[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Tom Scud at 'Aqoul wonders whether the American occupation of Iraq resembles the recently-ended Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and if so to what degree.


• Joel at Far Outliers posts extensive excerpts from a review of several books on Waziristan, a tribally-run area of northwestern Pakistan most recently famous for the region's links to al-Qaeda.


• Douglas Muir at A Fistful of Euros revisits his old predictions on the pecking order of western Balkan states when it comes to European Union accession. Serbia turns out to be doing better than he had expected.


• inuitmonster's Hunting Monsters has a post wondering why, since they gained independence in 1947, Pakistan has done so much worse than India.


• Joe.My.God has an ongoing series of posts relating snatches of conversation heard in passing. With a few exceptions, they're quite funny.


• princeofcairo celebrates the 100th anniversary of his home state of Oklahoma. (The possibility that Oklahoma:Texas and Canada:United States might be similar relationships had never occurred to me before reading his post.)


• The most recent installment of John Reilly's The Long View touches as usual on numerous topics, from the compatibility of Confucianism with Roman Catholicism to the associations of libertarian Republican Ron Paul with shady far-right groups.


• zarq has a follow-up post to his post on Megan Meier, a depressed 13 year old girl in Missouri who was pushed into suicide by neighbours, parents of a former friend of hers, who set up a fake MySpace account, used it to make friends with her, and then viciously attack her. While his decision not to let anonymous commenters post the names of those despicable neighbours speaks well of him, it's far too late to prevent their identities from coming out--a brief Googling is enough to find out the names of the people who are supposed to be responsible.