that a lot of very homophobic, right-wing straight people in Balkan countries feel "under attack" or "discriminated against" for being "normal" by gays and those of a liberal persuasion (read here in Croatian). In fact, homophobic outbursts and rhetoric are widely commended by such people as "healthy" and "reasonable" reactions to the "sick" and "immoral" promotion of LGBT "propaganda" and gay-friendly liberalism that supports it! And to top it all off, they resent any liberal politician from parties supportive of joining the European Union, who is vocally sympathetic to gay rights and promotes tolerance of homosexuals and other "sexual minorities" in their countries, with the intent of encouraging their societies to be more tolerant of diversity, and thus increase their countries' eligibility to join the EU. Homophobia, therefore, represents a morally-righteous defense to save the nation's "sound reason" (zdrav razum in Serbian and Croatian) from pro-EU, pro-gay, politically correct liberalism in their countries!

Three notes.

1. In political science, a state is an entity that has a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of force within its claimed territory. By banning Belgrade's gay pride parade and giving as justification the need to protect the forces of law and order from being exposed to disorder, the Serbian state is either abandoning its sovereignty or is ceding violence to anti-gay hooligans.

2. I'm rather glad that gay rights are increasingly considered human rights, and that the Serbian government's concession to violent homophobes will cost it.

3. As the Economist's Eastern Approaches blog speculated, this shameful event is just one policy decision of many that suggests Serbia will be far from following Croatia into the European Union. Notwithstanding that bloc's ongoing problems, the promise of European Union accession--even eventual accession--has been key in ensuring reforms to "Euro-Atlantic standards". Especially since the European Union is more likely to be introverted than not in the coming years, this suggests that Serbia--and its neighbours--will remain a black hole in the middle of Europe. Bad Things will come of this, most notably for the people of Serbia. Serbian talents and geography may be potentially central to southeastern Europe, but the region can cope.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the Prince Edward Island election of 2011, or, power above principles

The election results are in from natal Prince Edward Island, and the governing Liberal Party of Robert Ghiz won 23 seats (of 27) in the provincial legislature with 52.9% of the vote, the opposition Progressive Conservatives winning 4 seats with 41.4% of the votes cast. This isn't cause for Progressive Conservative grief. Rather, this is being taken as very nearly a best-case scenario. Nissologist Hans Connor had predicted that the third parties--the New Democratic Party, the Green Party, and the Island Party, of which only the first has been represented in Province House and that only with a single seat for a single session--would draw a critical 5% away from the PCs and result in a Liberal-dominated assembly.

Progressive Conservative Olive Crane, the Liberals’ main opponent, told CBC she wasn’t disappointed in the results.

“Today’s about Islanders and they’ve made their decision,” Crane said. “I am pleased. At one time people thought we were going to be 27-0, and that’s not the case.

“We worked really hard we had a great team.”

Crane said she wouldn’t be making a decision about the leadership of the provincial Tories.

“Tonight’s about the election. I’m excited that we’re going to have six, seven or eight in the legislature.”

Heading into Monday’s vote, following a month of aggressive campaigning, the Liberals held 24 of the province’s 27 seats.

Ghiz said this year’s campaign was far more negative than the previous two he had participated in.

The Crane-led Progressive Conservatives went into the election holding two seats, while one riding was without a representative when the election was called last month.

It's hardly as if this has not happened before. It happens more often than not recently, in fact.

In 2000, the Conservatives won 26 of the province’s 27 seats in the legislature, leaving the Liberals with one. Four years later, the Tories took 23 seats to the Liberals’ four.

But a big swing in 2007 saw the Ghiz-led Liberals reverse that outcome.

Ian Dowbiggin, a history professor at the University of Prince Edward Island, says the large majorities and significant swings in support are facts of Island politics.

Mr. Dowbiggin says the shifts are due to several factors – one of them being that the Liberals and Conservatives have been virtually the only choice for voters. The province has only elected one New Democrat to the legislature.

Another reason is the fact that, with 27 districts in a province of about 140,000 people, it doesn’t take much to produce large shifts in results.

“A decision in any particular district can shift with only 10 or 20 votes in some cases,” Mr. Dowbiggin says.

“The swing vote, then, doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be 20, 30, 50 votes. So it’s largely a case of just numbers.

“So what happens is, if there is even a small shift in the popular vote, it translates into these dramatic changes in seat totals.”

All this, mind, notwithstanding a massive scandal involving allegations that the province's immigration-recruitment program accepted bribes. (In the words of the local paper of record, "[t]he informants making the allegations are former provincial employees, one of whom claims, among other things, that she saw envelopes and rolled wads of cash being given to PNP directors by Chinese applicants during a trip to Hong Kong.") The outcome is entirely legitimate in that Island politics are very participatory, with turnout consistently above 70% of the registered electorate. They have to be: politics are unavoidably, problematically, personal and necessarily pragmatic. I don't understand this election to be different.

Why isn't there a fuss? Principled politics is neither a good idea nor a viable one for the average voter on the Island.

In a bigger province, Mr. Dowbiggin says such a scandal could give the governing party the boot. But once again, he says the politics of the tiny Island are different.

He says in PEI, people practise “the politics of familiarity” because they see their elected officials on the street, in the grocery store and at the coffee shop.

“There’s a real sense of familiarity and once a party gets into power, I think a lot of voters ... they’re willing to cut that party, that government, a lot of slack that you wouldn’t get in other provinces,” he says.

“So they’re most likely to give people in government, who they feel a kinship to, several chances at governing.”

The large role the government plays in a province this size can’t be ignored either, he added.

“Government plays a big role here in Prince Edward Island in the everyday lives of voters – especially in terms of jobs, especially in terms of employment, but also in terms of infrastructure,” he says.

“A lot of voters think seriously when they cast their votes. Do they want to be on the side of government? Because if you’re not on the side of government, well, your neighbourhood street might not get paved, or that rink that you’ve always wanted in your community won’t get built.”

Public services are nice. Employment, too. So why get too bothered, especially when the other party likely wouldn't do anything different?

[DM] "A brief note on the situation in Greece"

I've a post up at Demography Matters taking a brief look at what may be the beginning of economic crash-driven emigration from Greece. Everywhere's a possibility, even Toronto. This has implications for the future of Greece: why don't the Greeks head to Europe overwhelmingly?