[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw takes a look at the pictures indicating extensive use of tear gas against protesters in Istanbul.
• In a guest post at Centauri Dreams, Larry Klaes takes a look at a 2011 anthology of papers examining the dynamics of spacefaring societies (ours and others’), Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society.
• Crooked Timber’s Chris Bertram, visiting Brazil’s preplanned capital of Brasilia, starts a discussion about planned cities.
• Eastern Approaches notes the breakdown of the current coalition government in the Czech Republic.
• Geocurrents examines two Stalin Second World War-era ethnic cleansings, the first of the Volga Germans (now largely resettled in Germany) and the second of the Crimean Tatars (now largely returned to their Crimean homeland within Ukraine).
• Normblog’s Norman Geras wonders why many elements of Communist culture remain cool, despite its linkages with oppression.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer takes a look at mass transit in Colombia’s capital of Bogotá, noting that the current light rail system isn’t the best imaginable but is the best possible given the politics.
• Gideon Rachman notes the politics of green space, including parks, as exemplified by the Istanbul protests.
• Technosociology’s Zeynep Tufekci argues that online-driven protests do all fit a certain style.