[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At the Burgh Diaspora,Jim Russell writes briefly about how expats from declining areas (New Brunswick, say, or Pittsburgh) can be valuable human resources for areas hoping to recover.


• Eastern approaches' Edward Lucas has two oddly complimentary posts, the first examining the question of how Russian membership in NATO would work, the second reporting how a Russian threat to block imports of Moldovan wine after the smaller country's president proposed mourning the anniversary of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia in 1940.


• Gerry Canavan lets us know the disturbing news that the worst--or at least the worst-informed--have been revealed in a recent sociological study to be the most politically determined.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis writes about how Panama is easily Central America's economic success story in terms of GDP per capita and growth, although income inequality is rather severe. Lewis also mentions the relatively significant amount of self-government enjoyed by Panama's indigenous peoples.


• Hunting Monsters' Ian tackles the Islamic Republic's politicization of male hairstyles. Having non-regulation hair, he points out, doesn't necessarily signify one's membership in the opposition; it just signifies difference.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley mourns the disappearance of sensible foreign-policy wonks from the ranks of the Republican Party.


• Marginal Revolution hosts an interesting discussion of how Prohibition in the United States ended up being storngly anti-immigrant and anti-urban but began as a product of mobilized anti-abolitionists and religious revivalists.


• Strange Maps shows us Paula, the woman whose is as much an icon of the proud Brazilian state of São Paulo as Marianne is of France, only with a head and upper torso that actually maps onto the map of São Paulo.


• Torontoist reports on how popular and activist upset with the police reaction at the recent G20 summit here in Toronto might actually be evolving into some kind of durable movement.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that religion is becoming more of a barrier to intermarriage in the minds of Russians than ethnicity, perhaps contradicting--at least locally--a previous post there talking about continued high rates of religious intermarriage in Tatarstan.