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Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!


  • 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.

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  • Police in Hamilton explain why unauthorized marijuana shops are not easy to shut down. Theirs is a city of laws. Global News reports.

  • The small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour has lost its only grocery store, presaging perhaps a future of decline. Global News reports.

  • New York City is getting congestions pricing for traffic setting a precedent for other cities. VICE reports.

  • Roads and Kingdoms is providing some tips to the Australian surfing resort of Byron Bay.

  • Bloomberg notes the plight of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit.

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  • Mark McNeil at the Hamilton Spectator notes that real estate prices in Hamilton, often thought of as Toronto's less expensive bedroom community, are also rising very quickly.

  • The VICE article takes a look at the man who created Detroit's African Bead Museum.

  • The former red-light district of Luxembourg City is also maneuvering to take advantage of the post-Brexit resettlement of Europeans financiers. Bloomberg reports.

  • Architectuul looks at how architects in Lisbon are trying to take advantage of their changing city, to help make it more accessible to all.

  • The Guardian has a photo essay focusing on Comrat, a decidedly Soviet-influenced city that is the capital of the autonomous region of Gagauzia, in Moldova.

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  • Matt Williams at Universe Today notes that the discovery, by a team of astronomers based in the Canaries, of J0815+4729, an ancient metal-poor star in the Galactic Halo some 13.5 billion years old.

  • Fraser Cain at Universe Today shares a video making the argument that finding extraterrestrial life would be bad for us, since it would suggest the Great Filter lies in our future.

  • David Schrieberg at Forbes notes early signs that the decision of Luxembourg to market itself as a headquarters for the commercial space industry is paying off.

  • Beth Elderkin at Gizmodo interviews a collection of experts to see if the possibility of uploading a human mind, as depicted in (among others) Altered Carbon, is possible. Most seem to think something is imaginable, actually.

  • At Wired, Stephen Wolfram expands upon a blog post of his to consider what sort of archive, containing what sort of information, might be suitable as a beacon for future extraterrestrial civilizations after we are gone.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the real possibility that extrasolar visitor 'Oumuamua may have been ejected from the system of a dying star.

  • Centauri Dreams notes new efforts to determine brown dwarf demographics.

  • Crooked Timber shares some research on the rise and fall of Keynesianism after the financial crisis.

  • Hornet Stories shares a decidedly NSFW article about gay sex in Berlin.

  • JSTOR Daily notes the surprisingly high frequency of interspecies sex in the wild.

  • Language Hat notes new efforts to promote the status of the Luxembourgish language in the grand duchy.

  • The LRB Blog notes how a chess tournament hosted in Saudi Arabia has failed badly from the PR perspective.

  • What role does the novelist have in a world where the television serial is moving in on the territory of literature? The NYR Daily considers.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw reflects on John Lyons' book Balcony over Jerusalem, the controversy over the book, and the Middle East generally.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the ominous import of the decent drone attack in Syria against Russian forces.

  • Drew Rowsome praises the 2016 play Mustard, currently playing again at the Tarragon, as a modern-day classic.

  • Spacing features a review of a fantastic-sounding book about the architecture of Las Vegas.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the impact of the very rapid rotation of pulsars about their very shape.

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  • Claus Vistesen at Alpha Sources notes that the Italian economy has slipped back into recession.

  • blogTO identifies ten secret things in Toronto.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at gas giants with very unusual, even misaligned, orbits around their local suns.

  • The Dragon's Gaze links to one study on the internal geology of silicon-carbon worlds and to another on the moderating impact of oceans on planetary climates.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes the Indian military buildup in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and links to a study suggesting that even the very early Earth might have been hospitable towards life.

  • Geocurrents features a guest post from Will Rayner pointing out ways in which statistics can lie (Luxembourg looks very wealthy, but this is an artifact of a huge day-commuter workforce coming from outside of its frontiers).

  • Joe. My. God. reports that the Egyptian police seem to be using Grindr to hunt down gay men for arrests.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog notes the ethnographic justification for the Soviet invasion and partition of Poland.

  • Spacing Toronto points to an upcoming photo exhibit showcasing Toronto's tower neighbourhoods.

  • Torontoist reports on the success of urban agriculture as an experiment in New York City.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the deteriorating situation of Crimean Tatars and suggests Russia is preparing to move into the Baltic States.

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  • blogTO lists five classic Toronto signs at risk of disappearing.

  • Centauri Dreams discusses plans for really, really big telescope arrays.

  • The Dragon's Gaze notes that young star HD 169142 appears to be forming both a brown dwarf and its own planetary system.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on the use of a laser by the US Navy to accelerate a projectile to speeds of one thousand kilometres a second.

  • Far Outliers' Joel reports on the last major uprising of the Ainu against the Japanese, in 1789.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a report from some American homophobes claiming that lesbians, owing to their left-wing ideological commitments, are a big threat than gay men.

  • Language Log examines a sign blending Mandarin and Cantonese.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a news report suggesting readers absorb less from online reading than they do from paper.

  • Peter Rukavina maps his travels over the summer.

  • Spacing Toronto notes concerns over the cost of the high-speed rail connection to Pearson airport.

  • Torontoist notes Rob Ford's newest conflict of interest allegations.

  • Towleroad talks about Luxembourg's openly gay prime minister, set to marry his partner.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy notes problems regarding the protection of eagles and religious freedom issues regarding holding eagle feathers for religious reasons.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on claims by activists that Russia must federalize or disintegrate.

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GeoCurrentEvents' Martin Lewis notes how Luxembourg is a success story in multiple ways. For instance, it has successfully forged a national identity distinct from that of its neighbours, including the Germany that was at one point a co-lingual polity.

Unlike Belgium, Luxembourg has been able to generate a fairly solid sense of national identity. This process was helped by the partitions of the formerly multi-lingual Grand Duchy, whose French-speaking areas were annexed by France and Belgium. The German-speaking rump-state sought to culturally differentiate itself from Germany by elevating its own local dialect to a national language after World War II. From a linguistic standpoint, Luxembourgish (Letzeburgesch, locally) is a French-influenced variant of a group of local Germanic dialects known as Moselle Franconian. The boundaries between Germanic dialects do not correspond with national boundaries anywhere in the greater Netherlands, as the 1890 German dialect map posted above shows. Local dialects, however, are in decline, gradually being replaced by national languages. Outside of Luxembourg, Moselle Franconian is yielding to standard German to the east and north and French to the south and west. Inside the country, it is thriving. Due both to its national status and to the fact that speakers of standard German cannot generally understand it, Luxembourgish is now classified as a language rather than a mere dialect.


After noting Luxembourg's status as a tax shelter, Lewis notes how Luxemourg and other microstates are at once vestiges of the feudal past and key components of the post-modern world-system.

Europe’s feudal remnants, incongruous bits of territory that escaped state-building aggregation, are often viewed as quaint anachronisms. But Luxembourg and Lichtenstein can also be viewed as highly important and utterly modern geo-political formations: small places that have leveraged their anomalous sovereignty into lucrative positions in the global financial system. Whether the roles that they have carved out for themselves serve the interests of the world at large is another question.


Go, read.
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  • A BCer in Toronto argues that, given rising tuition, decreasing post-gradauation incomes, and difficult terms, Canada's student loan system is broken.

  • Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster points out, based on some plausible-sounding calculations that the huge amounts of energy needed to launch interstellar probes may well postpone the launch of the first probe to Alpha Centauri--the first to arrive in a reasonable timespan--to the mid-23rd century.

  • City of Brass maps the location of anti-mosque controversies across the United States, observing that the number of mosques actually isn't rising much (6% over 10 years) and that talk of a Muslim takeover is spectacularly premature.

  • At Eastern Approaches, Georgia's wine industry--slowly recovering from post-Soviet collapse--is examined.

  • Far Outliers' Joel remarks about the complicated migration histories of Finnic, Baltic, and Slavic peoples on the Baltic Sea.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how high minimum wages in South Africa contribute to catastrophically high levels of structural unemployment, much to the dismay of many workers.

  • Gideon Rachman takes a look at the discomfort of Luxembourg with the ongoing disputes within the European Union.

  • Slap Upside the Head congratulates some school boards for implementing anti-bullying policies, sometimes against the opposition of parents who presumably think homophobic bullying is OK.

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Paul Wells, writer for Canadian newsmagazine MacLean's, was the first person I read who pointed out that Luxembourg has been asked to solve Francophone Belgians' existential crises should Flanders leave.

The other day a reporter asked the prime minister of Luxembourg whether he'd like to take over most of Belgium if that country should fall apart. Jean-Claude Juncker sounded surprised. He should, because his tiny grand duchy is less than one-sixth the combined size of Belgium's Wallonie and Brussels regions. Taking them over would be like the goldfish swallowing the cat.


The reaction of Luxembourg's prime minister was reported in greater detail by Belgium's Le Vif.

Le Premier ministre luxembourgeois, Jean-Claude Juncker, estime samedi, dans une interview au Soir, que la crise politique risque de faire subir une perte de crédibilité à la Belgique.

"La crédibilité européenne de la Belgique risque d'être mise à néant si on n'arrive pas à faire en sorte que ce pays se ressaisisse", dit Jean-Claude Juncker. Interrogé sur le scénario qui évoquait un rapprochement des Communautés française et germanophone avec le Luxembourg, M. Juncker le trouve étrange. "Le Grand-Duché n'a pas vocation à dépanner une Belgique qui se cherche. Je crois que la réponse à la question belge réside en Belgique", dit M. Juncker. "Sans vouloir interférer dans ce genre de débat belgo-belge, j'ai beaucoup de sympathie pour la réaction de la communauté wallonne et francophone face aux exigences flamandes. Mais il faudra que la Belgique se ressaisisse. Qu'elle donne vers l'extérieur l'image d'un pays le plus uni possible", dit M. Juncker.

Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, said Saturday, in an interview with the
Soir, that the political crisis threatens Belgium's credibility.

"The European credibility of Belgium is at risk of being completely eliminated if no one bothers to put this country back together," said Jean-Claude Juncker. Asked about scenarios about uniting the French and Germanophone communities with Luxembourg, Mr. Juncker found them strange. "The Grand Duchy does not have vocation to repair Belgium which seeks itself. I believe that the answer to the Belgian question resides in Belgium," said Mr. Juncker.


I'd mentioned earlier, in my series of brief reports on Belgium's recent crisis, about how the idea of a Franco-Dutch partition of a failed Belgium on language lines was quite popular in those two countries even though there was very little sign that that sort of a partition was popular among Belgians. Recently, more fantastical scenarios still have begun to appear. The suggestion that Luxembourg might take on Francophone Belgium is one. Another came from The Brussels Journal, a far-right English/Dutch weblog associated with Flemish nationalists, which recently suggested that after Flanders leaves Wallonia might fall apart. Not only, the weblog argued, was Belgium's Luxembourg province likely to merge with Luxembourg, reversing the 1839 partition of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg between a Francophone west that became Belgian and a Germanic rump in the east that remained placed under Dutch suzerainty until 1890, but the "conservative and Catholic" province of Namur is "likely" to join the Grand Duchy, leaving only the provinces of Hainaut and Liège (and, as the blogger forget, Brabant Wallon) inside Wallonia. Like Greater Luxembourg, this second schema has also started to seep into the mainstream media, never mind that there seems to be little interest in the idea of Luxembourg reunification and I've never heard of Namurois separatism.

All these scenarios for the future, eccentric as they might be, seem to reflect the scenario-makers' common interest in predicting the futre that they would like to see. Yes, France and the Netherlands will be enriched by their new common border; yes, without Flanders Wallonia will fall apart; yes, Luxembourg will be happy to handle everything for Wallonia and Brussels. The problem with this wish-fulfillment school of futurology is that, as a rule, it doesn't seem to work very well in the face of reality. Some might find that a pity, but that would be a mistake.
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