Month

Archives: History

What can today’s Activists learn from the Summer of Love and the New Left?

Ira Chernus | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | - - It’s the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. What better place to celebrate than that fabled era’s epicenter, San Francisco’s Golden Gate…

First, the Soviets Collapsed: Is it America’s Turn Now?

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - Jump into your time machine and let me transport you back to another age. It’s May 2001 and the Atlantic Monthly has…

Why Thomas Jefferson’s vision of American Islam matters today

Denise A. Spellberg | (The Conversation) | - - An estimated 3.3 million American Muslims are celebrating the month of Ramadan. It was during this month that Prophet Mohammad first received revelations…

Was/Is there an Islamic Enlightenment? (de Bellaigue)

William Eichler interviews Christopher de Bellaigue | Informed Comment | - - Eichler: 1. In the conclusion to The Islamic Enlightenment you describe modern jihadists as “miracle-grow Muslims” who have been “incubated…

Alabama Passes Bill to Protect Confederate Monuments even at cost of Economy

TeleSur | - - Some Southern cities are rethinking the appropriateness of keeping such emblems on public property. Not Alabama. Alabama lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that prohibits the removal of…

GOP Politician: ‘ISIS Has Won’ After Confederate Monument Removed

Cenk Uygur | (The Young Turks) | Video News Clip | - - "Hey Confederates: your side lost. Yankees kicked your traitor slaver asses. Deal with it. Cenk Uygur, host of The…

Dear Marine Le Pen: Only a Fascist would Praise Colonialism . . . Oh Wait

Jessica Northey | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | - - Marine Le Pen's declaration that colonialism was a positive thing is not only a denial of France's painful history, but an example of the…

Mideast Partition Plans won’t Bring Peace, just Imperial Social Engineering

By Laura Robson | (Informed Comment) | - - The idea that partition and population exchange might represent “solutions” to Middle Eastern conflict, long advocated by a wide variety of observers and…

Washington’s demonization of Foes jumps Shark with Sean Spicer on Hitler

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - White House spokesman Sean Spicer is as ill-suited for his job as his boss Donald Trump is ill-suited for his own. The most…

What history reveals about surges in anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiments

By Ingrid Anderson | (The Conversation) | - - This February, more than 100 gravestones were vandalized at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society Cemetery outside of St. Louis, Missouri and at the…

No, supremacists, the Vikings wouldn’t have put up with “Teuton” Donald Trump

By Keith Ruiter | (The Conversation) | - - It has been suggested that Donald Trump “may get his assertive rather than passive manner from his alleged Viking ancestors”. Or so says…

The Untold Violence of the Pax Americana

John W. Dower | ( Tomdispatch.com) | - - [This essay is adapted from “Measuring Violence,” the first chapter of John Dower’s new book, The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since…

Syrian Musicians Celebrate Palmyra’s Liberation

TeleSur | - - The city and its ruins, designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 1980, have traded hands several times during Syria's six-year civil war. The 15-year-old's voice floated over…

Photo of the Day: Sad Girl, Happy Girl, Iran 1900 (Sykes)

British Museum | Sir Percy Sykes | - - Two rural Iranian girls of the Qajar era, 1900, one sad, one mischievous. Via British Museum Museum number: Sykes.453 Description: Lantern slide, showing…

Understanding Islam means understanding its and our Multiculturalism

Kishwar Rizvi | (The Conversation) | - - There has been much misinformation about Islam. Reports in Western media tend to perpetuate stereotypes that Islam is a violent religion and Muslim women…

Top Five ways Jesus was not White

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - Given the alarming rise of white nationalism in the United States and the ways in which it is often entangled with Christian nationalism,…

Egypt’s Special Courts in time of Crisis are Nothing New

by Yoram Meital | (Informed Comment) | - - The toppling of a regime, whether by civil insurrection or military coup, invariably gives rise to a fierce struggle over the lineaments of…

What Everyone Should Know about the Prophet Muhammad

Steve Scholl | (Spirituality and Health Magazine) | - - Muhammad has become a strangely unifying figure in America—able to get conservative Glenn Beck and liberal Bill Maher to agree that Islam…

Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East

By Christopher M. Davidson | (Informed Comment) | - - Swept along on a tidal wave of euphoria, by spring 2011 many had cautiously begun to believe that the wave of Arab…

60 Years later, Suez Crisis looks a lot like Iraq War

By Nigel Ashton | (The Conversation) | - - Does history repeat itself? Never perfectly or precisely, but some of the parallels between Anthony Eden’s handling of the 1956 Suez Crisis and…