[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Border Thinking, Laura Agustín discusses the ways in which many international migrants in sex work might actually welcome this employment.


• Daniel Drezner suggests that Israelis have chosen to ignore Obama's critiques for the sound reasoning that he's a weak president who may not get re-elected.


• Eastern Approaches comments on the latest rhetorical rounds between Greece and ex-Yugoslav Macedonia on the patrimony of the region of Macedonia.


• Far Outliers points out that the Jews of Soviet Minsk were unique by virtue of their high degree of assimilation, this enabling a high rate of survival.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis describes how the Tuli Block, a mountainous area separating South Africa from Botswana, may become a major destination for wildlife tourism.


• The Global Sociology Blog makes the argument that high rates of diagnosed mental illness might serve the function of displacing social ills from society at large to individuals suffering from society, an individualized and chemical responses to systemic collective problems.


• Language Log comments on the sectarian language used in Scottish football.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on a race issue of a century ago: "Are Finns white?". (Trans-Uralic barbarians, I suppose.)


• Mark Simpson argues that if metrosexuality is gone, it is so only because it has become as normative as air.


• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money points out that, at least as defined by an ability to get below-market prices for raw materials like oil, China does not have an empire, the closest thing beng the very low prices for oil China got from Venezuela on account of the parlous state of that latter country's state oil company.


• Slap Upside the Head notes that Calgary's mayor, unlike Toronto's, led his city's pride parade.


• At Spacing Toronto, Ken Greenberg and John Alschuler author an essay criticizing Ford's lack of vision for Toronto that remain relevant two weeks later.


• Understanding Society describes, contra the libertarian conservative vision, the philosophical justifications for social democracy with reference to the Nordic model.