A Bit More Detail

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.


• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.


• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)


• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick's Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.


• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I'm skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city's population is of Muslim background.


• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
  
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I'm inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.


• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.


• Finally, at the Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares Johannes Kroeger's image of the median Earth.


• The Crux considers when human societies began to accumulate large numbers of aged people. Would there have been octogenarians in any Stone Age cultures, for instance?


• The Dragon's Tales considers Russia's strategy in Southeast Asia.


• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes that one way to fight against fake news is for people to broaden their friends networks beyond their ideological sympathizers.


• Language Log, noting a television clip from Algeria in which a person defend their native dialect versus standard Arabic, compares the language situation in the Arab world to that of China.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen explains how the Tervuren Central African museum in Brussels has not been decolonized.


• The Planetary Society Blog explores the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why, in current physics, the multiverse must exist.


• Strange Company explores the strange disappearance, in the Arizona desert in 1952, of a young couple. Their plane was found and in perfect condition, but what happened to them?


• Strange Maps reports on the tragic migration of six Californian raptors, only one of which managed to make it to its destination.


• Towleroad reports on the appearance of actor and singer Ben Platt on The Ellen Show, talking about his career and coming out.


• Window on Eurasia notes the apparently widespread mutual dislike of Chechens and Muscovites.


• Arnold Zwicky considers the French Impressionist artists Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Suzanne Valadon, with images of their art.

• Guardian Cities notes how the German hub of Duisburg is taking on an outsized role as a linchpin in China's overseas trade.


• The SCMP reports on the terrible level of poverty, and income inequality generally, in a Macau that is one of the richest cities in the world.


• This VICE report examining how people of normal, never mind modest, incomes can afford to live in the San Francisco area is eye-opening.


• Guardian Cities reports on the new street names being given to routes in the Belgian capital of Brussels.


• This Cyberpresse report on the transit ambitions of the municipalities of the Rive-Sud, the South Shore of Montréal, reminds me of discussions about GTA transit.

• blogTO recommends some Toronto-related Vine clips.


• Centauri Dreams notes a SETI study of Boyajian's Star.


• Crooked Timber criticizes one author's take in the politics of science fiction.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the auroras of hot Jupiters.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper finding that atmospheric methane did not warm the early Earth.


• Joe. My. God. reports on how a Scottish hotel owner's homophobic statements led to his inn's delisting.


• Language Log links to a linguist trying to preserve dying languages.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Nate Silver's polling and prediction methods.


• The LRB Blog notes the background behind Wallonia's near-veto of Canada-EU free trade.


• Marginal Revolution looks at how economic issues do not correlate with support for Trump.


• The Planetary Society Weblog shares photos of the Schiaparelli crash site.


• pollotenchegg notes the degree to which economic activity in Ukraine is centralized in Kyiv.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes a poll suggesting conservative views are unwelcome at Yale.


• Both Window on Eurasia and the Russian Demographics Blog note a projection that Chinese will soon become the second-largest nationality in Russia.

• Antipope's Charlie Stross considers the question of how to build durable space colonies.


• blogTO notes that the musical Hamilton might be coming to Toronto.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that European populations are descended from Anatolian farmers, not local hunter0-gatherers.


• Far Outliers notes the plight of Czech and Slovak migrants in Russia following the outbreak of the First World War.


• Language Log looks at new programs to promote the learning of Cantonese, outside of China proper.


• Towleroad notes the sad story of a Belgian man who wants euthanasia because he's ashamed of being gay.


• The Financial Times' The World worries about the possible spread of illiberal democracy to Croatia.

• D-Brief looks at a study of the Jomon of prehistoric Japan, noting low levels of violence.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the sociological complexities of effective policing and crime.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas reports on the many good things in his life, personal and professional.


• Language Hat considers the origins of the Chinese name for Rome and links to a map of Native American languages.


• Language Log tracks down the origins of a Japanese sign barring Russian visitors.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the unemployed white working class and looks at American anti-urbanism in the 20th century.


• Marginal Revolution notes the poor prospects of immigrants in Belgium on the job market.


• Zero Geography reports on the importance of understanding the deep background to big data and the cloud.

When the family of Abdelhamid Abaaoud received word from Syria last fall that he had been killed fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant it rejoiced at what it took to be excellent news about a wayward son it had come to despise.

“We are praying that Abdelhamid really is dead,” his older sister, Yasmina, said at the time.

Their prayers — and the hopes of Western security officials — were not answered. Abaaoud, then 26, was in reality on his way back to Europe to meet secretly with Islamic extremists who shared his determination to spread mayhem. He has since been linked to a string of terrorist operations that culminated with Friday’s attacks in Paris.

Militant photo via APThis undated image made available in the Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq, shows Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud. .

“Of course, it is not joyous to make blood flow. But, from time to time, it is pleasant to see the blood of disbelievers,” Abaaoud declared in a French-language recruiting video for the ISIL released shortly before his supposed death.

During his travels back to Europe at the end of last year, European security services picked up his trail and tracked his cellphone to Athens, Greece, according to a retired European military official. But they lost him, and soon after that he appeared to have made it back to Belgium, where he had grown up in a moderately successful family from Morocco.

If the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant preaches the truth, why do most Muslims oppose it? “Because most Muslims go to hell,” answered the young man wearing a black hoodie adorned with a Kalashnikov and ISIL’s logo. “The hadith are clear. For every 1,000 [Muslims], 999 will enter hellfire.”

Michael “Younes” Delefortrie, 26, a former Catholic altar boy from a diverse Antwerp suburb, was convicted last month of belonging to a terrorist organization in a trial of 46 members of Sharia4Belgium, a group accused of recruiting young Belgians to fight in Syria. Sentenced to three years of probation and under continued monitoring by the authorities, he sits nervously in a booth at a diner once frequented by the group.

He was answering questions from Palestinian researcher Montasser AlDe’emeh, who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan and is studying ways of countering the appeal of extreme ideologies to at-risk youth. AlDe’emeh said he believes that exposure to a more sophisticated study of Islam can help some of those recruited by armed groups rethink their fanatical views. He engaged Delefortrie, who adheres to ISIL’s interpretation of Sharia, in a spirited theological discussion on his harsh view of other Muslims — even citing the criticisms of ISIL by Al-Qaeda-associated ideologues.

Delefortrie stayed in Aleppo, Syria, for about five weeks, according to court papers, and while there he posed for photographs with weapons and posted them on his Facebook page, where he named as his employers Jabhat Al-Nusra (the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise) and “Revolusi [revolution] Dawlah Al-Islamiah [ISIL].” He said he told the court he returned to Belgium because he missed his wife and two children. Court documents noted that as a converted Muslim, he likely didn't enjoy much trust among the Syrian rebels.

[. . .]

About 470 Belgians are estimated to be fighting in Syria — the most per capita of any Western European country, according to data compiled by Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian researcher. The extraordinarily high concentration of recruits to ISIL and other violent groups has put the country in the international spotlight, leaving policymakers searching for a strategy to combat extremism.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton photographs a small-town Ontario vestige of the now-defunct Zellers retail chain.


• Crooked Timber's Ingrid Robeyns writes about the new kings of the Netherlands and Belgium.


• Will Baird at The Dragon's Tales has a few links to interesting papers up: one describes circumstellar habitable zones for subsurface biospheres like those images on Mars; one argues that Earth-like planets orbiting small, dim red dwarfs might see their water slowly migrate to the night side; another suggests that on these same red dwarf-orbiting Earth-like worlds, the redder frequency of light will mean that ice will absorb rather than reflect radiation and so prevent runaway glaciation.


• Eastern Approaches reflected on the Second World War-era massacres of Poles by Ukrainians in the Volyn region.


• Geocurrents examined the boom in export agriculture in coastal Peru and the growing popularity of the xenophobic right in modern Europe for a variety of reasons.


• GNXP argues that language is useful as a market of identity and that the term "Caucasian" as used to refer to human populations is meaningless.


• Itching in Eestimaa's Palun argues that, given Soviet-era relocations of population into the Baltic States, much emigration might just be a matter of the population falling to levels that local economies can support.


• Language Log has a series of posts examining loan words to and from East Asian languages: Chinese loans in English (too few?), English loans in Japanese (too many?), Japanese loans in English (quite a lot).


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer argues that not only is the United States not trying to prolong the Syrian civil war, but that the United States should not arm them for the States' own good. (Agreed.)


• Registan's Matthew Kupfer approves of the selection of Dzhohar Tsarnaev's photo on the front page of Rolling Stone as being useful in deconstructing myths that he, and terrorism, are foreign.


• Savage Minds considers how classic Star Trek seems out of date for its faith in an attractive and liveable high modernity.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs examines the concept of the eruv, the fictive boundary used by Orthodox Jews to justify activity on the sabbath.


• Window on Eurasia quotes writers who wonder if Central Asian states might continue to break up and suggest that Tatarstan might have been set for statehood in 1991 and should continue to prepare for future events.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell argues that human bias as expressed in opinion polls is, depressingly, not just a matter of easily-remedied ignorance.

• 80 Beats reports that the drug Truvada failed to protect some participants in a study on HIV infection in Africa from infection as a prophylactic mainly because they weren't taking it.


• Far Outliers quotes from a passage in Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom to the effect that Prussia in the mid-19th century was becoming increasingly diverse, along ethnic and regional lines.


• At the Invisible College, Otto Spejkers refers to a legal dispute between Belgium and Senegal before the International Court of Justice over Senegal's failure to extradite Hissène Habré, former dictator of Chad. Inadequate national legislation (i.e. a failure in Senegalese law to require the extradition of non-citizens accused of crimes against humanity) is no excuse if international covenants also exist, it's argued.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis is quite right to argue that "the major problem with Hugo Chavez is that he is full of shit".


• Is Kazakhstan's denuclearization after the Soviet Union's end a model for Iran? Quite possibly, Registan argues.


• Kyle Bachan at Torontoist interviews the owner of the Silver Snail, a venerable comic book store set to leave its Queen West location after 36 years.


• Torontoist's Rachel Lissner reports on an effort in east-end Toronto to learn lessons in urban revitalization from the Australian city of Newcastle, in New South Wales.


• Towleroad reports on the launching of a concrete project to clone the woolly mammoth.


• At the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin points out that although the Galactic Empire of Star Wars fame may have had famously unpragmatic leadership styles (and failings!), these principles suited an aggressive totalitarian state perfectly. Who said that the Galactic Empire was supposed to be a rational-bureaucratic society?