[PHOTO] Looking west over Fort York

From this perspective standing on the Sir Isaac Brock Bridge, on Bathurst Street over the railway tracks, Fort York, the Gardiner Expressway, and some new condo towers are visible.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Dan Hirschman, Budding Sociologist, takes issue with Michael Shermer's claim that the left is as anti-science as the right.


• Daniel Drezner strongly disagrees with the contention of Roger Cohen that American diplomacy is impossible. It's simply more complicated than before, with more and more transparent actors.
  
• Far Outliers compares policies towards indigenous languages in the early Spanish and English empires, noting that in Spanish territories native languages like Nahuatl and Quechua were promoted for evangelism's sake while in New England English was pushed on the indigenous populations.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell notes the ongoing capital shortage in central Europe and has a news roundup from the region.


• GNXP's Razib Khan reviews two books on the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, noting that it was as much achieved through fiat on the part of the elites as it was through mass conversions.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Scott Lemieux makes the point that arguably worse than Lance Armstrong's cheating was the fact that he treated people who pointed out his cheating viciously.


• Strange Maps introduces its readers to the five types of territorial morphology of states.


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble has three posts about policing the fringes of the Russian ethnos, starting with the desire of some inhabitants of the Russian-populated province of Stavropol in the largely non-Russian North Caucasus Federal District to gain status as a Russian republic, to charges of treason levied against a Pomor activist fron a distinctive Russian subgrouping on the White Sea to controversy surrounding Cossack patrols.

[URBAN NOTE] On the belated arrival of winter in Ontario

The National Post's Ben Forrest notes the ongoing cold snap in Toronto, the coldest it's been in two years. (And yet it may still be warmer than average, once the daily temperatures are averaged.)

Toronto dipped just below -20 C Wednesday morning, the coldest it’s been since January 2011, but with the wind chill, it felt closer to -26 C . The city has been under an extreme cold weather alert since Monday after enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures through December and early January.

Ottawa, where a wind chill warning is in effect, is also being lashed by the chilly blast. The city shivered through its coldest morning in eight years on Wednesday after hitting -28 C. It will only get colder in the capital, with Environment Canada calling for a low of -29 Wednesday night with a wind chill of -38 C. Thursday the high will hit -19, with a wind chill of -42.

A wind chill warning is also in effect in Montreal, where the city is predicted to hit a high of just -23 on Wednesday, but a freezing breeze will make it feel -38. Gusts to 50 km/h will mean a high of just -16 on Thursday with a wind chill of -32.

Snow squalls also ripped through parts of Ontario overnight, according to Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson. Squall warnings are still in effect for parts of Bruce County, and below-seasonal temperatures are expected through Saturday, Coulson said.

But with a warm front expected early next week, Toronto’s average temperature for January could still be higher than normal, Coulson added. The city’s average temperature through Tuesday was -1.2 C, compared to the normal average of -6.3 C.

[LINK] "Canada seeks evidence on hostage-taker, summons Algeria envoy"

David Ljunggren's Reuters article notes the contretemps brewing between Algeria and Canada as the latter demands evidence for the claim that Canadian citizens were involved in the hostage-taking.

The article makes the point that the Canadian citizens involved were speaking English. This is a bit surprising since the assumption was that the Canadian citizens involved were of Algerian origin, most Canadians of Algerian background living in Québec on account of the French language shared. If true, are these citizens English-speaking Algerians? Or might they be of non-Algerian background altogether?

Canada wants to see Algeria's evidence for saying that last week's attack and hostage-taking at a desert gas plant was coordinated by a Canadian militant, a government official said on Tuesday.

Canadian foreign ministry officials summoned Algeria's ambassador late on Monday to make the request directly.

Around 80 people died when Algerian troops attacked the plant and ended the hostage-taking on Sunday. Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Monday that a Canadian gunman, identified only as "Chedad", had coordinated the four-day siege.

"Here in Ottawa and in Algiers, Canadian diplomats are requesting access to the information the Algerians are using to identify any hostage taker as 'Canadian'," the government official said in an email sent to Reuters.

"Canada summoned the Algerian ambassador to Canada to make that point directly," he added.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the risks of British departure from the European Union

British Prime Minister David Cameron has done it.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday he will offer British citizens a vote on whether to leave the European Union if his party wins the next election, a move which could trigger alarm among fellow member states.

He acknowledged that public disillusionment with the EU is "at an all-time high," using a long-awaited speech in central London to say that the terms of Britain's membership in the bloc should be revised and the country's citizens should have a say.

Cameron proposed Wednesday that his Conservative Party renegotiate the U.K.'s relationship with the European Union if it wins the next general election, expected in 2015.

"Once that new settlement has been negotiated, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice to stay in the EU on these new terms. Or come out altogether," Cameron said. "It will be an in-out referendum."

[. . .] Cameron stressed that his first priority is renegotiating the EU treaty — not leaving the bloc.

"I say to our European partners, frustrated as some of them no doubt are by Britain's attitude: work with us on this," he said.

Much of the criticism directed at Cameron has accused him of trying an "a la carte" approach to membership in the bloc and seeking to play by some but not all of its rules.

Speaking as a Canadian familiar with Québec's intermittent flirtation with the idea of separatism, I've a few things to point out.

• Much of British history towards political Europe is ill-informed. One thing that frequently comes up in Euroskeptic discourse is a hostility towards the European Court of Human Rights, a supranational legal institution associated not with the European Union but with the entirely separate Council of Europe. Too much critical detail goes unnoticed, or unknown.


• Much like Québec separatists who confidently assume that after a "Oui" majority in a referendum the province could negotiate whatever arrangement it would like with a rump Canada, even a nominally pro-European Union politician like David Cameron seems to be making the mistake of assuming that a threat of separation will lead Britain's European partners to make whatever changes the British government might want. I'm very skeptical of this. Perhaps more likely is a complete breakdown of the federation--in their own ways, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia came apart when this brinkmanship occurred.


• Many British Euroskeptics also seem to believe that, if the United Kingdom left the European Union, not only the United States but the entire Commonwealth would welcome the erstwhile founder of the Anglo-Saxon world. I can speak only for Canada, but there is no body of radically pro-Commonwealth sentiment in Canada. Canadian identity is no longer bound up with the Commonwealth in the way it was a half-century ago. If anything, British departure from the European Union would make the United Kingdom a less desirable partner relative to other European countries of a similar size.


• British departure from the European Union would be a catastrophe for the country. Unless a non-EU United Kingdom follows the lead of Switzerland and Norway in accepting European Union regulations while lacking any voice in formulating them, the United Kingdom will be outside of the various markets. What will happen to, among other things, Britain's financial sector? (Frankfurt and Dublin will do nicely.)


• I can't help but wonder what the consequences for Scotland might be if Britain departed. Could we get a Scottish separatism invigorated by the desire to remain in, or return to, the European Union?

Thoughts?

[LINK] "Chinese mafia thrives in Europe"

Emanuele Scimia's Asia Times article takes a brief look at Chinese organized crime and migration in southern Europe, especially Italy. It's noteworthy, and worrying, the extent to which Chinese migration has been facilitated by transnational organized crime networks for their own ends. It's probably also inevitable, given official anti-immigration policies that strictly limit migration in receiving as well as in sending countries.

Secretive Chinese communities scattered throughout the world are the real power base of criminal networks managed by their compatriots. Chinese enterprises in Europe keep up robust bonds with their motherland. They often serve as hubs for counterfeit goods sourced from mainland China and Hong Kong and are the natural outlet for the labor force emigrating from their country to the Old Continent.

The migratory flux from China is strongly conditioned by crime syndicates' needs, according to annual reports from the European law enforcement agency Europol and Italy's Anti-Mafia National Directorate.

Paolo Borsellino, a famous Italian anti-mafia prosecutor, who in 1992 was victim of a car bombing attack plotted by the Cosa Nostra criminal organization, used to say that "politics and mafia are two powers aiming to control the same territory: they either fight one another or come to terms".

[. . .]

The Camorra and Ndrangheta, two criminal groups that have overtaken the Cosa Nostra as the most powerful Italian mafias, have joined forces with their Chinese counterparts while facilitating the illegal entry of counterfeits via several container-terminal ports in southern Italy such as Naples, Salerno, Gioia Tauro and Taranto.

In 2010, the Italian revenue police defeated two money-laundering outfits that since 2006 had illegally transferred US$3.5 billion to China. The criminal network was led by Chinese nationals who smuggled fake fashion producs into Eastern Europe from their base in Italy.

[CAT] "Could a Cat Ban in New Zealand Save Birds?"

Megan Gannon's LiveScience article provides the most thorough examination I've seen on the proposal of a New Zealand environmentalist to push for a cat-free New Zealand. I suspect that, ethics and popularity aside, such a push is impossible: New Zealand's North and South Island are much larger than the islands that have been successfully cleared of cats. Keeping cats indoors, in contrast, or otherwise confined, strikes me as a much easier thing to do, not least since doing this has clear benefits for the cats.

[Gareth] Morgan's newly launched campaign, Cats to Go, is pushing for much tighter controls on New Zealand's cats, which prey on native birds and are considered an invasive species on the island country. He's not asking all cat owners to euthanize their beloved pets (though his website says "that is an option"), but Morgan wrote in a Jan. 23 op-ed in Wellington's Dominion Post that owners should acknowledge that they are harboring "a natural born killer."

"At the very least responsible people should consider not replacing it when it dies and meanwhile either keep it indoors or invest in a cat-proof enclosure in the backyard," he wrote. Morgan also suggested neutering and cat collars with bells, and the campaign's website has a petition to lobby local governments to require that all owners register their cats.

[. . .]

"He is not proposing anything that hasn't been tried elsewhere — and that hasn't been opposed vigorously by the cat activists of the world," Stanley Temple, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus in conservation, told LiveScience. A cat owner himself, Temple said that Morgan's pitch to keep cats indoors should not be controversial.

"We have long accepted the fact that you can't let your dog run free, and yet cat owners seem to take offense at the idea that they would be asked to keep their cats indoors," he said.

Once let outside, cats often look more like hunters than cuddly creatures whose main enemies are stuffed toys. A 2011 study in the Journal of Ornithology showed that in suburban areas outside of Washington, D.C., 80 percent of gray catbirds were killed by predators before reaching adulthood, and nearly half of those deaths were caused by cats. Though exact figures are hard to come by, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) estimates that more than 500 million bird deaths in the United States can be attributed to cats, both pets and strays.

In an effort to keep vulnerable migratory birds out of feline mouths, ABC has been urging responsible cat ownership with its Cats Indoors campaign. Conservation goals aside, ABC officials said keeping a cat inside is safer for both the pet and its owner.

Bob Johns, a spokesman for the organization, said outdoor cats have one-third the life expectancy of indoor cats, and they are also more likely to pick up diseases from interactions with feral animals. While dogs are usually associated with rabies, cases of rabid cats are on the rise. In 2009, there were three times more reported cases of rabies in cats than dogs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From contact with cat feces, humans can also get the mind-controlling parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which has been linked to a variety of brain problems and mental health issues, including suicide attempts. The parasite is the reason pregnant women are advised not to change cat litter boxes. The deep bite of cats also can transmit the infection-causing bacteria Pasteurella multocida.

[LINK] "Russia plans to outlaw ‘homosexual propaganda’ nationwide"

Gay rights are human rights. Pink News' Corinne Pinfold reported.

Legislation that will go to an initial vote in the Russian Parliament later this month could make spreading “homosexual propaganda” a crime punishable by a fine of up to $16,000 across all of Russia.

The Associated Press reports that public acts of open same-sex affection and events promoting or celebrating gay rights could become classified as propaganda under a bill being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, which bans “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism”, consisting of “mass media and public events that propagate homosexuality as normal behaviour”.

[. . .]

The Orthodox Church and the Kremlin have drawn up the bill as part of their efforts to encourage young people to take on Russian values rather than Western liberal ones. Other recent legislation with this aim banned websites and print publications that are deemed “extremist”.

The highest-level fine proposed by the bill would be one thousand times the amount charged to activist Pavel Samburov, who made the news last year after Russian police fined him $16 for kissing his boyfriend at a public protest under the charge of “public hooliganism”.

Mr Samburov, who founded gay rights activist collective the Rainbow Association, says that the bill is part of a crackdown on minorities intended to distract the majority from discontent with Putin’s regime.

The bill is reported to have been accepted or even supported by the majority of the public. Levada polls showed that two thirds of Russians agreed with the statement that homosexuality is “morally unacceptable and worth condemning”, and half of those think it is caused by “a sickness or a psychological trauma”.