[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats reports that the countries of the Sahel, from Senegal on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Indian Ocean, hope to hold back the Sahara by planting a greenbelt of trees from sea to sea.


• blogTO's Agatha Barc writes about the land transaction between the British Crown and the Mississauga First Nation of southern Ontario that saw the landmass of Toronto become sovereign British (eventually Canadian) territory.


• The Global Sociology Blog observes that although the United States spends about as much as Sweden or Denmark in social expenditures, the biases in American spending patterns towards the middle classes and the rich leaves the American poor much worse off than their Nordic counterparts.


• Laywers, Guns and Money's Charli Carpenter considers at length the question of whistle-blowers: What legal protections do they have, in domestic and international law? What's the difference between whistle-blowing and efforts at public embarrassment?


• Mark Simpson makes the argument (convincing, I think) that American men are less homophobic than ever before mainly because in any number of domains, from fashion to physique to identity, they're so once-stereotypically gay already that being homophobic just doesn't make any sense.


• In the middle of an interesting-written extended stay in Germany, Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen writes about how Germany's Turkish community is actually integrating pretty nicely, thank you very much; no Eurabia to be found there.


• Slap Upside the Head writes about a bed and breakfast in British Columbia shut down by its owners since they couldn't exclude same-sex couples. We've all heard stories like this, I think.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a recent survey of Muscovite realtors that confirms that ethnic neighbourhoods are coalescing in that Russian world city.