[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• BlogTO's Nav writes from the scene of one of the Tamil protests outside of Sri Lanka's Toronto consulate, and wonders who Israeli and Palestinian supporters can't be as civilized in their protests.


• Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias finds herself in partial agreement with conservative columnist Barbara Kay on abortion, in that it's not comparable to genocide or slavery or ...


• Centauri Dreams reports on the news that astronomers have found a small rocky planet similar to the Earth, a body with 11 Earth masses that rotates in a torch orbit around its sun.


• Far Outliers considers the question of whether the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge can trace their origins to primal forces within Khmer culture or were directed from above on the typical totalitarian pattern, and comes out in favour of the latter, and also describes the humiliation inflicted on the Chinese military by Vietnam's in their brief border war of 1979.


• Inkless Wells reports that Defense Minister Peter Mackay might be an acceptable compromise candidate for the post of NATO secretary-general. Might.


• Joe. My. God and Towleroad report on the sad news that Oscar Wilde's, New York City's oldest GLBT bookstore, is closing down.


• Noel Maurer comes out in favour of a NAFTA-bloc protectionism aimed against China on the condition that Canadian and Mexican stimulus packages work as well as we'd all hope.


• At Passing Strangeness, Paul Drye blogs about the Tunit people, an Arctic culture that predated the Inuit.


• Slap Upside the Head covers the news of the Manitoba doctor who allegedly refused to take on two patients because they were lesbian.


• Torontoist's Stephen Michalowicz reports from the scene of one of Toronto's great snow depots, almost industrialized in their vastness.


• Windows on Eurasia blogs about the dubious efforts behind the efforts to create a "hard core" of closely integrated post-Soviet states around Russia and the ongoing emigration of Russians (Russophones?) from Central Asia.