[PHOTO] Photographing photographers at High Park on Victoria Day

I went to High Park yesterday to see the last of the cherry blossoms and to take photographs of the park in spring bloom, not necessarily in that order. (I managed to winnow down my photographs to sixty or so. I'm getting better at that.)

The park was packed. All sorts of people had come to take advantage of a beautiful day, the last and titular day of the Victoria Day long weekend, to enjoy an increasingly green High Park anow that a long and brutal winter was finally over. One of these sorts were photographers. We were everywhere, taking group shots by the tulips at the northern entrance opposite the subway station, solitary shots among the trees or by Grenadier Pond or on the Queensway, or just posing under trees like a graceful weeping willow or even the last tree in the park to keep its cherry blossoms.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Antipope Charlie Stross examines the myth of heroism and its origins.


• blogTO comes up with ten fun things to do on the Toronto Islands this summer.


• Crooked Timber's Corey Robin doesn't think much of the American tendency towards charging criminal defendants the costs of their case.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that the viral MERS epidemic in Saudi Arabia has killed 173 people and infected more.


• The Financial Times' The World blog doesn't think Russian-Western relations will improve.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes the extent of the BJP's electoral success across India.


• Language Hat links to a new online archive of Emily Dickinson's manuscripts.


• Steve Munro, again, is unimpressed with the political short-termism in Toronto that keeps sabotaging subway lines.


• Torontoist warned us of the fragility of the cherry blossoms of High Park.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that the autonomy of Washington D.C. is limited by Congress in that it can't pass its own budget laws backed by citizen referenda.


• Window on Eurasia links to a Russian writer who suggests that while many on the European right might support Putin opportunistically, few support Russia's ideological vision.

[LINK] "Advocating Pill, U.S. Signals Shift to Prevent AIDS"

Donald G. McNeil's article in the New York Times about the prophylactic use of the anti-HIV drug Truvada to prevent HIV infections, as a supplement or even a replacement for condom use, got a lot of attention. Deservedly so: this could change the dynamics of HIV in queer communities substantially.

Federal health officials recommended Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk for AIDS take a daily pill that has been shown to prevent infection with the virus that causes it.

If broadly followed, the advice could transform AIDS prevention in the United States — from reliance on condoms, which are effective but unpopular with many men, to a regimen that relies on an antiretroviral drug.

It would mean a 50-fold increase in the number of prescriptions for the drug, Truvada — to 500,000 a year from fewer than 10,000. The drug costs $13,000 a year, and most insurers already cover it.

The guidelines tell doctors to consider the drug regimen, called PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis, for gay men who have sex without condoms; heterosexuals with high-risk partners such as drug injectors or male bisexuals who have unprotected sex; patients who regularly have sex with anyone they know is infected; and anyone who shares needles or injects drugs.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have long been frustrated that the number of H.I.V. infections in the United States has barely changed in a decade, stubbornly holding at 50,000 a year, despite 30 years of official advice to rely on condoms to block transmission.

Although there is no guarantee that gay men will adopt the drug regimen, federal officials say something must be done because condom use is going down. In a C.D.C. survey in November, the number of gay men reporting recent unprotected sex rose nearly 20 percent from 2005 to 2011.

[LINK] "Egypt and the Gulf: When a Free Lunch Is Not Free"

Steven A. Cook's blog post at the Council of Foreign Relations examining Egypt's awkward relationship with the Persian Gulf states has interesting implications.

Last Friday, the online version of the Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, reported that Egypt is slowing down its payments for commodities, especially food. Apparently, because the country’s foreign currency reserves are currently about $17 billion—which means the Egyptians are coming close to the minimum amounts of reserves needed to cover imports for 3-4 months—the Central Bank has become “particularly cautious” about allocating these funds. Upon hearing the news, one former IMF and Treasury Department official wrote to me: “So it begins…central bank has a delicate balancing act…withhold too long and it gets blamed, but it needs to slow the drain…often see this in advance of em [emerging market] crisis.” There has been some happy talk recently, most notably from IMF chief Christine LaGarde, about the state of Egypt’s finances, but it seems clear that the Egyptians are going to need additional assistance. Their likely patrons will be the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis who poured $12 billion in various forms into Egypt right after the July 3, 2013 coup and, in an implicit recognition that the Egyptian economy is in disastrous condition, the three Gulf states have committed an additional $8 billion. The Gulfies may come to regret their investment in Egypt, but for now they remain unwavering in their support for Cairo. It is true as some Emiratis have grumbled in private and stated publicly that they will not keep pouring money down a black hole, but for now at least the assistance will continue to flow. The funding from the Gulf is not just to keep the economy afloat but also to ensure that Egypt follows a particular political trajectory that does not pose a threat to the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis or their common strategic interests.

The Egyptians find themselves in both a potentially awkward and possibly advantageous position as a result of the assistance from the Gulf. Since Mubarak fell, Egypt’s leaders and potential leaders—whether servants of the old regime, Muslim Brothers, military officers, neo-Nasserists, business tycoons, or whoever—have desperately sought to tie themselves to the revolution. It is rather stunning how many non-revolutionary figures have declared their desire “to protect the revolution,” but that’s politics. No one in Egypt at least seems willing to call them out on this or point to the fact that as these figures wax eloquently (or not) about democracy and national empowerment, Egypt has become dependent on financing from countries that do not have a very good track record supporting more open political systems. This seems awkward, no? Or is it just me? Less than a year after the July 3 coup and the major Saudi-Emirati-Kuwaiti commitment, Egypt’s interim government and presumptive president, Field Marshal (ret.) Abdel Fattah al Sisi, have not paid a political price for Cairo’s relationship with the major Gulf states. Even presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahy, an avowed follower of Gamal Abdel Nasser—who basically went to war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen in the 1960s— is on record praising Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for their support. This is likely the result of a broad recognition of Egypt’s difficult economic circumstances and the importance of the assistance in keeping the Egyptian economy afloat. Egyptians seem genuinely grateful for the assistance. It may very well be that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait are next on the list of external powers that have financed Egypt’s pursuit of modernization and development. It did not end well for the Brits, Soviets, and Americans. Perhaps it will be different in the case of the Gulf states because they are, in the words of Sabahy, “brotherly,” but I suspect that it will not. At the moment, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait may have a confluence of interests, but those interests may change or views about how best to achieve these interests may diverge over time.

[URBAN NOTE] "Fair Play for Sikh Pioneers?"

On the weekend, Torontoist's Kevin Plummer wrote about the efforts of a Sikh in Toronto a century ago to overcome racist Canadian immigration policies. Apparently he was quite well-liked at the time.

“We are subjects of the same Empire; we have fought, we have sacrificed. We have fought for the Empire, and we bear her medals; we have an interest in this country; we have bought about $2,006,000 of property in British Columbia; we have our church and pay our pastor, and we mean to stay in this country,” Dr. Sunder Singh said in a speech before Toronto’s Empire Club on January 25, 1912. One of the leaders of the South Asian community in British Columbia, Singh spent that winter in Toronto, campaigning for the easing of highly restrictive immigration regulations for South Asians. He continued: “To others you advance money to come here, and yet to us, British subjects, you refuse to let down the bars. All we are asking of you is justice and fair play.”

“Many people have been telling me that it is useless my trying to bring this question before the Canadian people,” the speaker concluded, “but I am firmly persuaded that, if the question is properly brought before right-minded Canadians, that they will say that the same rights should be given to the Sikh people as are given to any other British subjects.”

A reasoned argument persuasively delivered, Singh’s speech that day was interrupted by spontaneous applause no fewer than six times, an indication of the reception he received in Toronto initially. For a brief moment, it appeared that he might succeed in rousing Ontario’s Protestant and pro-Imperialist sentiment to the cause of loosening immigration restrictions. But ultimately, the justness of his argument couldn’t overcome the vociferous outcry from British Columbia or the personal attacks launched on his character.

Born near Amritsar, Punjab in 1882, Dr. Sunder Singh (also frequently spelled Sundar) was educated at Punjab University, then studied medicine in Glasgow, Scotland. After qualifying as a doctor before the license board in Britain, he worked as a ship’s medical officer on the mail line for two years, travelling between Liverpool, Brazil, and New York. Singh arrived in Canada at Halifax in March 1909, where immigration restrictions against South Asians were much less stringently enforced than on the West Coast.

[LINK] Open Democracy on Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan on Eurasia

Just recently, Open Democracy has featured a series of articles taking a look at opinion on the Eurasian Economic Union in the smaller states soon to join this Russia-directed project. What do Armenians, Belarusians, and Kazakhstanis think?

On Armenia, Greg Forbes' article "Armenia and the EEU: the point of no return for Yerevan" suggests that Armenia is making the best of an unenviable situation.

Armenia’s dramatic turnabout decision to move towards Customs Union membership is most commonly attributed by western pundits to a campaign of sustained pressure from Moscow. Increasingly concerned with developments in neighbouring Ukraine post-Euromaidan, and hostile to soft power intrusions into the former Soviet space, Russia made clear its disappointment with Yerevan’s pursuit of an Association Agreement with Brussels. Armenia, dependent on Russia for energy, regional security and trade, and thus arguably hostage to Russian geopolitical interests, duly acquiesced.

However, as some observers have noted, there’s probably more to this picture than might meet the eye. Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan presides over a struggling economy and there has been significant domestic opposition to his government since contentious elections in February 2013 saw street protests dispute the legitimacy of his re-election to a second term. Yerevan’s hurried change of heart may have been prompted as much by Sargsyan’s sense of acute political vulnerability as by Armenia’s strategic dependency on Russia: Sargsyan was seeking to shore up his position with near-term economic rewards from Moscow and to forestall Russia’s possible fomenting of a more pliable client (the Kremlin boasts ties with the main opposition Prosperous Armenia Party, former President Robert Kocharian and allegedly with dozens of MPs from the ruling Republican Party).

To date Armenia has received relatively little in return for signing up to Russia’s grand project of regional integration. This reflects the profound position of weakness from which Armenia must negotiate with her patron. There are three core geopolitical drivers to the Russo-Armenian relationship and all of them are weighted in Russia’s favour: the supply of Russian energy to Armenia, the access of Armenian citizens to the Russian labour market, and Russia as Armenia’s security guarantor in the face of Azerbaijan’s revanchist aspirations.

On Belarus, Vadzim Smok suggests ("Belarus and the EEU: caught between a rock and a hard place") that while this integration might be relatively popular, it isn't actually changing the underlying Russian-Belarusian relationship much. The two countries are already closely integrated.

A March 2014 study by Belarus’s Independent Institute for Social, Economic and Political Research meanwhile asked the question: ‘If you had to choose between unification with Russia or membership of the EU, which would you choose?’ When the same question was asked in December 2013, about half of respondents answered in favour of the EU, but now, three months later, with the crisis in Ukraine and the help of a powerful Russian propaganda campaign, opinion has swung away from Europe, although more than a half of Belarusians still oppose the idea of hypothetical unification with Russia.

In other words, Belarusians are only interested in the economic side of integration, or to be more precise its impact on their own standard of living, and have little interest in grand political projects. If Eurasian integration brings no financial benefits, they will happily turn their attention back to the West. But recent events have shown that although Eurasian integration doesn’t seem to be moving very fast, the Lukashenka government is wary of sowing the seeds of disaffection among the public, to avoid annoying Russia.

[. . .]

A poll conducted by the Belarus Business and Management Institute’s Research Centre, in 2013 found that over 50% of owners of small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMB) saw the current level of integration in a fairly positive light, and 44% were in favour of further integration. Only 19% spoke out against the present situation, and 23% against an increase in integration. These figures nevertheless show a significant drop in approval compared to 2012: pro-integration numbers were down by 17%, and anti-integration ones up by 7%.

[. . .]

Eurasian integration has not, in fact, had any significant economic effect on Belarus, primarily because its partnership with Russia predates the ECU and EEU; in 1999 Lukashenka and then Russian president Boris Yeltsin set up the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which created close economic ties between the two countries. The current political situation is good for Lukashenka: the increasing external pressure on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine has brought concessions from the Kremlin on the single energy market, although Putin’s insistence on bilateral agreements means that he wants to use annual energy supply contracts to keep Belarus under his thumb. It also means that Belarus will be even more economically dependent on Russia than before (and it is already deeply dependent).

On Kazakhstan, meanwhile, Luca Anceschi and Paolo Sorbello argue in their "Kazakhstan and the EEU: the rise of Eurasian scepticism" that skepticism about Eurasian integration is being used strategically by the government and by opposition factors.

Rampant anti-Eurasianism represents a key factor in understanding the cleavage between the two main political alternatives to Kazakhstan’s current establishment. The first constituent of the Kazakhstani opposition appears to be favouring western models of political participation, seeing as it incarnates values and visions strongly influenced by US and European traditions. Close monitoring of its activities – as well as brutal repression – have ensured that the forces of this opposition have never become strong enough to have a sizeable impact on Kazakhstan’s political landscape. Pro-government media and political organisations have systematically discredited these actors and portrayed them as ‘foreign agents,’ working to facilitate the capitalist exploitation of Kazakhstan.

The other main opposition grouping – which can be roughly presented under the umbrella of the NatsPatrioty – is fuelled by nationalist sentiments, sits at the right of Kazakhstan’s political spectrum, and tends to manifest its views by advocating the promotion of the Kazakh language and the preservation of Kazakh culture. This group is important to the leadership in Astana, as it includes a sector of its supporters that have become increasingly uneasy with some of the government’s policies. For this reason, Nazarbaev and his associates have largely tolerated the agenda of the NatsPatrioty. The leadership has seemed unwilling to challenge their points of view and has even been known to espouse some of the NatsPatrioty’s arguments, in order to shape legislation introduced to the detriment of Kazakhstan’s main domestic minorities (Russians, Koreans, Germans, and others) or its key international partners (Russia, China, the US). Rumours that the regime has artfully fomented this strand of opposition may remain unfounded but it is undoubtedly true that some of the NatsPatrioty arguments have promoted a divisive nationalism, which is widening the gap between the different components of Kazakhstan’s multi-national fabric and, interestingly, is being used to put more distance between Astana and its neighbours.

In this context, the NatsPatrioty anti-EEU discourse encapsulates their duplicity vis-à-vis the establishment: the same opponents of the new framework, in fact, are defending the original idea that Nazarbaev presented 20 years ago in Moscow. Their criticism is targeted at Russia, as the NatsPatrioty see Kazakhstan as just a partner being deceitfully driven into the arms of the greedy bear. This discourse facilitates the airing of various opposition grievances, and it ultimately causes the juxtaposition of domestic issues – the country’s economic situation, a suffering job market and industries, its many environmental disasters – with international and geopolitical questions of sovereignty, respect for international law, and prestige in the global arena; a set of foreign policy concerns very dear to the leadership in Astana.

[URBAN NOTE] "Public Works: Maximizing the Potential of Your Local Library"

Peter Goffin's Torontoist feature today includes an interesting American program that seeks to make libraries community hubs.

“Public spaces are integral to any community. When they work well, they serve as a stage for our public lives. They are the settings where celebrations are held, where both social and economic exchanges take place, where friends run into each other, and where cultures mix.” So reads the Outside the Box placemaking guide, a handbook for activists hoping to participate in a growing community-building initiative in the United States.

The Outside the Box program promotes the use of public libraries as central neighbourhood gathering spaces in communities with strong local leadership, high ethnic diversity, and low median income. Led by DVD-rental giant Redbox; librarians cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc.; and non-profit planning, design, and education organization Project for Public Spaces, the program is expanding into 20 American communities this year after last year’s successful five-location pilot project.

The people behind Outside the Box see libraries as trusted public institutions, brimming with the potential to be inviting and accessible gathering places.

Library staff and community actors participating in Outside the Box receive training about creating inviting public space on and around library grounds. They also get $5,000 worth of reusable materials for seating, lighting, and other amenities in this public space. And the program helps out with a launch event for the new spot—something along the lines of a free concert or fair, or outdoor movie night.

More at Torontoist.