History

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 […]

Archaeology

Dear Tucker Carlson: Iraqis Invented Civilization and, like, Literacy when “White Men” were Painting themselves Blue

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson has been playing David Duke with a northeast accent and bow tie for some years, but in radio interviews with Bubba the Love Sponge from a decade ago released by Media Matters, he gave up the dog whistle for butchering and barbecuing the dog. Mediamatters4america: “Tucker Carlson makes […]

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 […]

Archaeology

For Int’l Women’s Day: An Arabian Woman of Late Antiquity Prays to Goddesses for Peace

Juan Cole

For Int’l Women’s Day, via OCIANA a Safaitic Arabic inscription [c. 1-400 AD], by a wealthy woman calling on two goddesses for peace: “By Shamat daughter of Sar is the mule [owned] and O {Shahqam} —-m—- [and] Allat, [grant] {security} [for] the people of al-Ḍaf.” This inscription from the first centuries after Christ in Arabia […]

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 […]

History

Islamophobia versus World History: Rediscovering Marshall Hodgson

Edmund Burke III

Santa Cruz (Informed Comment) – Published in 1974, Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam was a watershed moment in the study of Islam. By locating the history of Islamic societies in a global perspective, Hodgson challenged the orientalist paradigms that had stunted the development of Islamic studies and provided an alternative approach to world history. […]

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, […]