[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew Barton does not recommend living in the Vancouver-area city of Richmond, built on the sort of silt that liquifies during earthquakes like the one generally expected to occur sooner or later.


• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling posts interesting links to design groups interested in the designs and architecture of Communist modernism in East Germany and Belgrade.


• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin uses the end of Germany's reparation payments to the Entente powers of the First World War, in the fullest sense, to reflect on the 20th century. It might have taken a long time, but at least public opinion is mobilized against war in a way it wasn't in 1914.


• Daniel Drezner thinks it quite good that the United States is losing interest in Central Asia. What interests did it have there, and how much influence did it actually have?


• Eastern Approaches remarks on the recent environmental catastrophe in Hungary, with its tidal wave of alkalinic and toxic waste that kills rivers, forces permanent evacuations, and strips off the top layer of human skin.


• Geocurrents remarks on how Indian memories of the Mughal Empire has encouraged some--especially Hindu nationalists--to believe Pakistan and Bangladesh are united in wanting to create a new Muslim state in South Asia including India's Gangetic heartland, notwithstanding India's overwhelming strength over both countries combined.


• The Global Sociology Blog argues that particularly in the United States, but also elsewhere, growing inequality isn't expressed in classical class conflict but rather in terms of hostility towards the socially excluded.