A Bit More Detail

• Claire Messud writes at the NYR Daily about two art exhibits concerned with borders.


• Caitlin Chandler writes at the NYR Daily about the state of the experiment of Germany with mass reception and integration of refugees.


• The NYR Daily explores the modern Russian history of state-sponsored murder outside of its frontiers.


• Moroccan writer Hisham Aldi writes at NYR Daily about his relationship with Paul Bowles.


• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable exhibit at the Barbican in London of notable nightclubs in 20th century culture.

• Centauri Dreams considers the possibility of carbon dioxide being a biosignature in the atmospheres of exoplanets.


• D-Brief notes the discoveries of Hayabusa2 at asteroid Ryugu, including the possibility it was part of a larger body.


• Gizmodo links to a new analysis suggesting the behaviour of 'Oumuamua was not so unprecedented after all, that it was a simple exocomet.


• JSTOR Daily looks at Agnes Chase, an early 20th century biologist who did remarkable things, both with science and with getting women into her field.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to a new article of his analyzing the new aircraft carriers of Japan, noting not just their power but the effective lack of limits on Japanese military strength.


• Marginal Revolution notes the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.


• Neuroskeptic considers if independent discussion sections for online papers would make sense.


• The NYR Daily shares a photo essay by Louis Witter reporting on Moroccan boys seeking to migrate to Europe through Ceuta.


• Roads and Kingdoms has an interview with photographer Brett Gundlock about his images of Latin American migrants in Mexico seeking the US.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explores the mass extinction and extended ice age following the development of photosynthesis and appearance of atmospheric oxygen on Earth two billion years ago.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, in Karabakh, Jehovah's Witnesses now constitute the biggest religious minority.

• Architectuul looks back at its work over 2018.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait reflects on an odd photo of the odd galaxy NGC 3981.


• The Crux tells the story of how the moons of Jupiter, currently enumerated at 79 and including many oddly-shaped objects in odd orbits, have been found.


• Gizmodo notes how some astronomers have begun to use the precise rotations of neutron stars to calibrate atomic clocks on Earth.


• Keiran Healy shares a literally beautiful chart depicting mortality rates in France over two centuries.


• Hornet Stories notes that, two years after his death, the estate of George Michael is still making donations to the singer's favoured charities.


• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox celebrates the Ramones song "I Wanna Be Sedated".


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how unauthorized migrants detained by the United States are being absorbed into the captive workforces of prisons.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution approves of the Museum of the Bible, in Washington D.C., as a tourist destination.


• The NYR Daily looks at soccer (or football) in Morocco, as a badge of identity and as a vehicle for the political discussions otherwise repressed by the Moroccan state.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the paiche, a fish that is endangered in Peru but is invasively successful in Bolivia.


• Peter Rukavina makes a good point about the joys of unexpected fun.


• The Signal reports on how the American Folklife Centre processes its audio recordings in archiving them.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel debunks some myths about black holes, notably that their gravity is any more irresistible than that of any other object of comparable mass.


• Strange Company shares the contemporary news report from 1878 of a British man who binge-drank himself across the Atlantic to the United States.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a proposal in the fast-depopulating Magadan oblast of Russia to extend to all long-term residents the subsidies extended to native peoples.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on another Switzerland-like landscape, this one the shoreline around Lake Sevan in Armenia.

• Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani notes evidence that environmental change in Kenya may have driven creativity in early human populations there.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shows how astronomers use stellar occultations to investigate the thin atmosphere of Neptune's moon Triton.


• Centauri Dreams notes how melting ice creates landscape change on Ceres.


• D-Brief suggests
  
• Dangerous Minds shares Paul Bowles' recipe for a Moroccan love charm.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog investigates the transformation of shopping malls and in the era of Amazon Prime.


• At In Medias Res, Russell Arben Fox engages with Left Behind and that book's portrayal of rural populations in the United States which feel left behind.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how Roman Catholic nuns on the 19th century American frontier challenged gender norms.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of Tex-Mex cuisine, calling it an uncreative re-presentation of Mexican cuisine for white people in high-calorie quantities.


• The NYR Daily shared this thought-provoking article noting how Irish America, because of falling immigration from Ireland and growing liberalism on that island, is diverging from its ancestral homeland.


• Drew Rowsome reviews The Monument, a powerful play currently on in Toronto that engages with the missing and murdered native women.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes, in a photo-heavy post, how galaxies die (or at least, how they stop forming stars).


• Towleroad shares a delightful interview with Adam Rippon conducted over a plate of hot wings.


• Window on Eurasia shares an alternate history article imagining what would have become of Russia had Muscovy not conquered Novgorod.


• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative notes the very sharp rise in public debt held by the province of Ontario, something that accelerated in recent years.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests, in the era of Cambridge Analytica and fake news, that many journalists seem not to take their profession seriously enough.

More than 50 Moroccan and Spanish border guards were injured repelling around 1,100 African migrants who attempted to storm a border fence and enter Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, Spanish authorities said Sunday.

A regional government spokesman told The Associated Press that 50 Moroccan and five Spanish border guards were injured early on Sunday when the large group of migrants tried to enter Spain.

The spokesman said two migrants managed to reach Spanish soil. Both were injured in scaling the six-metere-high border fence and were taken to a hospital by Spanish police. He spoke anonymously in line with government policy.

A further 100 migrants climbed the fence, but Spanish agents sent them directly back to Morocco.

[. . .]

Hundreds of sub-Saharan African migrants living illegally in Morocco try to enter Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, each year in hope of getting to Europe.

Most migrants who try to cross are intercepted on the spot and returned to Morocco. Those that make it over the fences are eventually repatriated or let go.

• Bloomberg notes concerns over Northern Ireland's frontiers, looks at how Japanese retailers are hoping to take advantage of Vietnam's young consumers, examines the desperation of Venezuelans shopping in Colombia, looks at Sri Lankan interest in Chinese investment, suggests oil prices need to stay below 40 dollars US a barrel for Russia to reform, observes that Chinese companies are increasingly reluctant to invest, and suggests Frankfurt will gain after Brexit.


• Bloomberg View gives advice for the post-Brexit British economy, looks at how Chinese patterns in migration are harming young Chinese, suggests Hillary should follow Russian-Americans in not making much of Putin's interference, and looks at the Israeli culture wars.


• CBC considers the decolonization of placenames in the Northwest Territories, notes Canada's deployment to Latvia was prompted by French domestic security concerns, and looks at an ad promoting the Albertan oil sands that went badly wrong in trying to be anti-homophobic.


• The Inter Press Service considers the future of Turkey and looks at domestic slavery in Oman.


• MacLean's looks at China's nail house owners, resisting development.


• The National Post reports from the Colombia-Venezuela border.


• Open Democracy considers the nature of work culture in the austerity-era United Kingdom, looks at traditions of migration and slavery in northern Ghana, examines European bigotry against eastern Europeans, and examines the plight of sub-Saharan migrants stuck in Morocco.


• Universe Today notes two nearby potentially habitable rocky worlds, reports that the Moon's Mare Imbrium may have been result of a hit by a dwarf planet, and reports on Ceres' lack of large craters.

I met the Bermans more than 10 years ago in a fiction-writing workshop. It was my first semester at Concordia University in Montreal, and I was always overdressed for those early fall days—evidence that not too long ago, I was accustomed to living under an African sun. Halfway through the semester, as an example of ethnic literature, my professor introduced our class to the short story collection Natasha and Other Stories. The writer, David Bezmozgis, was a rising young Canadian author, and the collection was his first successful published book (it was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, and went on to win the Toronto Book Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for First Book—it became a bestseller).

In the collection, the Bermans—husband and wife Roman and Bella and their son Mark—move to Toronto in 1980 from Latvia, then still an entity of the Soviet Union, to begin their lives as Canadian immigrants. They experiment with the English language, with the North American way of doing business (Roman struggles as a massage therapist, taking on odd temporary jobs he was not trained for), with love in the suburbs in a home they can eventually afford to purchase. They move forward balancing a deeply entrenched Russian identity with the expectations of integration—often with awkward and uncomfortable results.

Although the seven stories that live in Natasha and Other Stories revolve around their specific immigration and assimilation experience as a Jewish Russian family, I—a Muslim Arab from Morocco—connected with the earnest aspirations of its characters. I felt a warm sense of belonging, a sudden surge of hope. With the Bermans, I was less alone.

[. . .]

Having been “Americanized” during my pre-university years at the Rabat American School in Morocco did nothing to prepare me for the cultural dislocation I experienced when I first came to Canada. It was an illumination to my silly ignorance to discover that Canadians are actually not at all like Americans, and that moving to another country is not at all like travelling.

Growing up in Morocco, I was a conflicted teenager: I was naturally extroverted, but would often turn down social gatherings in favour of reading books from abroad in my room. Looking back now, I understand that I was an artist at heart awkwardly looking to forge an identity in the arts while aunts, uncles, and friends of the family would insist I get up at weddings and belly-dance like the rest of the women (I still don’t know how to belly-dance). I decided to forge a career in the world of words in an English-speaking country. My late father was thrilled that I wanted more than to find a good Moroccan husband.

Anastasio Gomez, a Tzotzil Mayan from Mexico, fondly remembers his pilgrimage to Mecca. He circled around the Kaaba, the highest sanctuary of Muslims, seven times. At Mount Arafat he prayed to Allah and then he, together with 15 other Indians, sacrificed a sheep before boarding the flight back to their Mexican home.

"In Islam, race plays no role," the young man says joyously. His enthusiasm is understandable. After all, in his home state of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest, the indigenous people are viewed as second class humans, and whites and Mestizos treat the Indian majority as if they weren't there. In the southern Mexican provincial metropolis San Cristóbal de las Casas, the descendants of the Maya even have to move onto the street if a white person approaches them on the sidewalk.

Gomez, 23, converted to Islam eight years ago; ever since then, he has called himself Ibrahim. On his first pilgrimage seven years ago, the Indian was still something of an anomaly. Today, however, Muslim women in headscarves have become a common sight on the streets of San Cristobal.

About 300 Tzozil-Indians have converted to Islam in recent years and it's a development that is beginning to worry the Mexican government. Indeed, the government even suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida.

But the Indians have no interest in political extremism. Rather, they belong to the Sunni, Murabitun sect that was founded by the Scotsman Ian Dallas and is seen as an offshoot of a Moroccan religious order. The Murabitun followers represent a sort of primal Islam: Earning interest profits through money lending is a no-no and they preach a literal interpretation of the Koran.

A few kilometres before the border between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco, a sign informs passers-by that this outpost of Spain on African soil stands in a privileged position for those who wish to observe the annual migration of birds across the Strait of Gibraltar, their shortest route from Africa to Europe.

At the border itself, huge fences have been erected to block the daily attempts of human migrants seeking to escape hunger, despair and often conflict, a phenomenon that the people of Ceuta are less proud to advertise and about which they prefer silence.

That silence was dramatically broken at the beginning of May when a border control X-ray machine detected Abou, an eight-year-old boy from Cote d’Ivoire, inside a suitcase being carried into the Spanish enclave.

That was only the most recent of a number of (more or less ingenious) strategies used by migrants amassed in the Moroccan woods next to the Spanish border to try to enter the so-called ‘Fortress Europe’.

“What strikes the visitor most about Ceuta is its incredible contradictions. The city, with its population of just over 80,000 people living in 18.6 square kilometres and proudly Spanish since 1668, gives the idea of wanting to live as if the migrants and their attempts to reach the enclave do not exist”

Ceuta is one of the main (and few) ‘doors’ leading from northern Africa to the territory of the European Union, and is a ’door’ that has been closed since the end of the 1990s, when the Spanish authorities started to build two six-metre fences topped with barbed wire – complete with watch posts and a road running between them to accommodate police patrols in case of need – that surrounds the whole enclave (as in the other Spanish enclave in Africa of Melilla).

Even if they do not catch the attention of the media as in the case of Abou, every day Ceuta is the scene of young African migrants, almost all aged between 15 and 30, trying to reach Spanish territory in ways that are as, if not more, dangerous than the one chosen by Abou’s father.

The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. On the edge of the Sahara desert and the centre of the north African country’s “Ouallywood” film industry it has played host to big-budget location shots in Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones.

Now the trading city, nicknamed the “door of the desert”, is the centre for another blockbuster – a complex of four linked solar mega-plants that, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco’s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe. The project is a key plank in Morocco’s ambitions to use its untapped deserts to become a global solar superpower.

When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the world , and the first phase, called Noor 1, will go live next month. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive than the photovoltaic panels that are now familiar on roofs the world over, but it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down.

[. . .]

As engineers put the finishing touches to Noor 1, its 500,000 crescent-shaped solar mirrors glitter across the desert skyline. The 800 rows follow the sun as it tracks across the heavens, whirring quietly every few minutes as their shadows slip further east.

When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity, enough to power a million homes. Noor 1 itself has a generating capacity of 160MW.