Colonialism

1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords’ indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement

By Maura Chhun | – In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering 12 to 13 million people died, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.” At the time of the pandemic, India […]

Colonialism

Juan Cole, “International Liberation and Nonviolent Noncooperation: Martin Luther King and Afro-Asia” (Video)

Juan Cole

The nonviolent activism of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is associated in the minds of many primarily with the Civil Rights Movement against institutionalized racism in Jim Crow America. King was, however, a keen observer of decolonization and the awakening of colonized peoples in Afro-Asia to aspirations for self-determination. This anti-colonial perspective led to […]

Colonialism

When an Imperial U.S. first Tried to Crush a Muslim Movement: Massacres in the Philippines

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com) – For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce tribal Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar? As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers […]

Christianity

White Anxiety and Imperial Christianity: The GOP Pathologies that Twin them with Trump

Rebecca Gordon

(Tomdispatch.com ) – On the Thursday of the second week of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had a special guest on his weekly podcast, Carl Bernstein. It was Bernstein, with fellow Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, whose reporting broke open the story of how the Committee to Re-elect the […]

Colonialism

Putting the American in Somali-American: Why does Ilhan Omar put a Scare into the US Power Elite?

Juan Cole

Reprint edition. By Juan Cole | – Trump has attempted to depict Rep. Ilhan Omar’s reformism as an expression of hatred for the US. It is not. It is a recognition of the dark underbelly of this country’s history, its entanglement in colonialism and slavery and class oppression. She makes this critique from a unique […]

Colonialism

Israel Systematically Hiding Documents Proving Expulsion, Oppression of Palestinians

Juan Cole

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

Our understanding of colonialism is often limited to simple ideas about what we think colonialism looked like in the past

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 […]