[PHOTO] The motor vehicles of St. Patrick's Day

[LINK] "Is China more democratic than Russia?"

Ivan Krastev's Open Democracy essay makes some interesting points. China has seemed to be governed rather more pragmatically and successfully than Russia in many ways, all things considered, although there are still obviously issues. Thoughts?

At the juncture 1989-1991, both Communist leaderships — Soviet and Chinese — came to realise that Communism had become a dysfunctional type of system. But they had different understandings of what was wrong with it. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev decided that what was worth preserving were the socialist ideas, and what was bad was the Communist party and its inability to bring to mobilise the energy of the society. His idea of social transformation meant moving beyond the party rule, and developing a state which could be competitive in the Western paradigm. The Chinese communist party took a totally different view. They believed what was bad about communism were the Communist, socialist ideas, especially in an economic sense, and what was good about socialism was the Communist party and its capacity to keep control of society. So they did everything to keep the power infrastructure intact.

What do these regimes look like today? The Russian regime, observed from afar, certainly looks like a democracy. It enjoys a democratic constitution, runs elections, has a multiparty political system, has some free media and has not yet used tanks to crush massive public protests. If an alien with a degree in political science came from some other planet and landed in Russia, he would most probably think the country was a democracy. China, on the other hand, does not look like a democracy, not even to our alien friend. It is, instead, rather like a classic communist regime. As Richard McGregor observes in his book ‘The Party’: ‘Beijing retains a surprising number of qualities that characterised communist regimes of the twentieth century. The Party in China has eradicated and emasculated political rivals, eliminated the autonomy of courts and press, restricted religion and civil society, established extensive network of security police, and dispatched dissidents to labour camps’.

On the level of institutional design not so much has changed in China since 1989, but almost everything has changed in Russia. The paradox, though, is that Russia’s imitation of democratic institutions has led to the establishment of an ineffective political regime deprived of political dynamism and characterised by low quality decision-making. The Chinese regime is generally accepted to be much more effective than the Russian one, and the quality of its decision-making is certainly much better. Moreover, it is arguably more democratic than Russia. Chinese regimes are much more capable for self-correction. They have succeeded in integrating key democratic elements while preserving the communist infrastructure of power.

[URBAN NOTE] "Man shot in Cabbagetown brother of Eaton Centre shooting victim"

The CBC reports.

Police have identified the man that died following an overnight shooting in downtown Toronto as the brother of the victim in last summer's Eaton Centre shooting.

Police say they received a call reporting gunfire just after 11:30 p.m. Thursday at a seniors apartment at 55 Bleecker St., in the area of Carlton and Jarvis streets.

When police arrived, they found Nisan Nirmalendran, 21, suffering from gunshot wounds.

He was taken to St. Michael's hospital and pronounced dead. Police have not yet made any arrests.

Police confirmed that Nirmalendran was the brother of Nixon Nirmalendran, the 22-year-old who died on June 11, 2012 after being shot in the food court of Toronto’s Eaton Centre on June 2, 2012.

Det. Sgt. Terry Brown spoke at a news conference Friday, saying that there was “nothing to suggest that the two instances are related at all.”

[LINK] "Russians flock to troubled Cyprus in attempt to protect finances"

Miriam Elder's Guardian article talks about the effects of the Cypriot crisis on Russians invested in the country, a fairly broad cross-section of people.

They clustered in small groups on the plush couches dotted around the lounge of the Four Seasons hotel in the port city of Limassol. Nervous whispers and furtive glances revealed these were no ordinary tourists revelling in the sun on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

They were Russians, who have been flocking to the city for urgent meetings with lawyers and financial advisers, fearing for their personal finances, with sums at stake ranging from the low thousands to hundreds of millions of euros and totalling more than $32bn (£27bn).

"Everyone has flown in hoping to use contacts with locals to pressure the leadership, the deputies," says a man who identifies himself only as Vladimir. "We are all very worried, very scared."

The 45-year-old businessman refreshes his iPad incessantly, seeking news from the parliament in the capital, Nicosia. If the country's banks go bust, he stands to lose €58m. Where the money came from, he declines to say.

[. . .]

Many Russians have also invested heavily in real estate on Cyprus, buying luxury properties around the island. But many of the year-round Russian residents are not wealthy and have spent several days queuing up alongside Cypriots at bank machines in a desperate attempt to withdraw cash in the event of a bank collapse.

Alexandra Zimakova, 38, a small business owner originally from St Petersburg, has just under €100,000 in Laiki Bank, the country's second largest and most troubled. "I already lived through one default, in Russia," she says, referring to the 1998 crisis when Russia defaulted on its debt, devastating its economy. "Now we have to see what will happen next. So far it's terrible panic, people talking about horrible things, rumours everywhere, very little real information."

Cyprus was meant to be different. In Russia, successful businesses are regularly raided by corrupt government inspectors and then stolen by well-funded rivals. Banks are still seen as insecure; many keep their savings at home.

Eight years ago, Zimakova bought a house outside Nicosia for €150,000. She does not know how much it is worth today, with real estate prices steadily dropping. In the past few days, neighbours have reported three robberies as people begin to store more cash at home.

"We don't know what will happen," she says, echoing the sentiments of everyone across the island, be they Russian or Cypriot.

[LINK] "The Cyprus crisis reveals much about German-Russian relations"

Writing for The Guardian, one Stefan Meister argues that the Cyprus conflict is as much a matter of Russian-German competition as anything else.

From the Russian perspective, two aspects of the current crisis over the island are difficult to understand. First, it is unclear why the EU is not able to give Cyprus the relatively small amount, €17bn, required to avoid bankruptcy. Cyprus may be small, but it is important for the overall credibility of the euro. Second, if the EU really wanted to have Russian money for the bailout, then they should have involved Moscow in the process from the beginning, to work together to present a viable rescue plan for Cyprus. In the light of this, Russia's rebuffing of Cypriot entreaties for help hardly comes as a surprise.

From Moscow, it looks like the German government is once again playing an inglorious role in international affairs. Germany is Russia's key political and economic partner in the EU, but over the last two years – and especially since the return of Vladimir Putin as Russian president – there has been an increasing alienation between Berlin and Moscow. In terms of political belief, there is little common ground between Angela Merkel and Putin – the good old times of "male bonding" between Schröder-Putin and Kohl-Yeltsin are long over. Merkel has been a much more critical partner to Moscow than her predecessors and Russia's poor human rights record is a common theme in German discourse on the country.

Last November, a resolution by the governing coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Liberal Democrats in the German lower house emphasised the importance of civil society and rule of law in the relationship with Russia – a crucial milestone in German-Russian relations.

Merkel's stance stands in stark contrast to her predecessors. Three weeks ago, the leading German weekly Die Zeit started a debate on the lack of a balance between political values and political interests in German foreign policy. Many German politicians have been criticised for receiving Russian money to open doors to Russian business in Germany. As well as former chancellor Gerhard Schröder – who was nominated by Gazprom to head the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream, which aims to supply Russian gas directly to Germany – there is the former mayor of Hamburg Henning Voscherau, who lobbies for the Gazprom-led South Stream project.

As Die Zeit points out, even the respectable former minister of foreign affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher has been rolling out the metaphorical red carpet for authoritarian regimes such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. As a result, the interplay between economic interests and democratic values will be a key issue in the election campaign for the German parliamentary elections in autumn this year. The leadership in Russia must knows it will see more of Merkel's cold shoulder in the coming months.

[LINK] "Italians In Scotland"

Palash R. Ghosh's International Business Times article about the history of Italian immigration in Scotland last century interests me, and not only because of the parallels Ghosh draws with eastern European immigration in this century. The Scotland I've seen invoked by Canadians of Scottish heritage doesn't include this population, among other Scottish realities.

When we think of Scotland, diversity doesn’t come readily to mind. Yet Italians, many of whose ancestors came to Scotland in the late 19th century, make up a vital and vibrant segment of Scotland’s population -- about 100,000 people in a country of 5 million. They weren’t always welcome and they’ve been persecuted -- but not anymore. Now, Scotland is eagerly embracing and even celebrating its Italian heritage in food fairs, music festivals, neighborhood tours and public events -- to the point of romanticism, as some observers see it.

[. . .]

Fleeing poverty and famine at home in the 1890s, Italians moved eastward to the much richer and more globally powerful British isles. Many Italians ended up in Scotland, rather than England, in order to seek out business opportunities away from crowded marketplaces like London.

“They moved to where they could set up shop,” said Wendy Ugolini, a lecturer in British history at the University of Edinburgh.

Which is precisely what many of them did, opening up small restaurants, ice cream parlors and fish-and-chip outlets. Indeed in 1905, there were 337 Italian-owned cafes and takeout places in Glasgow alone, up from 89 in 1903, according to EducationScotland.

"It could be fairly argued that the Italian community popularized the 'fish supper' in Scotland," Stuart Atkinson, Scottish executive councilor with the National Fish Friers Federation told BBC. “To this day most Scottish towns still have an Italian chippy [fish-and-chip shop].”

However, life for Italo-Scots was not all friendly storefronts and chippies.

Given their somewhat darker features, foreign language and Roman Catholic faith, Italians were perceived by many of the Protestant Scots as unclean and irreligious. People complained publicly that the Italians kept their places of business opened longer than pubs and on the Sabbath. According to reports in the Glasgow Herald newspaper from the early 20th century, some church officials even condemned Italian ice cream shops as “immoral,“ “corrupt” and encouraging licentiousness.

[LINK] "Alex Salmond announces Scottish independence referendum date"

The Scottish independence referendum long promised by the Scottish National Party government has been scheduled, as The Guardian's Scotland correspondent noted. I'll have to keep my eye on this one; the results could be quite interesting, not least judging by Canada's experiences with referenda on separatism and my experience of said.

Alex Salmond has announced that Scotland's independence referendum will be held on 18 September next year, giving the independence movement 545 days to convince a largely sceptical population to say yes to leaving the UK.

Both the pro- and anti-independence campaigns launched online clocks counting down to referendum day, which the first minister had decided would come four weeks earlier than some expected.

Around 4 million voters, set to include 16- and 17-year-olds for the first time in a major poll, will be asked a single six-word question: "Should Scotland become an independent country?"

Salmond said 18 September would be "a date which becomes etched in our nation's story as the day Scotland took a decisive step forward to a better, fairer future".

But opposition leaders said Salmond knew that independence was unpopular: a series of opinion polls has consistently shown that about a third of Scots back independence, with support for remaining in the UK commanding majority support.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said it had taken Salmond some 700 days since he won a landslide in the Scottish elections to confirm the date.

Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader, said the further delay in staging the referendum meant Scotland would remain "on pause", delaying much needed action on poverty and economic recovery.

The Scottish government had repeatedly failed to set out in detail how an independent Scotland would function, what its tax, welfare and pensions policies would be or how it would improve health and education, Lamont said.

[LINK] "Commons approves transgender rights bill"

Go Canada! (More cross-bench support for the bill would have been nice, but having high-profile cabinet ministers vote in support of it is nice. Even if the Prime Minister didn't vote for it.)

A bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against transgender Canadians was approved by the House of Commons today.

The Opposition private member's legislation passed by a vote of 149-137, with the crucial support of 18 Conservatives, including four cabinet ministers.

It was one of the first tests of the Conservative caucus' resolve on lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) rights in Canada at a time when Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has been mounting a strong defence of such rights abroad.

The proposal had been scheduled for a committee vote Wednesday, but protesters forced a delay in lawmakers' debate.

Baird, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt and Heritage Minister James Moore were among the Conservatives who supported the bill. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, most of his front bench and the vast majority of his backbenchers opposed it.

Opposition parties were united in their support for the bill, sponsored by New Democrat Randall Garrison.