Review of Eugene Rogan, “The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (New York: Basic Books, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– How did Ottoman Damascus descend into violence and looting in July 1860? Why did the Damascene masses fall upon the Christians, leaving around 5,000 […]
- Africa (245)
- Asia (1,237)
- Australasia (34)
- Authoritarianism (384)
- Canada (7)
- Culture (553)
- Economy (1,047)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (51)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Degrowth (1)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Downward Mobility (1)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (16)
- Industry (5)
- Inequality (424)
- Inflation (5)
- infrastructure (10)
- Insurance (1)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (203)
- Plutocracy (619)
- Poverty (206)
- Poverty (12)
- Regulation (3)
- Retirement (1)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (37)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (114)
- Weapons sales (7)
- Education (165)
- Energy (1,721)
- Batteries (51)
- Coal (139)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Fossil Fuels (325)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (413)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (6)
- Hydroelectric (15)
- Mining (1)
- Natural Gas (107)
- Nuclear Energy (158)
- Petroleum (299)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (406)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (338)
- Environment (2,649)
- Climate Change (1,642)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (26)
- Biodiversity (12)
- Climate Refugees (2)
- CO2 (125)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (147)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (158)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Heat (389)
- Extreme Weather (296)
- Flooding (137)
- Food Supply (2)
- Forests (18)
- Green New Deal (40)
- Green Recycling (2)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (61)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (11)
- Sea Level (336)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (261)
- wildfires (237)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,291)
- Drought (295)
- Ecology (1)
- Ecology (10)
- Environmentalism (392)
- Green Transportation (252)
- Ice Melt (133)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (101)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (231)
- Water (95)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,642)
- Europe (1,355)
- Featured (4,046)
- Haiti (1)
- Health (693)
- History (354)
- Human Rights (1,587)
- Apartheid (263)
- censorship (305)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (577)
- Food Insecurity (29)
- Gay rights (29)
- Genocide (56)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Indigenous Rights (1)
- Migrants (4)
- privacy (21)
- Rights (89)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Starvation (4)
- Torture (102)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (103)
- Unlwful Killing (80)
- War Crimes (411)
- War Rape (9)
- International Politics and Economy (2,092)
- Arms Sales (72)
- BRICS (3)
- Corruption (265)
- Crime (130)
- Democracy (327)
- Dissent (435)
- Domestic Terrorism (15)
- Drones (112)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Hacking (8)
- Immigration (21)
- Immigration (4)
- Islamophobia (381)
- Migrants (2)
- military (125)
- nationalism (117)
- NATO (37)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- Peace (138)
- Policing (2)
- Politics (305)
- Politics&Culture (21)
- Propaganda (13)
- Smuggling (1)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (99)
- media (480)
- Middle East (9,640)
- Arab World (5,211)
- Iran (1,317)
- Israel (934)
- Israel/ Palestine (3,392)
- Israel/Palestine (9)
- Kurds (290)
- Turkey (586)
- Turkiye (113)
- Patriarchy (10)
- racism (467)
- religion (1,491)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (171)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (279)
- Terrorism (1,093)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,081)
- United Nations (159)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,329)
- US politics (5,326)
- Anti-War Movement (13)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (22)
- Central Intelligence Agency (63)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (78)
- Conspiracy Theories (23)
- Constitution (400)
- Courts (15)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (966)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (124)
- Ethnicities (387)
- Far Right (389)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (97)
- Immigration (240)
- Israel Lobbies (130)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (273)
- National Security State (475)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (564)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (9)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (13)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (15)
- Reproductive Choice (67)
- Republican Party (2,964)
- Supreme Court (133)
- Voter suppression (36)
- Whistleblowers (7)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (610)
- White Supremacists (229)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (557)
- workers (232)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (213)
Ottoman Empire
How Lebanon was shaped by its Great Famine in WW I
Brand, Tylor. Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Review of Tylor Brand, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – Suez, Gallipoli, Kut al-Amara, and Jerusalem saw […]
The Tapestry of Palestinian History: The Palestine Museum in Bir Zeit
Naima Morelli naimamorelli ( Middle East Monitor ) – Duty and care are the words that would best describe the approach of Dr Adila Laidi-Hanieh towards the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. She is stepping down as director of the museum at the end of this month, and we took the opportunity for her to […]
Fascist Italy’s forgotten Concentration Camps in Libya
Mustafa Fetouri MFetouri ( Middle East Monitor ) – On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above […]
Sudan’s entire History has been dominated by Soldiers and the Violence and Corruption they Bring
By Justin Willis, Durham University | – (The Conversation) – Sudan’s Central Reserve Police (CRP) recently announced it would be deploying officers to the streets of Khartoum to “secure public and private property”. That may sound puzzling in the context of the current violence: what are the police doing in the middle of this? The […]
DNA Study: Medieval Iranian Merchants account for Half of the Ancestry of Swahili People of East African Coast
By Chapurukha Kusimba, University of South Florida and David Reich, Harvard University | – The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean […]
The Ottoman Empire Ended Exactly a Century ago: Its Enduring Legacy for Europe and the Middle East
By Georgios Giannakopoulos, King’s College London | – (The Conversation) – For centuries empires were the dominant form of political organisation. In the west there is some degree of familiarity with the British, French and German empires, and the empires of Spain and Portugal. Not to mention the Romans or the Greeks. But one empire […]
The Ukraine Invasion and the Weight of the Crimean War: “We hate most those we harm the most”
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – There are some fascinating similarities between the Crimean War of the 1850s and the Ukraine War of 2022. According to Norman Rich, author of “The Crimean War” its main purpose was the containment of an expanding Russia as European powers had become fearful of Russia’s extension of power […]
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 […]