A Bit More Detail

• Curbed looks at what is happening with the proposed new streetcar route connecting Brooklyn and Queens.


• Urban farm Grow Calgary has found a new home in the southeast of that city. Global News reports.


• The claim of Donald Trump that Texas border city El Paso was a criminalized disaster spinning out of control is, of course, provably wrong. VICE has it.


• This Guardian feature shares the responses of readers to an article looking at the decline of the high street of the English city of Sheffield.


• CityLab looks at the impact of terrorism on Nairobi, at the growing presence of elements of security theatre on the street and at the targeting of ethnic Somalis in Eastleigh.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of comet A/2017U1, a potential visitor from another planetary system, while Centauri Dreams also takes a look.
  
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly celebrates Montréal's Atwater Market, with photos.


• Bruce Dorminey notes one report that Ceres' primordial ocean may have mixed with its surface, to make a world covered in salty mud.


• The Map Room Blog links to an interactive French-language map looking at census data on different neighbourhoods in different cities.


• The New APPS Blog looks at the changing role of the judiciary as enforcing of order in a privatized world.


• The NYR Daily wonders if North Korea's government has firm control over its nuclear weapons, given American issues.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes the expansion of Google Maps to other worlds in our solar system.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer examines the situation facing Catalonia, and Spain, after the UDI.


• Roads and Kingdoms takes a photographic look at Little Mogadishu, a Somali neighbourhood in Kampala, Uganda.


• Rocky Planet notes the ongoing risk of a major volcanic eruption at Tinakula, in the Solomon Islands.


• Understanding Society takes a look at the role and functioning of overlapping social identities.

Crossing African borders by land can be an intimidating process (it’s proving an increasingly intimidating process nowadays in Europe and the US also, even in airports). But crossing from Ethiopia to Somaliland at the ramshackle border town of Togo-Wuchale is a surreally pleasant experience.

Immigration officials on the Somaliland side leave aside the tough cross-examination routine, greeting you with big smiles and friendly chit chat as they whack an entry stamp on the Somaliland visa in your passport.

They’re always happy to see a foreigner’s visit providing recognition of their country that technically still doesn’t exist in the eyes of the rest of the political world, despite having proclaimed its independence from Somalia in 1991, following a civil war that killed about 50,000 in the region.

A British protectorate from 1886 until 1960 and unifying with what was then Italian Somaliland to create modern Somalia, Somaliland had got used to going on its own since that 1991 declaration, and today exhibits many of the trappings of a functioning state: its own currency, a functioning bureaucracy, trained police and military, law and order on the streets. Furthermore, since 2003 Somaliland has held a series of democratic elections resulting in orderly transfers of power.

Somaliland’s resolve is most clearly demonstrated in the capital, Hargeisa, formerly war-torn rubble in 1991 at the end of the civil war, its population living in refugee camps in neighbouring Ethiopia. An event that lives on in infamy saw the jets of military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre’s regime take off from the airport and circle back to bomb the city.

But visitors to today’s sun-blasted city of 800,000 people encounter a mishmash of impassioned traditional local markets cheek by jowl with diaspora-funded modern glass-fronted office blocks and malls, Wi-Fi enabled cafes and air-conditioned gyms, all suffused with typical Somali energy and dynamism.

• Bloomberg looks at the restarting of northern Alberta oil, looks at the deterioration in Sino-Taiwanese relations, reports on how Norway is using oil money to buffer its economic shocks, and suggests low ECB rates might contribute to a property boom in Germany.


• Bloomberg View notes the idea of a third party in the US, one on the right to counter Trump, will go nowhere.


• The CBC notes the settlement of a residential school case in Newfoundland and Labrador and predicts a terrible fire season.


• The Globe and Mail' Kate Taylor considers Canadian content rules in the 21st century.


• The Inter Press Service notes that planned Kenyan closures of Somali refugee camps will have terrible results.


• National Geographic looks at the scourge that is Pablo Escobar's herd of hippos in Colombia.


• The National Post notes VIA Rail's existential need for more funding and reports on Jean Chrétien's support of decriminalizing marijuana.


• Open Democracy looks at controversies over Victory Day in Georgia, and notes the general impoverishment of Venezuela.


• Vice looks at new, accurate dinosaur toys, feathers and all.


• Wired explains why Israel alone of America's clients can customize F-35s.

• The Dragon's Gaze notes evidence that Kardashev Type III civilizations do not exist.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the new Kenya-Somalia border war, suggests the United Arab Emirates will be building a mountain to try to trigger rain, and notes that the new French-built submarines of Australia will come with American tech parts.


• Language Log looks at the changing meaning of "feel".


• Marginal Revolution suggests Russian power might be on an upswing and looks at European Union proposals to fine countries which do not accept refugees.


• The NYRB Daily notes the controversy surrounding Poland's Second World War museum at Gdansk.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at robotic activity around the solar system.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers the question of whether or not Napoleonic rule did kickstart growth in western Germany.


• Savage Minds continues the discussion of decolonizing anthropology.


• Torontoist notes a protest tomorrow by Ontario parents unhappy that the provincial government will not cover enough of an effective autism program.


• Window on Eurasia looks at class divisions in Russia and notes a proposal to divert water from Siberian rivers to China.

• blogTO examines the nature of Toronto's abundant consumption of electricity.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a study of the atmosphere of Wasp 80b.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Russian rocket manufacturer Energomash may go out of business as a result not of sanctions but of threatened sanctions.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money does not approve of Kenya's plan to deport Somali refugees.


• Mark MacKinnon shares an old 2003 article of his from Iraq.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the new Vulcan rocket.


• pollotenchegg maps, by province, the proportion of Ukrainians claiming Russian as their mother language.


• Registan argues that NATO and Russia might be misinterpreting
  
• Spacing Toronto shares a screed on cyclists.


• Towleroad notes that Chile now has same-sex civil unions.


• Transit Toronto notes that the TTC has hired an external corporation to manage the problematic Spadina subway extension.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues that libertarians do exist as a distinguishable political demographic.


• Window on Eurasia examines turmoil in Karelia and terrorism in Dagestan.

Friday is the day people head to the beach near the ancient maritime town of Berbera, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. On any other day of the week, the shore is all but deserted.

On a recent Saturday afternoon Abdirahman Hashi, 26, cut a lone figure on the sand watching small waves lapping against Baathela Beach. He arrived for a swim, he said. Afterward, he began the walk back to town with the coast line all to himself.

Much like the unsignposted beach, there are few international indicators to identify Somaliland’s existence. Most people do not distinguish it from Somalia, and currently, the global community doesn’t either. Although a self-declared independent nation since 1991, Somaliland doesn’t technically exist. Somalilanders, not surprisingly, take umbrage, pointing out the contrary, highlighting how their country has built a functioning, democratic society from the scraps of civil war.

Today, creating a tourist industry based on the country’s beaches, history and cultural sites offers one means to change global perspectives and boost the livestock-export-dependent economy. However, no one thinks it will be easy.

“It seems that when you are doing things peacefully and helping yourself, then no one cares about you,” Ayanle Salad Deria, the acting Somaliland ambassador to Ethiopia, said of the international community’s approach to his country’s situation. “Somaliland has been functioning for 24 years, and we’ve got lots of places to visit, including 850 kilometers [528 miles] of beaches.”

He left his office briefly, returning with a large black ring binder folder full of visa applications he started to flip through. “American … American … European — these are for this month. There’s about 50,” he boasted.

A desperate Hamilton family called in CSIS and the RCMP two months ago in a frantic bid to prevent their eldest son from crossing into Syria and taking up arms in that country's civil war.

They failed, and earlier this week, CSIS visited them to tell them unofficially their son, Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, had likely died in fighting there. According to some media reports, he died following a fight between Kurdish forces and Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham fighters.

If true, he could be the first Canadian killed in the anti-ISIS military campaign.

Hamilton lawyer Hussein Hamdani said Wednesday he was approached by Mohamud's family in July as soon as they realized their missing son was using his phone in Turkey.

“This was not right. He shouldn't have been there. We need to tell the RCMP and CSIS right away,” Hamdani summarized their thinking. “So they contacted me.” Both agencies met with the family, he said, and tried to find ways to thwart Mohamud's entry into Syria.

“But by then, his handlers had him. Once he lands — they have their own underground railway — it's almost impossible to stop him. Unfortunately, he did cross over, and once he did, he texted his mother to say he was in Syria with his brothers.”

Hamdani said the family continued to assist security officials, even working with the RCMP to try to break into Mohamud's email account.

Mohamud was a “very intelligent young man” who'd been attending York University and was on track for a career in medicine, Hamdani said. Just how he became criminally radicalized is not clear.

• Al Jazeera notes anti-black racism in Morocco, attacks on Christians in border areas of Kenya, and the ways in which the crackdown on Somali crime in Nairobi is hitting Somali businesses.


• Bloomberg notes that Ethiopian migrants trying to enter Saudi Arabia are being persecuted on their trip by Yemeni criminal gangs, in much the same way that Eritreans trying to get into Israel are persecuted by Sinai gangs.


• BusinessWeek argues that tacky gifts at the 911 gift shop sell because people want them, notes that South Koreans like shopping online internationally to get bargains, notes the growing presence of the Taliban in Karachi, and observes the rise of Chinese fashions.


• MacLean's comments on the growing tendency of Italian young adults to stay at home, comments on the return of Sarah McLachlan, looks at the phenomenon of doctoral students who don't go into academia, and notes that Pakistan's independent Geo TV is nearing shutdown by state harassment and assassination attempts.


• Wired observes innovative ways to deal with online harassment and notes a new method for interplanetary communication--at least to the moon--that is as fast as a good home Internet connection.

• Andrew Barton remarks on the fact that not only are the dominant newspapers of British Columbia part of a commercial monopoly, they're all going up behind paywalls, too.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster notes that galaxies like our Milky Way, which has two relatively large satellite galaxies (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), are actually quite rare in the universe.


• In his ongoing False Steps blog, pauldrye describes a proposed American spacecraft designed in 1946 that could have sent an astronaut into space a decade ahead of time.


• Geocurrents describes the peculiar situation of the booming Somalian city of Galkayo, divided between two state-like entities.


• GNXP's Razib Khan is very critical of the recently-voiced argument that Indo-European languages evolved in Anatolia, not the Pontic steppes.


• Marginal Revolution takes note of Mexico's heavy investment in the United States, one data point illustrating that Mexico is actually something of a global economic power.


• New APPS Blog's Mohan Matthen revisits the question of Gandhi criticism.


• Savage Minds links to an anthropologist's posting describing how, given the terrible economic prospects for students in the field, the only future for anthropology truly is outside of academia. More later.


• Torontoist takes note of the commemoration of the one-year anniversary of Jack Layton's death at Toronto City Hall.


• Towleroad's Andrew Belonsky points out that the ongoing trend in the United States towards acceptance of same-sex marriage is likely to influence eventual Supreme Court decisions.


• At The Way the Future Blogs, Frederik Pohl is right to note that one major element behind the decline of Mexican emigration to the United States is the sharp fall in the Mexican fertility rate. This is not the only factor at play, however, as he implies.