[PHOTO] Into the pit of 11 Wellesley Street West

11 Wellesley Street West will rise, but first a deep pit must be dug.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Dangerous Minds looks at the oddly sexual imagery of zeppelins entering their births.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a paper looking at ways to detect Earth-like exomoons.


• Imageo notes unusual melting of the Greenland icecap.


• Language Log shares an extended argument against Chinese characters.


• The Map Room Blog notes the hundredth anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement to partition the Ottoman Empire.


• The NYRB Daily notes authoritarianism in Uganda.


• Noel Maurer looks at the problem with San Francisco's real estate markets.


• Towleroad follows RuPaul's argument that drag can never be mainstreamed, by its very nature.


• Window on Eurasia notes that a flourishing Ukraine will not be itself restore the Donbas republics to it.

[NEWS] Some Tuesday links

• Business Insider looks at the sad state of a project to build a Chinese bullet train in Venezuela.


• Bloomberg notes the profound unconstitutionality of Donald Trump's suggestion that the US national debt might be renounced, looks at the needs of the Brazilian economy, and suggests Poland's economic nationalism is viable.


• CBC reports that Sinéad O'Connor is safe in Chicago.


• National Geographic shares hidden pictures of the Cultural Revolution.


• The National Post notes the discovery of what might be the ruins of an old fort at Lunenburg.


• Open Democracy suggests that Brexit, by separating the City of London from the European Union, could trigger the end of globalization, also taking a look at the popularity of populism.


• Reuters notes the softening of the terms of a Chinese-Venezuelan loan arrangement.


• The Washington Post notes the migration of some Ethiopian-Americans to a booming Ethiopia.


• Wired looks at how natural gas will be used to move beyond the Haber-Bosch process which has created fertilizer for a century.

[URBAN NOTE] On the defense of James Forcillo against imprisonment made by his wife

I understand this argument coming from Forcillo's wife. It's really only when it comes from other people--the police, say--that I get upset. The National Post carries Diane Mehta's Canadian Press article on the subject.

The wife of a Toronto police officer found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting death of a troubled teen says her husband doesn’t deserve to go to jail because he isn’t a risk to society.

Irina Forcillo has made her plea to Justice Edward Then in a letter submitted as part of Const. James Forcillo’s sentencing hearing, which is to hear lawyers from Crown and defence lawyers on Wednesday.

“I do not see how James can ever be in jail. He is not a danger to the public, I assure you of that!” the mother of two wrote. “In fact, he is the one whose purpose has always been to protect.”

[. . .]

Forcillo’s lawyers have since filed a constitutional challenge to the mandatory minimum sentence of four or five years the officer faces, asking a court to consider a sentence of house arrest for the man rather than time in prison.

[. . .]

They argue that Forcillo was duty-bound to protect the public from a knife-wielding Yatim, trained to draw his gun and had been found to be justified in killing Yatim.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto laneway to be turned into community garden"

Derek Flack's blogTO report is fascinating. I will definitely be doing an expedition out to the Milky Way.

Running just south of Queen St. to the west of Dufferin, Milky Way is one of those Toronto laneways worth writing a love letter about. There's excellent graffiti, people regularly use it as a quieter alternative to walking/riding on Queen, and over the years various art spaces have called the place home.

Now, the laneway could also be home to an urban garden. The Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust (PNLT) & Greenest City have joined forces to acquire the space at 87 Milky Way in an effort to set up a community garden here. The two groups are launching a fundraising campaign later this week for part of the sum required to take possession of the land.

[URBAN NOTE] "How to Fight Against the Devastating Emerald Ash Borer"

Torontoist's Ryan O'Connor reports on terrible ecological news for Toronto.

The emerald ash borer is an invasive species of beetles first spotted in North America in 2002. Since then the metallic-green insect has destroyed tens of millions of ash trees across the continent. When it was detected in Toronto in 2007, its devastating effects were widely known. Simply put, once the emerald ash borer takes root in a locale, it is nearly impossible to stop its spread, and the subsequent destruction of the entire ash tree population.

According to a study undertaken by the City of Toronto’s Urban Forestry department, there were 860,000 ash trees at the time of the infestation, with approximately 40 per cent located on public land. The City implemented a mitigation and replacement strategy to limit the damage, including planting new trees and using an injection to protect existing ash trees. The injections, which use the insecticide TreeAzin, manage to protect the trees from the emerald ash borer, but must be reapplied on an annual basis. As of the end of 2015, there were 11,479 trees located on public lands that had received these life-sustaining injections, while 48,400 ash trees have been removed by Urban Forestry. Although there are no firm figures available for ash trees located on private property, Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park), Council’s tree advocate, estimates that just 300,000 remain in the city. This number will continue to dwindle, with all but the injected ash expected to be dead by 2020.

[URBAN NOTE] On the pop-up shop of Justin Bieber, in Toronto and elsewhere

When I saw Bianca Venerayan's blogTO post pop up on my RSS feed, I knew I'd be going to see this.

Justin Bieber just announced via Facebook that his merchandise will be sold at Nomad (819 Queen St W) this Wednesday and Thursday (May 18 - 19) from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Designed by Jerry Lorenzo of menswear label Fear of God, the Purpose tour merch will be available to those willing to wait in a round-the-corner line up (undoubtedly forming as you read this). A variety of exclusive Toronto gear and Nomad collaboration pieces will also be up for grabs.

A Vogue.com interview, "Talking Justin Bieber’s VFiles Pop-Up Shop With Designer Jerry Lorenzo" by Steff Yotka, goes into more detail about the idea behind the shop.

Jerry Lorenzo, the Purpose tour merch designer and Fear of God founder, was inside the shop, mingling with fans and thumbing the racks. “[The pop-ups are] a way for the artist to take that experience from the show and provide it to some other kids that possibly couldn’t get tickets to the show or weren’t able to make the show in certain cities,” Lorenzo told Vogue.com. “It’s just another touch point for the artist. It’s another place for the fans to come and congregate and talk and vibe. It’s just proven to be really successful. It was a model that, with what we’re doing with Justin, we felt like was necessary to follow.”

From the looks of the lines, the shop will prove to be successful for Bieber, too. When Vogue.com toured the interior, fans were piling hoodies and long-sleeve tees onto their arms in droves. Among the most popular styles were a black long-sleeve tee with Bieber’s face on the back, a beige-y T-shirt with “My Mama Don’t Like You” written down the back, and the electric yellow hoodie made in collaboration with VFiles that reads “Security” on the front. On the whole, the pieces bent toward the hard-core—perhaps a new style note for some of Bieber’s younger fans, but one they seem keen to test out. “It’s all Justin’s vision. It’s his idea, it’s his direction,” Lorenzo said, explaining that the singer was inspired by the brands he wears and his hobbies outside of music. “What he’s doing with his life when he’s not performing is skating. He wanted it to have this ’90s skate feel, and he’s super into all these vintage tees, so he wanted it to have this timeless, vintage, ’90s metal touch to it. I got this metal artist, Mark Riddick, who’s one of the best in coming up with logos and full-on art, and we worked hand in hand in coming up with some ideas. The design team from Bravado had their ideas, and I kind of just sat back and put the pieces together and made sure that it kind of was the same language in the end.”

[URBAN NOTE] On the tragedy in Rexdale, and its origins and consequences in the Fords

This news has made national headlines, and for good reason.

Candice Rochelle Bobb, 35, of Malton, was in the back seat of a car near John Garland Boulevard and Jamestown Crescent in suburban Rexdale when someone in a vehicle driving in the opposite direction started shooting, striking the pregnant woman, according to Homicide Det.-Sgt. Mike Carbone, who provided an update Monday morning.

"For some reason, only known to the offender at this point, that vehicle was certainly targeted," said Carbone about the vehicle that Bobb was sitting in.

The three other people with Bobb were not hurt and Bobb, was driven to Etobicoke General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead and the baby was delivered. After the delivery, the baby was transported to the trauma centre at Sunnybrook hospital.

The baby is now in stable condition, according to Carbone, who would not reveal any further details on the child, including sex.

There have been calls from religious and political figures, local and otherwise, to deal with gun violence. The neighbourhood of Rexdale, a neighbourhood in northern Etobicoke and in the northwest of the amalgamated City of Toronto, has long had a reputation for random gun violence as well as high rates of crime and poverty, at least by Canadian standards.

It's also worth noting that Rexdale includes the Ward 2 where Rob Ford built his political career. He was reelected here repeatedly, up to the 2014 election. His famous drunken rant in a restaurant occurred in Rexdale.

"New Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Drunk, Swearing in Jamaican Patois? Bumbaclot" (Watch on YouTube)

Why? Simply put, Ford's populist stance appealed strongly to people who felt, mostly rightly, that they were marginalized in a larger city driven by downtown concerns. Jeet Heer's 2014 Toronto Life "Rexdale isn’t perfect, but I prefer it to the hypocrisy of downtown" does a great job of explaining this alienation and how the Ford family exploited this alienation.

Because of Ford’s antics, Rexdale has become a major journalistic stomping ground. Although newspapers like the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail have done a top-notch job of exposing Ford’s many nefarious deeds and habitual mendacity, I’m appalled by the way they’ve depicted Ford’s milieu. Journalistic accounts of Rexdale are written in the same tone of anxious amazement as ­Victorian explorers’ reports from Africa. The National Post once described Rexdale as “blighted and violence-plagued,” and on another occasion alluded to “the wilds of Islamic Rexdale.” The Globe’s publisher has said his newspaper is only interested in readers who make more than $100,000 a year, which by implication means his paper isn’t for the cab drivers and factory workers who live in Rexdale.

Despite his buffoonery, Rob Ford’s political prowess should never be under­estimated. He doesn’t reflexively look down on Rexdale. He knows his way around it all too well. Ford once promised to make “Rexdale the new Rosedale.” This typical Fordian flourish earned him many a snide laugh in downtown Toronto yet endeared him to his core constituency. He might be promising the stars, but at least he takes Rexdale seriously. Ford’s right-wing populism derives its power from understanding the aspirations of Rexdalers for projects like the expansion of ­Woodbine Racetrack into a shopping and casino complex. Although the billion-dollar project fell apart, Ford’s efforts on its behalf earned him street cred. What do Ford’s opponents have to offer Rexdale, aside from austerity and condescension?

Alienation, combined with suffering, produces anti-establishment figures. Who knew?

[ISL] On how old Rapa Nui ended, not through indigenous ecocide but foreign genocide

Easter Island, easternmost outpost of Polynesia, has long been of at least passing interest to me. Even before Jared Diamond had presented a story of the island culture's eventual decine through environmental exploitation as a warning for our times in the mid-1990s, I had been interested in the island for its cultural achievements. There were the famous moai statues, depicted in the books I read as a child as liberally scattered across the island, but there was also the mysterious rongorongo, something that might be a script but was currently undecipherable. What mysteries did the island hide?



Aurbina's photo in the Wikimedia Commons, "Moai set in the hillside at Rano Raraku", is superb.

Diamond's narrative was simple.

Eventually Easter’s growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating. The people used the land for gardens and the wood for fuel, canoes, and houses--and, of course, for lugging statues. As forest disappeared, the islanders ran out of timber and rope to transport and erect their statues. Life became more uncomfortable-- springs and streams dried up, and wood was no longer available for fires.

People also found it harder to fill their stomachs, as land birds, large sea snails, and many seabirds disappeared. Because timber for building seagoing canoes vanished, fish catches declined and porpoises disappeared from the table. Crop yields also declined, since deforestation allowed the soil to be eroded by rain and wind, dried by the sun, and its nutrients to be leeched from it. Intensified chicken production and cannibalism replaced only part of all those lost foods. Preserved statuettes with sunken cheeks and visible ribs suggest that people were starving.

With the disappearance of food surpluses, Easter Island could no longer feed the chiefs, bureaucrats, and priests who had kept a complex society running. Surviving islanders described to early European visitors how local chaos replaced centralized government and a warrior class took over from the hereditary chiefs. The stone points of spears and daggers, made by the warriors during their heyday in the 1600s and 1700s, still litter the ground of Easter today. By around 1700, the population began to crash toward between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number. People took to living in caves for protection against their enemies. Around 1770 rival clans started to topple each other’s statues, breaking the heads off. By 1864 the last statue had been thrown down and desecrated.

The problem with this story, I began learning a few years ago, is that it isn't true. The bulk of ecological damage to the island was, two archaeologists argued, a consequence of the accidental importation of the Polynesian rat, compromising native ecosystems. The Rapa Nui of the island ended up coping quite well, as described in 2013 at NPR.

For one thing, they could eat rats. As J.B. MacKinnon reports in his new book, The Once and Future World, archeologists examined ancient garbage heaps on Easter Island looking for discarded bones and found "that 60 percent of the bones came from introduced rats."

So they'd found a meat substitute.

What's more, though the island hadn't much water and its soil wasn't rich, the islanders took stones, broke them into bits, and scattered them onto open fields creating an uneven surface. When wind blew in off the sea, the bumpy rocks produced more turbulent airflow, "releasing mineral nutrients in the rock," J.B. MacKinnon says, which gave the soil just enough of a nutrient boost to support basic vegetables. One tenth of the island had these scattered rock "gardens," and they produced enough food, "to sustain a population density similar to places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden and New Zealand today."

According to MacKinnon, scientists say that Easter Island skeletons from that time show "less malnutrition than people in Europe." When a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggevin, happened by in 1722, he wrote that islanders didn't ask for food. They wanted European hats instead. And, of course, starving folks typically don't have the time or energy to carve and shove 70-ton statues around their island.

[. . .]

Because, say the Hawaiian anthropologists, clans and families on Easter Island didn't fall apart. It's true, the island became desolate, emptier. The ecosystem was severely compromised. And yet, say the anthropologists, Easter Islanders didn't disappear. They adjusted. They had no lumber to build canoes to go deep-sea fishing. They had fewer birds to hunt. They didn't have coconuts. But they kept going on rat meat and small helpings of vegetables. They made do.

Discover's Collide-a-scape took a look in 2014 at the shift in the consensus away from a long history of decline. Estimates of ancient population sizes have been found to be overlarge, for instance. The Rapa Nui seem to have been good custodians of their island. The newest studies seem to confirm this.

What ended a civilization that built so many impressive stone statues and even managed to develop what might have been a writing system? The statues were no longer being built when the Chileans came, nor was knowledge of rongorongo passed on. What happened to the Rapa Nui? Not ecocide, as Diamond's scenario implies, but genocide.



The above Wikimedia Commons picture shows Side b of Rongorongo Text R, one of the few rongorongo texts to survive. I saw them myself in a 2001-2002 exhibition at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Splendid Isolation: The Art of Easter Island. The catalogue, happily, is available in PDF format here. Texts R and S were there on loan from the Smithsonian, along with a few dozen artifacts of pre-contact Rapa Nui society. This society did not survive, it turns out, because it was actively destroyed as a consequence of genocidal acts. Wikipedia's dry summary leaves my head spinning at the scale of the catastrophe.

In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island's population. International protests erupted, escalated by Bishop Florentin-Étienne Jaussen of Tahiti. The slaves were finally freed in autumn, 1863, but by then most of them had already died of tuberculosis, smallpox and dysentery. Finally, a dozen islanders managed to return from the horrors of Peru, but brought with them smallpox and started an epidemic, which reduced the island's population to the point where some of the dead were not even buried.

Little wonder, as I noted in my review of Andrew Robinson's Lost Languages, that the few survivors of Easter Island by the end of the 1860s had abandoned much of their traditional culture. For all its brilliance, all its accomplishments and knowledge, it had clearly failed to save the Rapa Nui from catastrophe. That conscious rejection made far more sense to me than Diamond's narrative of decline.

Savage Minds noted in 2005 that researchrs were challenging the integrity of Diamond's historical research. Sitting here in 2016, knowing what I know about how the depopulation of any number of colonized populations by disease and the extension of foreign rule and how this depopulation has been used to justify the very colonization, I wonder about the potential misuses of Diamond's apparent misinterpretation of the island's historical trajectory. Is his model of an imagined Easter Island as a metaphor for the Earth and its risks even usable?