More than 300 former migrant workers occupied the German Embassy and its compound for a second day on Thursday, vowed to remain until they are paid for work done two decades ago.

Riot police wielding batons injured three protesters and arrested three others in a brief clash during the night that began when shouting workers shoved a police officer.

Authorities said on Wednesday that the standoff had ended after six hours when German Ambassador Ulf Dieter Klemm told the protesters he would raise their case with Mozambican authorities.

However, the former migrant workers refused to leave the embassy and its grounds, vowing to stay until their demands were met.

"They are still occupying the embassy and negotiations continue," a German foreign ministry spokesperson said from Berlin on condition of anonymity.

The ambassador has been talking to both the Mozambican government and the protesters, she said.

The protesters, known as Majermane, pushed their way past embassy guards and occupied the embassy compound on Tuesday. They contend Mozambique's government owes them $2.2-million in pay for work they did in East Germany in the 1980s. Germans did not pay the workers directly and gave the money to the Mozambican government instead.

The protesters decided to continue the occupation, hoping the Germans can pressure Mozambique to pay them, said Alberto Mahuaie, a leader from the Forum of Returnees From The Ex-German Democratic Republic, or GDR, a group claiming to represent the Majermanes.

'We are not going to pay any extra money because we owe them nothing'
The occupation was spontaneous and not planned by his organisation, he said.

"Some of our colleagues were tired of waiting and decided to invade the German embassy to try and force the two governments to sit at the same table and reach a conclusion about our demands," Mahuaie said.

eternityfan

• Yonge Street and Bloor Street West. I like the different streets and neighbourhoods of Toronto for different reasons. These streets attract me because they're so active and attractive. Bay Street's fine skyscrapers give that street a distinctive character but the street is too broad and underpopulated to feel particularly intimate, while Queen Street West certainly has a sense of compactness and busyness throughout its length but feels as if it's trying too hard. Yonge and Bloor feel very credibly urban, and very wonderfully civilized in all of the senses of that word.


• The Toronto Public Reference Library. This library has six levels. I haven't gotten past the second floor. I do not know when I will do this. I do not think that I care. I do not think that anyone who knows of my work background and/or my interest in the written word needs to ask why I don't care.


• A Deepness in the Sky. There's something appropriate in the fact that I began reading this 1996 book by Vernor Vinge, prequel of sorts to the 1992 A Fire Upon the Deep, almost exactly two years after I bought a copy of A Fire Upon the Deep on the strength of James B.'s recommendation of the two books to me. A Deepness in the Sky is a very strong book, one that I enjoyed more than its far-future galactic-rim space-operatic successor. Perhaps this is because Vinge's Qeng Ho sublight trading culture is more generic and hence more readily comprehensible than A Fire Upon the Deep's Singularity-era interstellar civilization. Even so, there was something fundamentally appealing about the book, and I've the utmost admiration for any writer who can make arachnoid aliens so plausible.


• The Western Mediterranean World. I first came across this geographical survey of the lands surrounding the western lobe of the Mediterranean--the Iberian peninsula, Mediterranean France, Italy, the Dalmatian coastline of then-Yugoslavia, the Maghreb--in the Education Library at Queen's last October; a month later, I acquired a copy of my own via a sale at the Kingston public library. The book dates from the 1960s--Italy is caught midway through its economic boom, Spain at its boom's beginning, the Maghreb just after decolonization-but it does a fantastic job of describing the physical and human textures of the territory. Books like these make me wish that UPEI had a geography program.


• Eating out. Prince Edward Island got its first Indian restaurant in 2002--or is it 2003? Kingston's restaurants provide the interested diner with many more opportunities for eating out. Toronto offers the quasi-gourmand wannabe another couple of orders of magnitude more choice. Inasmuch as, right now, I'm an Unemployed Young Post-Student (tm), I don't have the funds needed to explore these choices on my own. I have gone on dates recently, though, and I can confirm La Paloma and Dutch Dreams each offer excellent ice creams in the Italian and Dutch traditions, respectively, while Café Diplomatico
and the Retro Café are rather nice restaurants. Each in its own way, of course. Smaller hole-in-the-wall type restaurants like neighbourhood bars and downtown pizza places also have their charm.

After 15 years of soul-searching, France has decided to create a Museum of Immigration. Why now? For generations, France successfully absorbed waves of Poles, Russians, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese — and remained French. Then over the past 30 years millions of migrants flooded in from the third world, and it was France that changed.

• Little Portugal. It's not so surprising that I find myself at home here, since Atlantic Canada and Portugal actually have quite a bit in common, including a fondness for seafood (most notably cod) and a tradition of mass emigration from our ill-governed homelands (though Portugal seems to be closing the gap nicely). I've not spent nearly enough time wandering the streets of Little Portugal, rather focusing my explorations elsewhere. I really want to do this, though. It's also interesting how the wider Lusophone world is making a tentative impression in the district, starting with the scattered presence of Brazilian flags and restaurants.


• The novels of Lois McMaster Bujold and Terry Pratchett. Stephen DeGrace introduced me to the "Witches of Lancre" books with Wyrd Sisters in the first half of 2002; Jonathan Edelstein piqued my curiosity from an earlier date. These authors' works might belong to specific genres which fall outside of the realm of high literature--science-fiction space opera and satirical fantasy, respectively. Nonetheless, the high calibre of their writing, and their synthesis of penetrating insight with entertaining narratives, places them a cut above many other writers of more mainstream taste. I've harped on this before; last year, I wrote about the portability of culture. Also be sure to check out the discworld and lmbujold communities.


• Tea. I'm a caffeine addict, but my lack of access to a coffee machine, the need to avoid spending money in coffee shops, and my possession of a tea kettle have all combined to accelerate my shift to tea-drinking. Ginseng and green tea are nice, though I've not yet progressed to tea made with leaves as opposed to teabags.


• Europa Universalis II. I admit to playing a couple of sessions of this game at the Grey Region. It's a fantastic game--if I owned the game, I'd doubtless become an addict. My favourite session began in 1492, with me as monarch of France. I demonstrated my true inclination towards shameless imperialism by brutally invading, crushing, and annexing Lorraine and Strassburg. A subsequent attempt to seize English-occupied Calais ended up causing a trans-Channel invasion of England, which ended after two wars with Eire's declaration of independence and my annexation of the whole southwestern half of England from Wales to Kent into my domains. There was another landgrab made of Navarre, I ravaged the Austrian Netherlands for a bit after I got dragged into a coalition war, and I even managed to plant colonies in Chesapeake, Isle Royale, and Gander. Unfortunately, the computer crashed in the 1530s.


• Postcards. Last week, I received a postcard from Greenpeace thanking me for joining. It has a nice picture of the base of an old-growth temperate rainforest tree. Rather more personally appreciated are the postcards I've received from escondidoid from his Caribbean trip--thanks for the images of the Las Calles and El Morro districts of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico's Palomino Island, and the islands of Dominica and Charlotte Amalie, Scott!

• Last Thursday night, just after I finished up my guest post on the Head Heeb, I went out for drinks with lesslyn at a nice bar north of Bloor. We split up at a quarter to two, and I briskly walked to the nearest subway station. There, I learned that the last southbound car had left at 1:35. This prompted a rather enjoyable walk west across Toronto, past the Robarts Library, along Dundas, and then down along Queen Street West. I rather like walking at night through metropoli; you get a good sense of the city's life, passing by nightclubs, grocery stores, and one nice tobacconist's shop that stays open until 3:30 to serve Queen Street West's denizens.


• Last Sunday, I decided to see as much of Toronto's waterfront as I could. I didn't see very much until I got to Lake Shore Park, adjacent to Ontario Place. It's only when I actually began to watch the Canada geese swimming across the litter-covered surface of the lake waters that I'd realized I'd never seen that stereotypically Canadian wildlife before. (I also realized that Lake Ontario is rather polluted in a way not visible at Kingston, although the Toronto Star is happy to report that thanks in part to the infestation of zebra mussels, Toronto's harbour has improved so much that things live in it.


• I left my residence at 9 o'clock in the morning on a walk east, along Dundas and up Bay. The shift in ethnic neighbourhoods along Dundas Street--from Little Portugal to Chinatown--was interesting to notice on foot, and it was a beautiful morning. Bay Street, with its skyscrapers and wide vistas, is attractive.

lesslyn

One of the rehearsal rooms at English National Opera has been transformed into what looks like a rock recording studio. There are amplifiers, a mixing desk, guitars and - strangest of all - a noticeboard covered with pictures of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadafy, and his glamorous female bodyguards.

Sitting in front of it all is guitarist, producer and programmer Steve Chandra Savale, aka Asian Dub Foundation's Chandrasonic. "Opera used to be the music of the establishment," he says, "but no one else would do a project like this. If I went to a record company with this idea, they'd never look at it. They are the conservatives now."

In one of its boldest experiments to date, ENO has commissioned Asian Dub Foundation - best known for their blend of breakbeats, rap and politics - to write an opera. It will premiere at London's Coliseum in February 2006, in a production directed by Peter Sellars, the maverick American who once set Mozart on a Los Angeles freeway.

Exactly what the opera consists of remain to be seen, for this is very much a work in progress. However, some things are certain: its subject matter will be that enigmatic political survivor, Col Gadafy. That role will be taken by the rapper JC001 (who has previously worked with Nitin Sawhney), while the ENO chorus will play Gadafy's bodyguards, "the revolutionary nuns". ADF will provide the music, helped by a female violinist simply known as Mee. The staging will make considerable use of stills and film clips.

• While taking an eastbound streetcar on Queen Street West last Thursday, on the intersection of Queen with Bathurst I saw a woman in her twenties, dressed like Minnie Mouse—a white-painted face with spots of red on her cheeks, a high-cut lacy black dress—running east, followed by someone with a Super-8 camera. She waved at me.
  
• Saturday, I bought Kraftwerk’s CD The Mix for 7.99 dollars Canadian at the HMV on Yonge Street, at the end of a lengthy walk down that street at a time when much of it was closed off for street festivals. “Trans-Europe Express” is a great song, so pathetically emotional in its understatements (lyrical, musical).
• Monday, as I walked to the Parkdale branch (and to buy furniture), I picked up a professionally-bound zine in some retro-seventies design shop. It had, among other articles, first-hand narratives of drug manufacturing, an investigation of the gang problem in suburban Aurora, an E-mail from a Taiwanese punk rocker emphasizing the need for bestiality to be consensual, and an editorial providing helpful advice on how to write effective suicide letters (hint: keep it brief and try to blame other people).