[PHOTO] On the shore of Grenadier Pond, High Park

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Big Picture shares pictures of the devastating flooding in the Balkans.


• Crooked Timber discusses the ethics of immigration, with particular emphasis on the United Kingdom.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the discovery of a Neptune-mass planet orbiting nearby brown dwarf Gliese 687.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that increased soot and rising temperatures have been responsible for the shrinkage of the Greenland ice cap since the late 19th century.


• Far Outliers notes that hundreds of British prisoners of war taken in Singapore were used as forced labourers in the Solomon Islands.


• A Fistful of Euros' Edward Hugh notes the pressures on the Eurozone for changing policies.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes the recent election in India shows the BJP dominating most of India save for the southeast where regionalist parties reign.


• Peter Rukavina shares a map of his movements around Charlottetown, tracked by social media apps.


• Steve Munro uses traffic data to suggest that the new articulated buses haven't improved things on the Bathurst Street route.


• Torontoist reacts to the recent arrest of a driver of Rob Ford's Escalade.


• Transit Toronto examines the various TTC-related locations open for Doors Open this year, including a new streetcar.


• Window on Eurasia notes that some Tatars in the adjoining republic of Bashkortostan want their territory to secede to Tatarstan.

[LINK] "U.S. immigration crackdown brings gangs, California cuisine to Yucatan"

The News-Observer featured an interesting article by one Tim Johnson examining the consequences of large-scale migration from Mexico's Yucatán peninsula to the United States (specifically to the San Francisco area). All sorts of things have been brought back: money, crime networks, cultural influences.

Wander into Cafe Rex in Oxkutzcab, Mexico, deep in the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, and some odd things pop out on the menu. For one, there’s red curry and other Thai food. It might seem like a culinary aberration, but it isn’t.

Across town at the Limba Restaurant, the menu carries an assortment of dishes from Thailand, created by a chef who spent a decade in kitchens in San Francisco, where Asian food is prevalent.

“I was chief cook in three Thai restaurants,” said Eduardo Dzib Vargas, listing venues on Potrero Hill, the Embarcadero district and Ghirardelli Square. Back in his hometown, he’s broadened the menu at Limba beyond Thai. “I modified it because there are five or six restaurants with Thai food.”

Like towns across southern Mexico and Central America, migration has changed the face of Oxkutzcab (pronounced OHSH-kootz-CAHB), which lies a three-hour drive south of Merida, Yucatan’s state capital. The ethnic Mayan town has sent thousands of migrants to the San Francisco Bay Area, most of them to work in the food service industry.

[. . .]

The great migrant wave from the state of Yucatan to the United States occurred later than in other parts of Mexico and Central America.

“Between 2000 and 2005, the migration to the U.S. shot up between 400 and 500 percent,” said Angel Basto Blanco, the deputy director of migrant affairs at Indemaya, a state-run agency that assists native Maya.

Some 70,000 Yucatecans reside in the Bay Area, Basto said, with smaller concentrations in and around Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Many speak mainly Mayan, and only passable Spanish.

[LINK] "U.S. immigration crackdown brings gangs, California cuisine to Yucatan"

The News-Observer featured an interesting article by one Tim Johnson examining the consequences of large-scale migration from Mexico's Yucatán peninsula to the United States (specifically to the San Francisco area). All sorts of things have been brought back: money, crime networks, cultural influences.

Wander into Cafe Rex in Oxkutzcab, Mexico, deep in the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, and some odd things pop out on the menu. For one, there’s red curry and other Thai food. It might seem like a culinary aberration, but it isn’t.

Across town at the Limba Restaurant, the menu carries an assortment of dishes from Thailand, created by a chef who spent a decade in kitchens in San Francisco, where Asian food is prevalent.

“I was chief cook in three Thai restaurants,” said Eduardo Dzib Vargas, listing venues on Potrero Hill, the Embarcadero district and Ghirardelli Square. Back in his hometown, he’s broadened the menu at Limba beyond Thai. “I modified it because there are five or six restaurants with Thai food.”

Like towns across southern Mexico and Central America, migration has changed the face of Oxkutzcab (pronounced OHSH-kootz-CAHB), which lies a three-hour drive south of Merida, Yucatan’s state capital. The ethnic Mayan town has sent thousands of migrants to the San Francisco Bay Area, most of them to work in the food service industry.

[. . .]

The great migrant wave from the state of Yucatan to the United States occurred later than in other parts of Mexico and Central America.

“Between 2000 and 2005, the migration to the U.S. shot up between 400 and 500 percent,” said Angel Basto Blanco, the deputy director of migrant affairs at Indemaya, a state-run agency that assists native Maya.

Some 70,000 Yucatecans reside in the Bay Area, Basto said, with smaller concentrations in and around Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Many speak mainly Mayan, and only passable Spanish.

[LINK] "Being gay in Pakistan: Where anti-gay serial killers are applauded"

Via Towleroad I came across Naila Inayat's Global Post article talking about the issues facing non-heterosexuals in Pakistan. They're severe, existential even.

Sitting at a coffee shop in a posh Lahore neighborhood, two young men hold a heated debate over the serial killer caught killing gay men in their city last month.

“Gay rights are human rights,” says one, arguing that gays have the right to live openly here. This is Pakistan, the other countered. “It is best to let these things stay unsaid, and underground – it's not okay in this society.” It’s a debate so fundamental that it might, at this point, sound hackneyed to a Western audience — yet in Pakistan it’s rare to hear such openness even in a private discussion.

In late April, a young man named Muhammed Ejaz confessed to killing three gay men over the past two months because he wanted to send a warning about the “evils” of homosexuality.

The 28-year-old paramedic from Lahore said he had lured his victims through a gay social networking site manjam.com and killed them following a sexual encounter in their own homes.

Ejaz, a father of two, said his hatred against gays springs from his being abused by an older man when he was 10.

“I have hated them ever since that happened to me," he said in an interview from his prison cell aired on Samaa TV. "By killing these men, I wanted to warn them to stay away from this evil of homosexuality.”

In Pakistan, where homosexuality is illegal, these killings have set off panic in the already closeted gay community.

"I deactivated my account initially after the news of the killing broke on social media because I was scared that the killer Ejaz will be portrayed as a hero locally," says 31-year-old Amir Shah from Lahore, who belongs to the popular manjam.com site. "You’ll find many people who would buy into his philosophy that homosexuality is an evil.”

Gay people in Pakistan can’t go to gay clubs: They don’t exist. Many say the internet was the best thing that ever happened to the community — until now.

[LINK] "Visa, MasterCard Weigh Russia Exit as Ukraine Vote Looms"

Bloomberg's Elizabeth Dexheimer reports on the possibility that Visa and Mastercard might effectively be forced out of Russia by proposed new banking regulations prohibiting either from blocking transactions to groups named under sanctions. The symbolism of this would be noteworthy.

Visa Inc. (V) and MasterCard Inc. (MA) have about six weeks to decide whether a new Russian law requiring them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to operate in that country is worth the cost. For now, Visa’s answer is nyet.

Russia’s current demands “just go beyond what we’d be willing to do,” Visa Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf said yesterday at an investor conference in Boston. “I would hope that we get to a different conclusion than to get to July 1 and just say we’re not willing to participate.”

Scharf and MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga said yesterday they’re talking with Russian lawmakers about making changes to the legislation, passed in response to sanctions the U.S. imposed to protest the Russian role in Ukraine’s turmoil. At stake is about $403 million in combined annual revenue for the two payments networks as well as their foothold in a market that’s shifting from cash to electronic forms of payment. U.S. threats of even more sanctions ahead of next week’s Ukrainian presidential elections loom over the discussions.

“They’ve got three options -- do we stay, can we leave or can we negotiate?” William Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., said in a phone interview. “If additional sanctions are introduced after the Ukraine elections, then it’s less likely that the Russian government will back down.”

[. . .]

Should the two companies completely withdraw, the biggest effect would be on the 15 percent of Russia’s population who regularly travel abroad, Aslund said. The firms’ decisions will be closely watched by all U.S. companies that do business in Russia, Pomeranz said.

“What happens to them will be a signal of what’s ahead,” Pomeranz said. “If Visa and MasterCard can’t work there, who is going to be able to work in Russia?”