History

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | The discovery of a couple pages [apparently actually 18] of a very old Qur’an (the Muslim scripture), probably from the 640s CE [“AD”], in a library in Britain, has provoked a good deal of press reporting. Muslim tradition holds that the scripture was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad […]

Climate Change

What can World History teach us about Cooperating against Global Climate Challenge?

contributors

By Adrian Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It is ironic, perhaps, but writing a world history, which involves telling hundreds of stories, makes one realize how few truly significant stories there are in that history. Most significant among these is not the history of Europe, or the history of science, or warfare, or […]

Apartheid

Israel orders half of West Bank Palestinian village demolished after Ramadan

contributors

Ma’an News Agency | – – HEBRON (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of around half of the homes in a village south of Hebron to be carried out after Ramadan, Israeli watchdogs said on Wednesday. (MaanImages/Charlie Hoyle, File) Rabbis for Human Rights and B’Tselem said in a statement that pressure from Israeli settlers […]

Apartheid

Security Zones Being Used to Further Expand West Bank Settlements

contributors

By IMEMC | – – “Land confiscated from Palestinians for the purpose of security buffer zones around illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is actually being utilized as “land reserves or for agriculture,” according to an investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.” The buffer zones were originally created during the Second Intifada [Palestinian Uprising] reportedly […]

Cold War

Iran’s Nuclear Program was A Child Of Washington in the First Place

contributors

By Tony Wesolowsky | (RFE/RL) | – – The start of Iran’s nuclear program can arguably be pegged to December 8, 1953. It was on that date that U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what was later dubbed his Atoms For Peace speech to the United Nations General Assembly. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (right) […]

Colonialism

Michael Oren, Neo-Orientalism and the Ghost of Edward Said

contributors

By Daniel Brumberg | (Informed Comment) | – – Poor Edward Said cannot rest in peace. Twelve years after he passed away from cancer, his ghost apparently haunts the State Department, Pentagon and even the White House. This, at any rate, is the argument that informs the grim diagnoses of Obama “Muslim World” policies offered […]

Archaeology

No, GOP, biblical Marriage was not between one man and one woman

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The freak-out by the Republican presidential candidates over the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage provokes me to revise and reprise the points below. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have formally pledged: “We will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us […]

African-Americans

1871: First US Anti-Terror Law banned White Racist attacks on Black Officials, Voters

contributors

Dara Lind | (Vox Video Report) | – – “Was the shooting that killed 9 people in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church on Wednesday terrorism? Vox’s Dara Lind explains.” Vox: “The Charleston shooting is part of a long history of anti-black terrorism”

Colonialism

The Forgotten Costs of War in the Middle East

contributors

By David Vine | (Tomdispatch.com) | – First, they tried to shoot the dogs. Next, they tried to poison them with strychnine. When both failed as efficient killing methods, British government agents and U.S. Navy personnel used raw meat to lure the pets into a sealed shed. Locking them inside, they gassed the howling animals […]