[PHOTO] Six photos from the end of last week's winter storm

Here's six photos taken Friday night, at the end of the two-day storm.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bag News Notes reacts to two photos reflecting the debate on gays in Scouting in the United States, one showing two proud parents with their two happy gay Scout sons, the other an anti-gay protesters standing in front of a crowd of silent Scouts.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster reacts to the news that a significant number of red dwarfs might support Earth-like worlds, noting that an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri--the dimmest and most distant member of the Alpha Centauri trinary--hasn't been excluded.


• Daniel Drezner thinks that rhetoric on Iran has become so clichéd one may as well automate blogs about the ongoing crisis.


• At False Steps, Paul Drye considers Soviet plans in the 1980s for a successor to the Mir space station, noting that some design elements made it into the International Space Station.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's DJW argues that complementarian views of gender are wrong and destructive for men and for women, not least because it forces real people to conform to abstract--even unreal--ideologies.


• New APPS Blog's Mohan Matthen wonders about the implications of Judith Butler's support for the Brooklyn College conference on divestment from Israel.


• Norman Geras is rather unfair in thinking that Judith Butler opposes Jewish self-determination. It would be more accurate, given her support for diaspora communities, for her to argue that she doesn't think Jewish self-determination should come at the expense of others.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer argues that fracking is going to be delayed if not blocked outright in Europe by the wastewater "flowback" produced by the process.


• Torontoist's Kevin Plummer describes the sensational trial of Carrie Massie, an English servant in Toronto who, in 1915, shot her employer Charles “Bert” Massey after he allegedly tried to sexual assault her. (She got off.)


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes that Russian opposition to recognition of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States is continuing to harden.

[LINK] "Marriage Made in Civil Heaven"

Zak Brophy's Inter Press Service article describes the continuing absence of civil marriage in Lebanon, an intentional policy of the Lebanese state--as of most other Middle Eastern states, democratic Israel included--to prevent the emergence of a secular public sphere where religious sects would no longer be able to determine what sort of families get formed by who. Here's hoping for change!

In Lebanon social and political integration is realised through sectarian affiliation; it is within the legal institutions of the 18 different religious sects that marriages are traditionally authorised. “It is really a different feeling when you feel like a human being getting married to another human being based on human rights and not on sectarian rights,” the groom, Nidal Darwish, tells IPS.

Darwish and his bride Kholoud Sukkariyeh tied the knot in a secret ceremony at her house with just her brother for a witness, and a notary to oversee the signing of the contract. But once their marriage entered the public domain it soon became a hot and controversial topic of discussion across the country. What may in many societies seem a trivial matter cuts deep into Lebanon’s social, political and religious fabric.

[. . .]

While the political community has come out split over the issue of civil marriage, there have been varying degrees of opposition from the religious establishments of different sects. The grand mufti of the Sunni Muslim community opposed the idea of civil marriage most virulently. He threatened in a religious edict, or fatwa, “Every Muslim official, whether a deputy or a minister, who supports the legalisation of civil marriage, even if it is optional, is an apostate and outside the Islamic religion.”

Civil marriages are not new per se to Lebanese couples. However, Darwish and Sukarriyeh broke the course set by thousands of other like-minded lovers who travel to foreign countries such as Cyprus or Turkey every year to tie the knot in a civil ceremony.

These marriages are recognised in Lebanon, and the Lebanese legal system can apply the civil marriage laws of the country in which the marriage was signed.

[. . .]

The dispute over the balance of religious and civil law in Lebanese society runs back to the very inception of the country and perhaps reached its apex in 2011 when tens of thousands of Lebanese, inspired by the successful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, took to the streets to protest against the sectarian system in its entirety.

The first civil personal status law was submitted to parliament in 1971 but was rejected, and the sectarian divisions within society only became further entrenched and exacerbated during the bitter civil war from 1975 to 1991.

In the wake of the conflict former president Elias Hrawi presented a draft law on civil marriage in 1998, which received the majority of votes in the cabinet. However, then prime minister Rafiq Hariri shelved the legislation and didn’t send it to parliament.

“Of course this was not legal but Hariri was was controlling the government to serve his position and the sects,” Tony Daoud, civil society activist with local NGO, Chaml tells IPS.

[LINK] "How to Save a Dying Language"

Ariel Sabar's article in the latest issue of Smithsonian, "How to Save a Dying Language", documenting the efforts of linguist Geoffrey Khan to record samples of the Aramaic language before it disappears as a living language, is a bit misnamed. Khan isn't revitalizing the language so much as he is documenting the way that it is currently spoken, by a fast-aging diaspora of Christians from the Middle East scattered across the world.

It was a sunny morning in May, and I was in a car with a linguist and a tax preparer trolling the suburbs of Chicago for native speakers of Aramaic, the 3,000-year-old language of Jesus.

The linguist, Geoffrey Khan of the University of Cambridge, was nominally in town to give a speech at Northwestern University, in Evanston. But he had another agenda: Chicago’s northern suburbs are home to tens of thousands of Assyrians, Aramaic-speaking Christians driven from their Middle Eastern homelands by persecution and war. The Windy City is a heady place for one of the world’s foremost scholars of modern Aramaic, a man bent on documenting all of its dialects before the language—once the tongue of empires—follows its last speakers to the grave.

The tax preparer, Elias Bet-shmuel, a thickset man with a shiny pate, was a local Assyrian who had offered to be our sherpa. When he burst into the lobby of Khan’s hotel that morning, he announced the stops on our two-day trek in the confidential tone of a smuggler inventorying the contents of a shipment.

“I got Shaqlanaye, I have Bebednaye.” He was listing immigrant families by the names of the northern Iraqi villages whose dialects they spoke. Several of the families, it turned out, were Bet-shmuel’s clients.

As Bet-shmuel threaded his Infiniti sedan toward the nearby town of Niles, Illinois, Khan, a rangy 55-year-old, said he was on safari for speakers of “pure” dialects: Aramaic as preserved in villages, before speakers left for big, polyglot cities or, worse, new countries. This usually meant elderly folk who had lived the better part of their lives in mountain enclaves in Iraq, Syria, Iran or Turkey. “The less education the better,” Khan said. “When people come together in towns, even in Chicago, the dialects get mixed. When people get married, the husband’s and wife’s dialects converge.”

We turned onto a grid of neighborhood streets, and Bet-shmuel announced the day’s first stop: a 70-year-old widow from Bebede who had come to Chicago just a decade earlier. “She is a housewife with an elementary education. No English.”

Khan beamed. “I fall in love with these old ladies,” he said.

Go, read.

[LINK] "Duffy’s ‘neighbours’ in P.E.I. say they haven’t seen the senator"

The Toronto Star's coverage, courtesy Mitch MacDonald, of Prince Edward Island senator Mike Duffy's non-residence in Prince Edward, is appropriately caustic.

Nestled behind a layer of trees, Senator Mike Duffy’s cottage is barely visible from Morgan and Debbie Eisenhaur’s year-round residence on the north shore of Canada’s smallest province.

While Duffy’s residence is just a small, snow-covered field away, the Eisenhaurs have never met their neighbour, who is one of three senators in the midst of an audit involving their residency declarations and related expenses.

Aside from never having bumped into Duffy in the community — either during the busy summer months or in the long, cold winter — the Eisenhaurs said the dirt lane leading to his cottage and several others is not maintained during the off-season months.

[. . .]

Duffy and his wife, Heather, who also own a home in Kanata, Ont., get garbage collection only six months of the year at their Cavendish residence.

They are listed as non-residents and pay 50 per cent more land taxes than someone classified as an Island resident. To qualify for the lower tax rate on P.E.I., property owners must reside in the province for 183 consecutive days.

[. . .]

If Duffy wanted to live in Cavendish year-round, it wouldn’t be hard, the couple added.

Despite largely being a resort municipality that swells to a population of thousands in the summer, the provincial government lists 266 residents as living in the area all year, including during snowstorms.

“We just wait it out,” said Morgan, pointing out that nearby Rustico has all the necessities required to live year-round, including a grocery store, gas station, several restaurants and a liquor store.

At the closest local coffee shop in Rustico, several patrons laughed when asked if they had ever seen Duffy in the area.

“Never,” said one Cavendish resident who asked to remain anonymous.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the possibility of Canadian Marc Ouellet becoming the next Pope

"Could a Canadian become the next pope?" is the title of the CBC article on the prospects of Marc Ouellet--archbishop of Quebec, Primate of Canada, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops--succeeding Benedict XVI to the office of the Papacy.

Three Canadian cardinals will be part of the conclave to elect a new pope, and one is considered a leading contender to take over after Pope Benedict XVI steps down Feb. 28.

The selection of a Canadian as pontiff would be unprecedented. A non-European cardinal has never been chosen to lead the church.

The Canadians involved in the decision-making process are Cardinal Thomas Collins from Toronto, and Cardinals Jean-Claude Turcotte and Marc Ouellet, both from Quebec.

[. . .]

Cardinal Ouellet is the Canadian head of the Vatican's office for bishops and joins Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, and Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, as potential successors to Benedict.

Cardinal Ouellet was appointed Metropolitan Archbishop of Quebec in November 2002, and elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals one year later. He participated in the conclave that led to the papal election of Benedict in April 2005. He is also prefect of the Congregation of Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

In his current role in the Vatican, the cardinal oversees the appointment of bishops and is active on numerous Roman Catholic commissions and committees. His special interests have included Latin America.

In an interview with the Catholic news organization Salt + Light TV published online last April, Cardinal Ouellet was asked whether he had hopes of becoming pope.

"I don't see myself at this level, not at all ... because I see how much it entails [in terms of] responsibility," he said. "On the other hand, I say I believe that the Holy Spirit will help the cardinals do a good choice for the leadership of the church, the Catholic Church, in the future."

It's worth noting that Ouellet belongs to what is quite possibly the last generation of strongly Roman Catholic French Canada. Canadian Francophones never formed more than 30% of the Canadian population, but they form--and still form--half of Canada's Roman Catholic population. In the past half-century, as Québec has secularized with a vengeance, Roman Catholicism's strength as anything other than a badge of identity has weakened sharply. Ouellet appeared here in 2010 in connection with the overwhelmingly hostile reaction in Québec to his statement that abortion was never justifiable, not even in cases of rape.

Were Ouellet to become Pope, he would find himself fulfilling a lot of records: the first non-European, the first Canadian, the first Francophone in centuries. I would expect quite a few people in Canada, and in Québec more specifically, to be rather proud of him. I would not expect

[LINK] Two links on the Senate of Canada

First is by Tim Naumetz of the Hill Times of Ottawa, "40 per cent of Canadians want a reformed Senate, 31 per cent want it abolished: Forum Research poll".

In the wake of the latest controversies involving allegations of wrongdoing by Senators, including two appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a new poll shows Canadians who want an elected Senate outnumber those who want it abolished it entirely.

But, even though only 14 per cent of respondents said the Senate should be left as it is, the Forum Research survey suggests if Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) succeeds in his Supreme Court of Canada quest to take incremental steps toward an elected Senate, the political turmoil could be significant.

The survey of 1,091 voting age Canadians on Feb. 7, found 40 per cent of respondents favoured an elected Senate, with an outright majority only in Alberta, where 55 per cent said they supported the idea.

A full 31 per cent across Canada said they want the Senate to be abolished, a longstanding NDP position that—depending on the result of Mr. Harper’s request last week for an opinion on constitutional questions about Senate reform from the Supreme Court—could be impossible.

[. . .]

The Forum Research poll, an interactive voice response telephone survey with a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent 19 times out of 20, found opinion about the Senate had not changed even one percentage point from an identical poll Forum Research conducted in January, 2012.

“While the appetite for Senate reform is not overwhelming, it exceeds the interest in abolition, so we may have the Red Chamber to kick around for a while longer,” Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff told The Hill Times.

Second is a Canadian Press article published in the Charlottetown Guardian, "Tories, Liberals unite in bid to salvage Senate’s tarnished reputation".

Conservative and Liberal leaders in the much-maligned Senate are joining forces to salvage the upper chamber’s tarnished reputation.

They are demanding a swift — and public — resolution to allegations that some senators are abusing a housing allowance meant to compensate those who keep a secondary residence in Ottawa.

The Senate’s internal economy committee has been investigating the allegations and last week called in an outside auditor to scrutinize three cases — involving Conservatives Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau and Liberal Mac Harb.

In a rare show of bi-partisanship, government Senate leader Marjory LeBreton and Liberal Senate leader James Cowan have written the committee urging it to interview senators who have claimed the allowance in order to confirm their claims.

LeBreton and Cowan say that if a claim is found to be invalid, the senator in question should be required to immediately repay the money, with interest.

They say the Senate’s reputation is at stake, so it’s “vital” that the matter be resolved quickly and transparently.

[REVIEW] Goldstein, Goldstein and Sternbach, Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology

Back in July 2011, after only a brief amount of hesitation I bought at BMV on Bloor West in downtown Toronto, a copy of Spaceflight Chronology, written by Stan and Fred Goldstein and illustrated by Rick Sternbach. I was really lucky: The book may have been printed back in 1980, but not only I was able to find a good copy, but I was able to find a cheap one, too! (A side note: I'd never have come across it if not for a physical bookstore where I could actually browse for books. Physical bookstores matter.) *



The Spaceflight Chronology is a good read. Between its detailed and engrossing chronology--progress always happens, people learn, technologies advance, frontiers retreat--and the very high qualty of Rick Sternbach's colour and sketch illustrations, both colour and sketch, I'd say it bears comparison with the classic Terran Trade Authority series.

This book is very much a product of its time, as the Spaceflight Chronology is a double alternate history. Star Trek itself is an alternate history, describing a world that is fundamentally different from our own, but more, the Spaceflight Chronology recounts a version of Star Trek radically different from the canon that has been developed since its publication. In the Spaceflight Chronology, for instance, the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s was Earth's final conflict, following which space travel and colonization flourished along with Earth's unification, with an aggressive blue-algae-driven terraforming of Venus succeeding by the mid-21st century even as the Moon and Mars were colonized and the first STL ships sent to Earth' neighbours entirely independently of any other power. In the current Star Trek universe, Earth continued to struggle through its geopolitical turmoil, seeing space travel and space colonization develop at a rather slower rate than above finally suffering a global nuclear war before Cochrane's development of warp drive led to a rather necessary Vulcan protectorate and, ultimately, to the emergence of Earth as an autonomous power in the galaxy. **

Why these differences? The Spaceflight Chronology was published at a time when all there was to Star Trek were the three seasons of the original series from the 1960s, the 22 episodes of the animated series from the early 1970s, and, just barely, the first Star Trek movie from 1979. There really wasn't much canon at all for fans of the show. The Spaceflight Chronology ended up playing a major role in providing a broader depiction of the Star Trek universe for fans, its timeline and details inspiring both the FASA Star Trek roleplaying game and the 1980s Pocket Books novel continuity. Roddenberry began to enforce his copyright against these non-canonical perspectives on his universe in the late 1980s, stripping the RPG license from FASA, putting editors in place to make sure that the novels could never come close to challenging his writ, and--of course--producing Star Trek: The Next Generation with its own backstory. Only isolated elements from this earlier continuity have survived to the present, even in the more liberal realm of the novels. It's still fun to read this, the fount of so much Trek.

The Spaceflight Chronology is also a sterling example of the science fiction of its time, a carefully-detailed and charted history of humanity's expansion into the universe. Solar power satellites cheaply provide the abundant energy needed for the betterment of life on Earth; the space shuttle provides rapid and efficient access to space and is itself but the precursor multiple O'Neill cylinders occupy the LaGrange points of cislunar space while a Mars base was founded last year; Venus is successfully terraformed within a century via Sagan's blue-green algae and imported water from comets; and, with increasing confidence, humanity reaches out to neighbouring stars and makes there not only new homes but new friends. Space travel can be easy, space colonization even easier, and the universe is a potentially warm, friendly, and comprehensible place. I really have to give props to everyone involved in this book for making it work so well.

* This review is derived from this Trekbbs.com post and subsequent discussion.

** (Being even more geekier beyond these details of the past, the near-Sol environments differ markedly. In the Spaceflight Chronology, Earth's first contact is made at Alpha Centauri in 2048, when the UNSS Icarus happens upon the astonishingly very-nearly-human Alpha Centauran civilization, opening up a productive relationship that sees the Centauran Zefram Cochrane start a joint Earth-Centauri program leading to the development of warp drive. The discovery of a damaged Vulcan scout craft in Sol system by the UNSS Amity and the return of its crew to the Vulcan homeworld in the Epsilon Eridani system follows, with contact made in 2073 with the Tellarites and at an undetermined point with the Andorians. By the end of the 21st century, these five states and Rigel have bounded together to form the United Federation of Planets. By the time of V'Ger's visit just after the beginning of the 23rd century, the Federation is a thriving culture set to develop rapid intergalactic travel, ubiquitous psionic skill sets in anyone so interested, and the ability to move planets about. In the actual Star Trek universe, Vulcan is in the 40 (or, if you would, Omicron 2) Eridani system, not nearby Epsilon, Alpha Centauri's extensive planetary system was unpopulated until Earth colonists set up an independent state there some time after the mid-21st century, contact with the Tellarites and the Andorians seems to have been limited by the Vulcan protectorate well into the 22nd century, Rigel was not a founding member of the UFP, and the development of the technologies I described at the end of the last paragraph is well, well into the future.)