History

The U.S. Committed Cliocide (Destruction of History) in Iraq, and even Returning Gilgamesh Can’t Fix it

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US government has returned 17,000 archeological artifacts to Iraq, many of them over 4,000 years old. This, according to Al Jazeera The objects and tablets were looted from the country during the chaos of the Bush administration’s rule of that country and were smuggled into the U.S., then sold […]

History

Disruption — David Potter discusses Radical Change in History (Constantine, Muhammad, Trump) with Juan Cole on “Literati at Home”

Juan Cole

At Home with Literati: David Potter & Juan Cole The book is David Potter, Disruption: Why things Change — order from Literati Bookstore. “How do things change? The question is critical to the historical study of any era but it is also a profoundly important issue today as western democracies find the fundamental tenets of […]

Colonialism

Top 5 Differences between the Fourth of July and the Capitol Insurrection

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 1. The Fourth of July celebrates a revolutionary event. January 6 was a counter-revolutionary event. Why do I say this? The chief feature of the Declaration of Independence was not that it announced an insurrection (or rather confirmed one already announced by some 90 councils and other local bodies). Insurrections […]

Bill of Rights

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t really complaining about King George, and 5 other surprising facts for July Fourth

The Conversation

By Woody Holton | – Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as historian Woody Holton explains. His forthcoming book “Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced […]

Climate Crisis

How colonialism’s legacy makes it harder for countries to escape poverty and fossil fuels today

The Conversation

By Patrick Greiner | – ( The Conversation ) – While fossil fuels were powering wealthy nations’ economic growth in the 19th and 20th centuries, many countries across the Global South remained largely impoverished. Today, all that burning of oil, coal and natural gas has warmed the planet toward dangerous levels, and science shows that […]

African-Americans

If we truly honored Juneteenth, we would end the exception in the 13th amendment

Waging Nonviolence

By Emma Jordan-Simpson | – (Waging Nonviolence ) – In my inbox this morning from a major nonprofit organization that should have known better was a Juneteenth celebratory greeting: “We proudly celebrate Juneteenth, the day slavery finally came to an end throughout the South — historically a monumental feat for American history and now a […]

History

The Qur’an and Black Lives Matter (Podcast)

Juan Cole

My interview is at Renovatio concerning my forthcoming article on equality in the Qur’an, which I wrote in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement. The audio is embedded here: Renovatio’s notes: “God’s creativity is seen as an expression of the divine will and those blessed with insight can perceive it as such, and perhaps […]

African-Americans

When You Lift from the Bottom, Everyone Rises: Have We Entered America’s Third Era of Reconstruction?

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – West Virginia, a state first established in defiance of slavery, has recently become ground zero in the fight for voting rights. In an early June op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin vowed to maintain the Senate filibuster, while opposing the For the People Act, a bill to expand voting […]

Climate Change

What the Ottoman Empire can teach us about the consequences of climate change – and how drought can uproot peoples and fuel warfare

The Conversation

By Andrea Duffy | – In the late 16th century, hundreds of bandits on horseback stormed through the countryside of Ottoman Anatolia raiding villages, inciting violence and destabilizing the sultan’s grip on power Four hundred years later and a few hundred miles away in the former Ottoman territory of Syria, widespread protests escalated into a […]