[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bag News Notes comments on some recently-published photos of the family of Bashar Assad--father, mother, children--and how they seem particularly staged.


• The Burgh Diaspora links to an article describing how migration to the United States from one Mexican village helped, via remittances, to lift it to middle4 classes.


• The Discoblog summarizes a recent paper taking a look at conflicts of pattern in Wikipedia article edit wars, noting--among other things--that certain specific patterns of editing indicate that a conflict will go on for some while.


• Eastern Approaches writes about the Bosnian city of Tuzla, home to--among other things--salt lakes. They're popular with tourists, see.


• Geocurrents links to a news item highlighting the latest efforts--so far mostly rhetorically--to start up economic cooperation between China and countries of the Portuguese-speaking world.


• GNXP's Razib Khan highlights the ongoing controversy over the division of the indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere into three groups, a conflict centering on the question of whether or not the Amerind group actually exists.


• Registan highlighted Tajikistan's position of being able to cultivate multiple partners, trading basing rights for money, Russia and India standing out.


• Zero Geography maps the relative prominence of articles on different countries in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian Wikipedias.