• This Ryan Diduck article at CultMTL taking a look at the MUTEK electronic music festival and Never Apart, evoking what I suppose might be called midtown Montréal, is wonderfully evocative.


• The mayor of Québec City wants to increase immigration to his metropolis, the better to deal with labour shortages. CBC reports.


• Guardian Cities takes a look at the famously Italianate 1930s capital of Eritrea, Asmara. What future does it face as the country opens up?


• Guardian Cities reports on how lethal being a graffiti artist can be in São Paulo.


• This Dara Bramson article at Protocols sharing a first-hand perspective on the revival of Jewish life in Krakow is beautiful.

• Antipope's Charlie Stross worries about the literal survival of Britons in the post-Brexit United Kingdom.


• D-Brief notes the discovery of an ancient corpse in China shrouded in cannabis.


• Dangerous Minds reports on a 1971 BBC documentary about New York City starring a pre-stardom Patti Smith.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a study mapping the changing clouds of the twin brown dwarfs of Luhman 16.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on drops in atmospheric oxygen over the past hundred thousand years.


• Language Hat reports on Italy's many dialects and their uses.


• Language Log engages with Trump's non-apology.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at Ted Cruz's despair.


• The LRB Blog looks at the classic architecture of Eritrea's capital, Asmara.


• The Map Room Blog looks at Karen Margolis' art maps.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer continues to look at the Colombian referendum and notes on the difficulties of enabling the rule of law in Mexico.


• Peter Rukavina remembers Prince Edward Island's Teachernet.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a provocative argument about Russia's demographic past and its lop-sided urbanization.

There is no war in Eritrea, and little civil unrest. Yet refugees from this small country on the Horn of Africa make up the fourth-largest group — after Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis — crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

The main cause of the exodus is the huge number of young people fleeing indefinite national service. Despite claims by officials that conscription would be limited to 18 months, a report published Wednesday by Amnesty International found that national service continues to be indefinite, sometimes lasting for decades. Conscripts include boys and girls as young as 16 as well as the elderly, and the program often amounts to forced labour.

The Eritrean government has cited aggression and the threat of invasion from its neighbour Ethiopia — from which it became independent after a referendum in 1993 following a 30-year war of independence — as the key justification for national service. The two countries were at war from 1998-2000. The Eritrean government adopted a law in 1995 that requires every adult Eritrean to undertake an 18-month period of national service.

More than 5,000 Eritreans are fleeing their homes every month, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

The sense of outrage, loathing and emotional tumult displayed by people in Canada who have direct or indirect U.S. connections reverberates on at least three major websites devoted to the battle against the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, best known as FATCA.

Americans in Canada have written about experiencing emotional breakdowns, marital discord, depression and alcohol dependence on FATCA-protest websites such as The Isaac Brock Society, Maple Sandbox and the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty. Using pseudonyms, they have called Uncle Sam a "global bully," an "oligarchy" and a "desperate fading empire."

Their fury has been heating up since July 1, when the Canadian government brought into effect a complex agreement with the U.S. that requires roughly a million people in Canada who are considered "U.S. persons" to file U.S. income tax statements — or face severe penalties. While many Americans in Canada will not be out of pocket because of FATCA, many will be hit with extra costs, including capital gains on the sale of their Canadian homes.

Upset with what they see as the Conservative government caving into pressure from the U.S. government in its global quest to root out tax "cheats", a group of Canadian citizens this week launched a lawsuit in Federal Court alleging the legislation is unconstitutional.

Two Ontario women with roots in the U.S. — Gwen Deegan of Toronto and Ginny Hillis of Windsor — took the risk of attaching their name to the lawsuit, which was sponsored in part by the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty and is being spearheaded by noted Vancouver constitutional lawyer Joe Arvay.

Deegan, who moved to Canada when she was five years old and has never had a U.S. passport, called Canada's complicity with FATCA "a literal betrayal." She maintained the country in which she was born, but has no meaningful ties, is "plundering" her retirement savings with an "absurd law."

One Metro Vancouver man has also come forward with how appalled he is by the behaviour of the U.S. and Canadian governments, even though he's not a signatory to the lawsuit. James Hamilton, a 55-year-old BC Hydro engineer who lives with his family in Coquitlam, joins many in demanding to know how the U.S. can get away with being the only major country in the world that taxes people based on citizenship, not residency. Hamilton believes the U.S. is engaged in "a big money grab" since its inadequate banking regulations helped throw the world into a financial crisis in 2008.

More than 100 dissident soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information in the small East African nation of Eritrea on Monday and read a statement on state TV saying the country’s 1997 constitution would be put into force, two Eritrea experts said.

The soldiers held all of the ministry workers — including the daughter of the president — in a single room, said Leonard Vincent, author of the book “The Eritreans” and co-founder of a Paris-based Eritrean radio station.

The soldiers’ broadcast on state TV said the country’s 1997 constitution would be reinstated and all political prisoners freed, but the broadcast was cut off after only two sentences were read and the signal has been off air the rest of the day, Vincent said.

By late afternoon there were indications the soldiers’ attempt would fail. A military tank sat in front of the Ministry of Information but the streets of the capital, Asmara, were quiet, and no shots had been fired, said a Western diplomat in Eritrea who wasn’t authorized to be identified by name.

Vincent stopped short of calling it a coup d’etat and said it wasn’t immediately clear if the action was a well-organized coup attempt or what he called a “kamikaze crash.”

Later Monday government soldiers surrounded the ministry, an indication the action by the dissident soldiers had failed, said Martin Plaut, a fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Britain.

“It looks like it’s an isolated attempt by some soldiers who are completely frustrated by what is going on. But it wasn’t done in a co-ordinated manner,” Plaut said.

“They did seize the television station, they did manage to put this broadcast out, but the government is still functioning calmly. There is nothing on the streets.”

Proud and stoic, a private woman, Nighisti Semret didn’t want people knowing where and how she lived.

Now, sadly, everybody knows where and how she died.

A makeshift flower memorial — forlorn urban ritual for violent loss in modern times — marks the spot where the 55-year-old refugee from Eritrea was brutally slain early Tuesday, a gloomy, wet morning.

The attack was frenzied and seemingly random, Semret’s assailant shadowing her footsteps, striking suddenly from behind, repeatedly plunging the knife. Dropped it, picked it up again, fended off a couple of Good Samaritan wranglers who tried to seize him, and fled.

Semret never saw any of it coming, likely didn’t even hear menace approaching as she walked homeward, umbrella lifted over her head. She’d just finished her overnight shift as a cleaning supervisor at the Delta Chelsea Hotel. No doubt she was tired and anxious to get out of the wet, back to her cramped 12-by-12 bolt-hole at a city-run women’s rooming house on Winchester St., with its shared kitchen and bath down the hall. Home and safety were just 100 metres away.

[. . .]

Yet it was a better life than the one Semret had known in Eritrea, and vastly improved from the homeless, friendless existence of two and a half years ago, when she first arrived in Toronto.

"The first thing I observed here is this community is divided in two," [Berhane] said. "Some are supporters of Eritrean government; others are opposed.

"Regardless, the challenges they face here are huge and yet they spend their time discussing Eritrean politics. Their children drop out of school. The divorce rate is high. And they don't change their lives.

"Once they start working in odd jobs, they end up doing that for the rest of their lives. They don't try to improve their lives. They just discuss Eritrean politics and what should be done and they don't contribute here at all."

[. . .]

When he arrived in Toronto he got a job as a security guard. Then Berhane, who has a degree in mass communication from the University of Asmara, won a scholarship to the Journalist at Risk program at Massey College. He studied Canadian society, the economy and politics in order to understand his new home. The following year, he got a job as a PEN lecturer at George Brown College. He launched Meftih – which means "key" in Eritrean – in September 2004. It has a circulation of about 6,000.

Some of the recent issues he has looked at include allegations of mismanagement of funds by an Eritrean community association. But he tries to keep his coverage of local issues only.

"We say: `You're in Canada. Understand how the system works. If you understand how the system works you can start to help yourself and your children.'"