[NEWS] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• The Times' Giles Whittell observes that the firing of Canadian-born American conservative David Frum, he who claims to have invented the phrase "axis of evil," from his conservative think-tank employer on the apparent grounds that his criticism of the Republican Party's strategy was treasonous, says something about the American right-wing's internal coherence.


• The news that there's the beginnings of an arms race in the Arctic isn't surprising, but perhaps the argument (as advanced by Michael Byers) that this expansion of capacity is to be expected of an area that's traditionally been quite underserviced should be more widely known.


• The Globe and Mail's Robert Silver does not like the recent, popular, legislation in Québec banning users of the niqab from interacting with government-provided services. Others in the comments disagree, strongly, some pointing out that the legislation has only been proposed and hasn't reached its finished form, if it passes at all.


• The University of Ottawa didn't handle the abortive Ann Coulter speech that never got a chance to be held there, the Globe and Mail's John Allemang argues, between the provost's warning her to watch her language and his argument that academic freedom's being threatened by safe-space concepts.


• In the New York Times and elsewhere, Andrew Kramer writes in the aftermath of this morning's Moscow subway bombings about the prominence of the female suicide bomber--often motivated by personal loss, whether related to Russian government actions in the North Caucasus or not--in contemporary Russian anti-terrorist strategies and in the popular imagination.


• Recent studies of tree rings have revealed that the Khmer empire of the late medieval period, centered on the famous ruined city of Angkor, was brought down by an erratic climate, swinging from prolonged drought to torrential monsoons, that threatened the empire's food supply and damaged its infrastructure.