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For anyone who keeps abreast of politics in places like Japan, South Korea, or Turkey, the spectacle of a nationalist movement attacking textbooks and curricula for being insufficiently patriotic is a familiar one. The current strife gives experts in, say, Japanese history curricula a chance for their own “what would you say if you saw this in another country” moment.

unlike those countries the United States doesn’t have a national educational curriculum, since we’ve decided in our infinite wisdom to allow states and localities to decide what our children in public schools will learn. This is an oddity, given that educational curricula in most countries have been founded specifically to help nationalize disparate communities—to turn peasants into Frenchmen, or serfs into the new Soviet man, for instance

even before the dreaded Texas school textbook adoption committee used its market power to enforce a degree of uniformity in historiography that we basically had a form of national consensus about what should be taught: a blandly consensual, Whiggish, sunnily white-apologist curriculum in which all good things (like democracy, capitalism, and the interests of big business) went together and all bad things (like labor unions, radical activists, and political divisions) could be ignored

British Columbian governments and officials played a major role in the incarceration and dispossession of Japanese Canadians, and in other racist actions over the years. The B.C. legislature passed 170 anti-Asian laws from 1895-1950 that seriously impacted the Japanese Canadian community.

Many in the federal government didn’t buy the B.C. government’s claims that Japanese Canadian were spies, but the B.C. delegation persisted and ultimately succeeded.

the army and RCMP declared that they did not believe that Japanese Canadians were a security risk. (Contrast this with the treatment of German and Italian Canadian communities who were not interned on masse nor dispossessed.)

There are things going on in the sky that are strange and do not have an obvious explanation. These are UFOs, and like any other unidentified phenomenon, human beings are curious creatures and normally scientists will rush out to study whatever we find fascinating or puzzling. But in this case, scientists won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. And that’s the taboo. So even though the Navy is now saying, “Hey, we’ve got UFOs on film, here they are,” the scientists are still not going to study them. So there seems to be something blocking the scientific community from engaging this phenomenon

We argued in our 2008 academic paper that the modern state is what we call anthropocentric. Basically, that means human beings are sovereigns. In ancient times, it was the gods or nature that was thought to rule over everything. Now it’s human beings. And this principle is embodied in the state. And if you call that into question, if you call into question that the state is not the only potential sovereign here, the whole legitimacy of the state is called into question. So the whole worldview of the modern state is very vulnerable to the UFO question. You can’t even ask the question because it raises the possibility that there could be ETs here. And that would just blow everything wide open.

What’s interesting lately is that states seem more willing to engage with this than scientists. I think there’s a hubris in the scientific community, a belief that human beings are the most intelligent species on this planet, and it’s very hard to come to grips with the idea that if there are aliens here, they’re obviously much smarter than we are.

what would later be claimed, by those who led it, as one of the most successful propaganda operations in postwar British history. A top secret operation that helped overthrow the leader of the fourth most populous country in the world and contributed to the mass murder of more than half a million of its citizens.

Recently released in Britain’s National Archives are pamphlets purporting to be written by Indonesian patriots, but in fact written by British propagandists, calling on Indonesians to eliminate the PKI, then the biggest communist party in the non-communist world.

The outcome of the turmoil was a brutal and corrupt 32-year military dictatorship whose legacy shapes Indonesia to this day

"The United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries," he said in his address before the 193-member General Assembly. "The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn't borne out by America's current policy or public opinion."

The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill

In addressing the conflict in Syria, Obama said U.S. aims were largely humanitarian. "There's no 'great game' to be won, nor does America have any interest in Syria beyond the well-being of its people, the stability of its neighbors, the elimination of chemical weapons, and ensuring it does not become a safe haven for terrorists,"

Why is the world’s safest, most powerful country its biggest defense spender, more than triple the next spender (China)?

as a percentage of GDP defense has been hovering around 4-5% since the end of the Cold War. Nothing big has changed recently, but for an increase in DoD’s budget after 9/11 that is now being scaled back. The USAF is decades ahead of the Chinese and Russians in stealth and UAVs. We’re weaponizing space. We have ten times the number of nuclear warheads the Chinese have. (The Chinese are actually very responsible on MAD, not wildly overbuilding like we did, but no one ever gives them credit for that.) We have 11 carrier groups; China has zero. If you look at the total US national security budget – because a lot of defense-related spending in the US is done outside of DoD as a gimmick to make the DoD number look smaller than it really should be – it’s actually closer to 8% of GDP: DoD + VA + DHS + the intel community + DoE (which pays for US nukes) = $1T per annum. If Chalmers Johnson is right, we have bases of one kind or another in something like 2/3 of the world’s countries. If anything we look like an imperium, like the Delian League morphing into the Athenian Empire. But one Obama official says ‘leading from behind’ and we don’t charge into Syria – despite charging into Libya and Obama’s first term surge into Afghanistan – and suddenly it’s national security crisis. Good grief, think-tankers. Don’t be so lazy.

the blissful unwillingness to learn even the most obvious lessons from the GWoT: that the US – yes, even America – can’t do occupations well

“I’m an unashamed traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum,” Mr Gove said. “Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of 11, modern foreign languages. That’s the best training of the mind and that’s how children will be able to compete.”

In the absence of any context, the image becomes an abstraction; it is an image of European soldiers, acting in the name of the international community and benevolently protecting a group of happy but poor, brown children in some nameless tropical locale. In other words, this is the new portrait of the white man's burden.

This is the big door through which we may penetrate into the affairs of the East …. In addition to the big door there is a smaller one. Syria, and the Christian population of Lebanon in particular, have the right to obtain from the Sultan, by virtue of a European intervention, guarantees, and in particular an administrative regulation, which may provide them with protection from the abuse they suffered under different rulers and that may secure Syria against sliding once more into chaos … We believe that it is the duty of the Christian powers, even their honour, to support this approach and push forward toward accomplishing a positive practical outcome

Guizot thought that obtaining the consent of Russia and Austria would neutralise Britain and make it less able to hinder the implementation of his project. Russia had been pursuing an expansionist approach within the Ottoman sphere of influence. It had close links with the Orthodox and Armenians of the Sultanate, who – and not the Catholics – constituted the majority of the Christians of the Orient.

he was seeking to establish an independent, or semi-independent, administrative status in the district of Jerusalem, which was at the time part of the Damascus governorate

In a bid to stop "biopiracy", researchers are building a giant database to catalog genetic material from the world's largest rainforest. From the rubber in car tires, to cosmetics and medicines, genetic material contained in the Amazon region has contributed to discoveries worth billions of dollars. Communities living there, however, have rarely benefited from the genetic wealth extracted from their land - a form of theft that legal experts call "biopiracy".

"At the heart of the conservation debate is: how do you find a way for a person in the forest to get more cash in their hand right now from preserving that habitat rather than cutting it down?"

compelling investors to pay royalties

Listening to Capra’s motivation for the film—as quoted in The Los Angeles Times—makes it hard to believe he had anything like promoting a worker’s paradise in mind: “There are just two things that are important,” he said, “One is to strengthen the individual’s belief in himself, and the other, even more important right now, is to combat a modern trend toward atheism.” But in the FBI’s analysis—and possibly Rand’s, though it’s not clear how much, if any, of the report she authored directly—the tale of George Bailey manifested several subversive tendencies. Flavorwire sums up the charges succinctly: “Written by Communist sympathizers,” “Attempting to instigate class warfare,” and “Demonizing bankers.”

even if It’s A Wonderful Life may now look like apple pie on celluloid, Flavorwire points out that it's still liable to raise suspicions among certain aggressive pundits and culture warriors who push a “war on Christmas” narrative and see socialist subversion even in acts of charity, like those displayed so extravagantly in the film's mushy ending

New Mexico spaceport is only the latest entry in a triumphant time line of military and aerospace innovation in this southwestern state. Our video narrator speeds through Spanish colonialism and westward expansion to highlight the Manhattan Project’s work in Los Alamos, to the north, and Operation Paperclip, a secret program that recruited German scientists to the United States after World War II. Among them was Wernher von Braun, who brought his V-2 rockets to the state.White Sands Missile Range, a 3,200-square-mile military-testing site in South Central New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin, hosted much of this work. It’s home to the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, and von Braun’s rocket testing site, too. Spaceport America is positioned adjacent to the Army property, in a tightly protected airspace. That makes rocket-ship testing a lot easier.

“It feels exciting, it’s like the future is now,”

For now, the spaceport is a futurist tourist attraction, not an operational harbor to the cosmos. The tour buses depart from a former T or C community center twice a day every Saturday. They pass thrift stores, RV parks, and bland but durable-looking structures, defiant underdogs against the mountains. We pass the Elephant Butte Dam, a stunning example of early-20th-century Bureau of Reclamation engineering that made it possible for agriculture to thrive in southern New Mexico; even so, a fellow spaceport tourist notes that the water levels seem far lower than what he recalls from childhood

There was no Orientalism before modernity

“No matter how ethnocentric and how dominating pre-modern empires all were, none could wed knowledge to power and redefine ethics as our modern empires did and continue to do.”

I see engineering, economics, business schools, journalism, law schools, mainstream philosophy, science, medicine, and a host of others as being epistemologically structured in the same manner in which Orientalism was fashioned

AFRICOM contends that hundreds of airstrikes and commando missions in the past 10 years have killed or injured only two civilians in Somalia. This flies in the face of scores of local accounts as well as investigations by international journalists and human rights organizations, including a recent report by Amnesty International. And The Intercept has obtained an AFRICOM document, through the Freedom of Information Act, that shows the command itself has long been aware of multiple attacks that left civilians dead or wounded following operations by U.S. or allied forces

The document, along with remarks from a former commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa who spoke with The Intercept, suggests that AFRICOM may be classifying all military-aged males killed in airstrikes, including civilians, as combatants. (This has long been standard operating procedure in Afghanistan, suggesting that targeting protocols employed by U.S. Central Command have migrated to AFRICOM.)

Some witnesses interviewed by Amnesty suggested that a lone member of al-Shabab, identified by two people as “Malable,” was the fourth individual killed and the likely target of the strike. A senior local official also confirmed to Amnesty that three civilians were killed in the attack. “I don’t know why they were hit, but maybe it was a mistake,” the local official said. “The U.S. are making a lot of mistakes in this region.”

Supritha Rajan, an English professor at the University of Rochester, sees the dominant story of capitalism working in this way. Part of a wave of humanities scholars taking a closer look at the meaning and history of capitalism, her book, A Tale of Two Capitalisms, reveals how the fields of anthropology and economics, along with the literary form of the novel, which developed together in the late 18th and 19thcenturies, cross-pollinated each other and worked in tandem to investigate and offer new theories about human nature and culture. Together, they helped create a new story for the citizens of an emerging world.

Late 19th century economist Alfred Marshall went so far as to invoke the concept of medieval chivalry to explain how modern economic systems should function. In “The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry,” he criticized contemporary accounts of the free market and described a middle path between government non-interference and a systemic welfare state, calling on a “spirit of chivalry” which could drive people to combine self-interest with self-sacrifice. This model would function to uphold the paternalistic administration required for the British Empire.

Rajan started with a hunch that magical rites, sacrificial rituals, and sacred values were not just relics of a pre-modern past, but actually woven right into the story of capitalism from the beginning. They exist everywhere under our noses, popping up in everyday economic activities and permeating even the high-tech exchanges of the global marketplace. What we are taught to think of as irrational and rational are actually mobile, flexible categories that continuously overlap

Even as they gaze at the monument, tourists "overlook entirely" its reference to the role of America's indigenous people in the battle at Iwo Jima, said Elizabeth Rule, assistant director of the AT&T Center for Indigenous Politics and Policy. So, she helped create an app to change that. The memorial is the first entry in the new Guide to Indigenous DC app, which takes users on a walking tour of Native American history — and ongoing presence — in the nation's capital.

The free app, which Rule designed in collaboration with others at the AT&T Center and with the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association, features 17 sites around the city.

"The focus on D.C. is mainly driven by the desire to educate people that the capital of the nation, the seat of government, is an Indian space," said Rule, who is a member of Oklahoma's Chickasaw Nation.

The Eisenhower administration relied on the advice of officials who admired Nasser as a nationalist and anti-Communist: a secular modernizer, the long hoped-for “Arab Ataturk.” The most important and forceful of the Nasser admirers was Kermit Roosevelt, the C.I.A. officer who had done so much in 1953 to restore to power in Iran that other secular modernizer, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

To befriend Nasser, the Eisenhower administration suggested a big increase in economic and military aid; pressed Israel to surrender much of the Negev to Egypt and Jordan; supported Nasser’s demand that the British military vacate the canal zone; and clandestinely provided Nasser with much of the equipment — and many of the technical experts — who built his radio station Voice of the Arabs into the most influential propaganda network in the Arab-speaking world.

Offers of aid were leveraged by Nasser to extract better terms from the Soviet Union, his preferred military partner. Pressure on Israel did not impress Nasser, who wanted a permanent crisis he could exploit to mobilize Arab opinion behind him. Forcing Britain out of the canal zone in the mid-50s enabled Nasser to grab the canal itself in 1956. Rather than use his radio network to warn Arabs against Communism, Nasser employed it to inflame Arab opinion against the West’s most reliable regional allies, the Hashemite monarchies, helping to topple Iraq’s regime in 1958 and very nearly finishing off Jordan’s.

What is the “Muslim world?” Is it solely a descriptive term employed in the social sciences and humanities to name a shifting geographical boundary of Muslim-majority countries? Or, as its critics argue, is it a term that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a strategy to imagine a new transnational, religious unity at the end of empire?

precolonial forms of communal difference and interaction did not directly correspond to the kinds of intra- and inter-imperial claims concerning citizenship and belonging that were at stake in the formulation of the idea of the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Citizenship under British, French, or Dutch rule often came with the promise of integration into the “civilized” political order, yet with varying degrees of fulfillment and often dependent on whether the colonial subject had been sufficiently “educated” into Europe’s civilizational order

Gilley’s piece makes three inter-related claims; all of these are supported only sloppily by a bad reading of evidence and scholarly literature: that colonialism was beneficial, that elites often supported it, and that we need a return to colonialism today

a substantial social science literature has already developed to show the effects of colonialism. While this literature is too voluminous to review here, some findings are significant to point out as illustrations: Inter-communal violence is highly correlated with colonial legacies. Colonialism has an impact on the psychophysical health of colonized peoples and their dependency on the state. Colonialism has annihilated entire populations. One example: 84% decline in population of indigenous peoples of Australia between British colonization and 1900.

Gilley also brings up some anecdotal examples of local elites supporting colonialism in colonized areas. His lack of a nuanced discussion here is due largely to the fact that he does not engage with the post-colonial social science literature on dependency, which has long argued that many elites had economic interests in common with colonizers, often to the detriment of the colonized peoples they represent. André Gunder Frank called this the “comprador class,” and this group is implicated directly in the perpetuation of underdevelopment in the wake of post-colonialism. They are not a piece of contrary evidence about colonialism’s effects. They are effects. And bad ones.

sought to align themselves with a long and venerable tradition of internal domestic opposition to the abuses of imperial power abroad, not only but quite often issuing from the left. But they do not rightfully belong in that company. No one who explicitly or implicitly aligns themselves with the malignant Assad government does. No one who selectively and opportunistically deploys charges of “imperialism” for reasons of their particular version of “left” politics rather than opposing it consistently in principle across the globe—thereby acknowledging the imperialist interventionism of Russia, Iran, and China—does.

The evidence that US power has itself been appallingly destructive, especially during the Cold War, is overwhelming. All across the globe, from Vietnam to Indonesia to Iran to Congo to South and Central America and beyond, the record of massive human rights abuses accumulated in the name of fighting Communism is clear. In the post-Cold War period of the so-called “War on Terror,” American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have done nothing to suggest a fundamental national change of heart. But America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what these people claim. The idea that it somehow is, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, is a by-product of a provincial political culture which insists on both the centrality of US power globally as well as the imperialist right to identify who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are in any given context.

erasure of Syrian lives and experiences embodies the very essence of imperialist (and racist) privilege. These writers and bloggers have shown no awareness of the Syrians, including signatories to this letter, who risked their lives opposing the regime, who have been incarcerated in the Assads’ torture prisons (some for many years), lost loved ones, had friends and family forcibly disappeared, fled their country—even though many Syrians have been writing and speaking about these experiences for many years.