Month

Archives: Colonialism

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

Colonial Slow Genocide: Palestinian Leader Abbas asks Britain for “Balfour” Apology

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestine, is asking Britain for an apology for its having in 1917 issued the infamous "Balfour Declaration." He won't…

Architects of Failure: 100 years of Sykes-Picot

By Akil N. Awan | ( History Today) | - - How an agreement signed in 1916 became shorthand for western treachery, greed and the impact of colonial machinations on the lives…

Britain should stop trying to pretend that its empire was benevolent

By Alan Lester | (The Conversation) | - - The recent debacle of David Cameron’s filmed condemnation of Nigerian and Afghan corruption and the Queen’s remark on Chinese officials’ rudeness highlights the…

100th Anniversary: What did the Sykes-Picot Agreement mean for the Middle East?

By Stephen Pascoe | (The Conversation) | - - To mark the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, we’ve got a package with an explanatory article about the secret accord (below) .…

Beyond Victimhood: 5 Slaves Who Fought Back and Changed History

By Mohamed Hemish | ( TeleSur | - - March 25 marks the United Nations’ “International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery,” which aims to draw attention to the more…

Syrian Refugees: Colonial Legacy & the Responsibility of France & UK

David Peduto | (Informed Comment) | - - The Syrian war has resurrected uncomfortable colonial legacies for France and the United Kingdom. For the French and the British, whose policies in post-World…

Anti-Orientalism: Artists 3-D Scan looted Egyptian treasure in German museum

By Cory Doctorow | ( Boing Boing | - - Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles, an Iraqi/German artistic duo, covertly scanned a famous looted Egyptian treasure, the Bust of Queen Nefertiti,…

Western Invasions can’t fix the Middle East because they wrecked the Middle East

By Baher Kamal | (Inter Press Service) | - - MADRID (IPS) - One hundred years ago, on 6 May 1916, two men, Briton Sir Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot,…

The lost fortunes of Palestine’s dynamic Ottoman-era merchants

By Charlie Hoyle | (Ma'an News Agency) | - - The pink stone mansions hidden among the modern urban geography of Bethlehem --surrounded by an eight-meter high concrete wall and penned in…

Despite Sordid Past, Nuclear Deal can Repair US-Iran Relations: An open letter to Congress and the White House

Francis A. Mlynarczyk, Jr. and Walter M. Cadette | (Informed Comment)| - - Washington has an opportunity to repair its tattered relations with Iran. The opportunity is there on the premise that…

Settlement Expansion Largely Responsible for Violence in Occupied West Bank

By Kanya D'Almeida | (Inter Press Service) | - - UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - Just weeks after an 18-month-old baby was killed in an arson attack in the Palestinian village of Duma,…

Israel orders half of West Bank Palestinian village demolished after Ramadan

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,…

Security Zones Being Used to Further Expand West Bank Settlements

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…