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Category: History/Archeology

We need Greenland. But not in the way Trump imagines

We need Greenland. But not in the way Trump imagines

A year ago, Paul Bierman wrote: Donald Trump has a thing for Greenland. First, he wanted to buy the Arctic island. Then, his son visited for a photo-op. Now, he refuses to rule out using the U.S. military to seize it. Decades ago, the value of Greenland was indeed its strategic location between superpowers and its unique mineral resources. No longer. Today, Greenland’s value is the ice that covers 80 percent of the island. Keeping Greenland’s ice frozen preserves at…

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The Trump regime rejects America’s foundational belief in human equality

The Trump regime rejects America’s foundational belief in human equality

Osita Nwanevu writes: It’s garnered less attention than the other events of our already wretched new year. But to understand why Renee Nicole Good was killed on Wednesday, why the White House has designs on Greenland, and why the people of Venezuela may soon be governed, in effect, by a junta of oil companies backed by the US military, we should also consider an email Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M, received about his course Contemporary Moral Problems…

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‘Naked imperialism’: How Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the U.S.

‘Naked imperialism’: How Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the U.S.

The Guardian reports: The US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, follow a long history of interventions in South and Central America and the Caribbean over the past two centuries. But they also mark an unprecedented moment as the first direct US military attack on a South American country. At a press conference after Maduro’s capture, Donald Trump said that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again”. But since the mid-19th…

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After Watergate, the presidency was made legally accountable. Trump decided that doesn’t apply to him

After Watergate, the presidency was made legally accountable. Trump decided that doesn’t apply to him

Matthew Purdy writes: A power-hungry president had twisted the government into a tool for his personal political benefit. His aides kept an “enemies list” of opponents to be punished. His cronies ran the Justice Department and he made puppets of other agencies that were meant to be independent. Corporations that wanted favorable treatment from the White House were pressured to make illegal contributions to the president’s political coffers. As revelations of rot in the Nixon administration tumbled out through the…

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The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power

The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power

Allison Stanger writes: On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter granting the East India Company exclusive rights to conduct trade in the Indian Ocean region. The document was precise in its limitations: The company could establish trading posts, negotiate with local rulers, and defend its commercial interests. Nothing more. Seventy-seven years later, the same company had acquired the right to mint currency on behalf of the British crown. By 1765, it controlled the tax collection (ruthlessly…

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They tried to smear him as an antisemite – but Mayor Zohran Mamdani walks in a rich Jewish tradition

They tried to smear him as an antisemite – but Mayor Zohran Mamdani walks in a rich Jewish tradition

Molly Crabapple writes: Billionaires raised fortunes against him. The president threatened to strip his citizenship. Mainstream synagogues slandered him as the spawn of Osama Bin Laden and Chairman Mao. But today, Zohran Mamdani became the first socialist mayor of New York City. For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which…

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What if our ancestors didn’t have feelings anything like we do?

What if our ancestors didn’t have feelings anything like we do?

Gal Beckerman writes: The historian Rob Boddice sat cross-legged on his couch in Montreal on a frigid day last winter and conjured for me the image of a medieval carpenter, hammering away in his workshop. “Imagine this guy; he’s building a table,” he said. Suddenly the carpenter misses the nail and bangs his thumb instead. “What did that feel like for him?” Boddice asked. I stared for a few seconds while Boddice smiled encouragingly, as if he’d just asked me…

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How Trump upended the rules-based global order

How Trump upended the rules-based global order

Patrick Wintour writes: ‘The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci once wrote. “And the new world struggles to be born.” In such interregnums, the Italian Marxist philosopher suggested, “every act, even the smallest, may acquire decisive weight”. In 2025, western leaders appeared convinced they – and we – were living through one such transitional period, as the world of international relations established after the second world war crashed to a halt. During such eras, Gramsci more famously wrote, “morbid phenomena…

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John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

David Daley writes: In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data…

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U.S. immigration and assimilation debates have roots in patterns of settlement that go back centuries

U.S. immigration and assimilation debates have roots in patterns of settlement that go back centuries

Colin Woodard writes: It is said that America is a nation of immigrants, and for a truism, that’s pretty accurate. But it’s also true that the United States hasn’t always been a nation of immigrants — or at least not all at the same time and not in all the same places. These days, the debate over immigration still revolves around age-old issues — whether immigrants can assimilate, whether they must assimilate, whether the nation is augmented by newcomers or…

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The U.S. is engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of the 1930s, British MPs warn

The U.S. is engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of the 1930s, British MPs warn

The Guardian reports: The US is engaging in “extreme rightwing tropes” with echoes of the 1930s and threatening “chilling” interference in European democracies, British MPs warned ministers on Thursday. The House of Commons rounded on Donald Trump’s national security strategy, which stated that Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” and vowed to help the continent “correct its current trajectory and promote patriotic European parties”. Matt Western, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s joint committee on the UK government’s national security…

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Decolonise political thought. Africa’s alternatives to liberalism

Decolonise political thought. Africa’s alternatives to liberalism

Gabriel Asuquo writes: When African nations such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Cameroon claimed independence in the mid-20th century, they inherited more than borders and fragile institutions; they also inherited a political philosophy. Liberalism, born of Europe’s Enlightenment, was presented as the universal grammar of progress. It came clothed in the language of democracy, development and human rights, promising that multiparty elections, private property, free markets and individual rights would secure for Africa a swift entry into modernity. Yet, decades…

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Echoes of 1938 in 2025

Echoes of 1938 in 2025

Timothy Snyder writes: In certain ways, the autumn of 2025 in the United States has recalled the autumn of 1938 in Nazi Germany. The mass deportation of undocumented people was one of Hitler’s largest coercive policies before the war. That fall, the German police and SS rounded up Jews who lacked German citizenship and dumped them on the Polish side of the German-Polish border. This set off a chain of events which can give us a useful perspective on where…

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Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

Rebecca Solnit writes: As Donald Trump deteriorates and his grasp on power fades, he has been lashing out furiously at female journalists and ethnic groups, most recently Somali Americans. His insults land because of their animosity and his power, not their accuracy. Likewise, his administration’s attacks on immigrants are sloppy and driven by lies. It’s strikingly clear that the target is not individuals with criminal records. It’s anyone and everyone guilty of being brown. Native Americans with tribal identification cards,…

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Haunted by history, Japanese Americans fight against Trump’s immigration crackdown

Haunted by history, Japanese Americans fight against Trump’s immigration crackdown

The New York Times reports: From the passenger seat of a sky blue Prius, Amy Oba craned her neck to get a look at the federal detention center, a hulking tower surrounded by a black chain-link fence and laced with barbed wire. On a recent evening, she was on patrol, part of a group of Japanese Americans who are keeping a watchful eye on the actions of immigration agents in Los Angeles. “I definitely think about my family when we…

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Decades-long droughts doomed one of the world’s oldest civilizations

Decades-long droughts doomed one of the world’s oldest civilizations

Live Science reports: A series of severe, decades-long droughts ushered the end of the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the world’s oldest civilizations, a new study finds. This Indus Valley Civilization (also known as the “Harappan” civilization) flourished between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago in a region that stretched across the modern-day India-Pakistan border. Its people created cities, such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, which had sophisticated water-management systems. They also created a written script, which remains undeciphered by modern…

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