[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdpei]

• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes how Brazil is using the Afro-Brazilian majority legacy of the transatlantic slave trade to justify the construction of new transatlantic links with Africa.
• Crooked Timber comments upon the Irish anti-abortion laws that just cost a woman her life and the homophobia of the Reagan administration that made HIV/AIDS a laughing matter.
• Daniel Drezner wonders if the ongoing expanding Petraeus scandal will end up diminishing the American public's regard for the military.
• Eastern Approaches notes that no one in the Balkans seems to be commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the First Balkan War.
• Far Outlier's Joel quotes from Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to describe how Christopher Columbus was really riding on the coat-tails of Portugal's successful long-range maritime exploration.
• Geocurrents observes efforts by some Arab Christians in the Levant to revive Aramaic.
• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Laurent Dubois' Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, highlighting the extent to which Haiti's catastrophes are the products of foreign meddling.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis maps Detroit. The extent to which the borders of the City of Detroit overlap with African-American majority populations, and to which the sprawl of Metro Detroit is constructed so as to detach the suburbs from any responsibility for the city at their region's center, is noteworthy.
• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports on Carl Sagan's feminism.
• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer summarizes what's going on with Uruguay's decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.