[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bear Left writes about how soccer can be a vehicle for international amity, whether between Cubans and Americans or Turks and Armenians (this last also described by Douglas Muir at A Fistful of Euros). That said, there's also case studies of conflicts like the Football War of 1969.


• Centauri Dreams touches upon the idea of interstellar panspermia, the belief that microorganisms suitably prepared could not only traverse the vast distances within a planetary system but the vaster gaps between planetary systems. It's an evocative idea.


• Daniel Drezner addresses the question through links of whether or not al-Qaeda is still a threat, with Bruce Hoffman pro and Juan Cole con. I lean towards a moderate version of con--the organization proper might be down but the ideology has a lot of support.


• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird wonders whether the poor showing of Russia's military equipment and its soldiers as evidenced in the Georgian war and its ongoing financial issues means that the current troubles are the reactions of a declining power.


• Gideon Rachman reports on polls suggesting that in only 9 out of 17 countries does a majority of the population believe that al-Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11th, with the American government coming next, then Israel


• Hunting Monsters takes a look at the increasingly publicized tendency for some Egyptian men to grope woman, making the plausible suggestion that this phenomenon is likely a product of sexual and other frustrations felt by young Egyptians.


• If not for The Pagan Prattle I would not have learned that the computer game Spore is evil because it deals with evolution. Sigh.
  
• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer reports that Bolivia is nearing civil war thanks to ethnic conflict and disputes over the sharing of hydrocarbon revenues.


• Wis(s)e Words reports on a remarkably reckless American military adviser who suggests that Georgia should model its armed forces on those of Hezbollah, combining light and highly mobile infantry with modern weapons. As if that would work in the face of an upset Russia.