[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 'Aqoul's dubaiwalla writes about the challenges facing Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as they try to increase citizen employment, as they try to improve their skills while avoiding harm to local economies.


• At Border Thinking, Laura Agustín takes a look at how Israel is fortifying its Sinai frontier-with Egyptian help--to keep out refugees, linking it with newly imposed penalties for Israelis who help people sneak into the country.


• Centauri Dreams reports on yet another astounding innovation in observational astronomy, this a new technique that allows ground-based telescopes to analyze the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on Iran's claim to have successfully launched a live cargo into space with its new launchers.


• Far Outliers examines how, in early modern Southeast Asia, different ethnic groups were governed by different legal systems.


• The Grumpy Sociologist is understandably grumpy about an Australian police official's dismissal of attacks on Indian student in Melbourne by saying that they're safer than in India, anyway.


• Murdering Mouth nails the sort of environmentalist survivalist who longs for an early 20th century (or earlier) existence and attacks the contemporary era with its complexities, all while happily taking advantage of these very useful complexities themselves.


• Noel Maurer at the Power and the Money makes the claim that, contrary to popular mythology, the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States actually work in ways not unlike parties in Canada, with party policy overriding individual representative's wishes.


• Slap Upside the Head observes that, in Saskatchewan, religious denominations support measures aimed at allowing civil marriage commissioners the right to opt out of marrying same-sex couples (and who next?).


• Towleroad carries the news that US military officials expert it could take years to integrate queers into the American military; commenters suspect that this is political.