[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 'Aqoul suggests that Maghrebin immigrants in western Europe, especially in Spain, are going to shrink as the economic contraction hits.


• Centauri Dreams suggests that the astronomical state of the art is advancing to the point where telescopes might detect massive moons orbiting some of the extrasolar planets discovered over the past decade and a half.


• Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell notes that Ireland is set to experience a crushing recession, worse even than the one experienced by Finland in the early 1990s.


• Daniel Drezner critiques New York Times columnist David Brooks about one man's thoughts on global governance, while being skeptical about the chances of a Republican Party revival.


• A Fistful of Euros' Alex Harrowell lets us know that Russia's radar system--you know, the one used to detect incoming missiles?--is holey and needs to be helped, immediately.


• Language Hat points readers towards a Silk Road-centric view of Eurasian history and looks at the dynamics of Indo-European language evolution.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen wonders whether Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party might actually weaken his hand and that of the party.


• pauldrye examines the origins of the phrase "Yellow Peril" in the late 19th/early 20th unseemly competition for territory and power by various imperialists in China.


• The Pagan Prattle lets us know that some anti-Semites believe that the Starbucks logo is an iconic representative of Jewish world domination, or something.


• Slap Upside the Head points out that a British Columbia politician who wrote an E-mail a dozen years ago comparing homosexuality to pedophilia wrote it to a fellow teacher in opposition to an anti-bullying initiative.


• Spacing Toronto examines the travails of poor neglected beat-down Jarvis Street and its improvement plans, tours the Shops at Don Mills, Toronto's latest anti-mall, and examines the zonards, people in the mid-19th century who lived on the fringes of Paris.


• Torontoist reports on the threatened gentrification of the famously eclectic Kensington Market neighbourhood and links to a panorama of Toronto as seen from the top of the CN Tower.


• Window on Eurasia reports that Russians tend to prefer the term "post-Soviet space" as opposed to "near abroad" to define the other fourteen Soviet successor states.


• Finally, the Yorkshire Ranter points out that Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who engineered the 2003 invasion, has come out and admitted the lies. Surprise.