Colonialism

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Hagar Shezaf at the Israeli newspaper of record, Haaretz [“The Land”], reveals that a secretive Israeli agency has been systematically going through the country’s archives, including local repositories, and removing and classifying documents having to do with repressive and embarrassing Israeli actions toward Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis. One such disappeared document […]

Colonialism

Great Powers in Latin America have Tried to Make Walls before: It didn’t End Well

The Conversation

By Alberto P. Marti | – Despite the US administration’s renewed interest in Cuba, including new travel restrictions, few have paid attention to a little-known, but telling, historical episode: the island’s 19th-century military “Trocha”. This massive fortified line was a Spanish attempt to contain the Cuban independence rebellion by splitting the island in half – […]

Colonialism

How Colonialists Led the Way to our Environmental Crisis of Over-Exploitation

The Conversation

By Joseph McQuade | – We are currently experiencing the worst environmental crisis in human history, including a “biological annihilation” of wildlife and dire risks for the future of human civilization. The scale of that environmental devastation has increased drastically in recent years. Mostly to blame are anthropogenic, or human-generated factors, including the burning of […]

Colonialism

No, Fox’s Katie Pavlich, the US wasn’t the First to Abolish Slavery

Juan Cole

Fox Cable News’ Katie Pavlich asserted Tuesday, “They keep blaming America for slavery, but the truth is that throughout human history slavery has existed. America came along as the first country to end it within 150 years. And we get no credit for that.” Seriously, how utterly and comprehensively brain dead stupid and ignorant do […]

Colonialism

What does the World look like from Somalia? Explaining why Ilhan Omar Scares the Horses in DC

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | – Few Americans remember that the United States colonized the Philippines and virtually no one but the more historically conscious Filipinos remember how destructive the initial military occupation was, with thousands killed by US troops and hundreds of thousands killed by disease and exposure as a result of the brutality with […]

Climate Change

European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population and caused global cooling

The Conversation

By Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis | – While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of […]

Colonialism

Why do we Revere Malala but Not Ahed Tamimi?

The Conversation

By Sarah Kastner | – After Israeli forces shot her 15-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet last December, Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian girl from Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, stood up to the occupying Israeli forces and was arrested and charged for slapping a soldier. The story of the activist went […]

Colonialism

Muslim Troops Helped Entente Win WW I, Shaped European Security

Mohammed Samaana

(Informed Comment) – As the world is marking the end of the First World War first centenary and remembering its millions of military and civilian victims, in this article I’m going to focus only on one victim of the Great War and that’s the truth. There are millions of forgotten Arab and Muslim soldiers who […]

Colonialism

Human Zoos in the Age of Trump

Ariel Dorfman

Durham, NC (Tomdispatch.com) – When Donald Trump recently accused “illegal immigrants” of wanting to “pour into and infest our country,” there was an immediate outcry. After all, that verb, infest, had been used by the Nazis as a way of dehumanizing Jews and communists as rats, vermin, or insects that needed to be eradicated. Nobody, […]