genocide

GeoCurrents Editorial: The Genocide of the Yezidis Begins, and the United States is Complicit

Editorial, Myth of the Nation-State, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa, State Failure / By

(Note: GeoCurrents is still technically on summer vacation, allowing me time to catch up with other obligations that I have neglected. My recent essays on eco-modernism, written for the Breakthrough Institute, can be found here and here. I am interrupting this GeoCurrents hiatus, however, to address a highly disturbing and significant development. This post also violates the GeoCurrents policy on political editorializing. In general, this website strives to be as politically neutral as possible, but exceptions are made. One reason for my reluctance to express opinion is the fact that many of my views are somewhat extreme, although… – Read More

The Politics of Genocide Claims and the Circassian Diaspora

Autonomous Zones, Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Historical Geography, Linguistic Geography, Migrations, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus, The Caucasus / By
Map of the Caucasian Language Families

Map of the Caucasian Language FamiliesAllegations of genocide are often politically charged. On January 23, 2012, the French parliament voted to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In Turkey, by contrast, it is illegal to assert that the same acts were genocidal. The Turkish government remains adamant, threatening to impose unspecified sanctions on France for passing the new law. Turkish critics meanwhile accuse France of having engaged in a genocidal campaign of its own… – Read More

Anna Eshoo and the Ignored Plight of the Assyrians

Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Geopolitics, North America, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

In looking over the sample ballot for the 2010 November election, my mind turned to the Assyrians as I came to the name of Anna Eshoo, their champion in the U.S. Congress. By “Assyrians” I mean not the ancient empire-builders, but rather the modern community, several million strong globally, that claims to be their – Read More

Geocurrents on Google Earth: The Gulag Archipelago Illustrated

Google Earth, Guest Posts, Samuel Raphael Franco / By

The Gulag system began under Lenin as a means of ‘Re-Education through Labor,’ and was expanded exponentially under Stalin. Twenty to Thirty Million people were imprisoned in concentration camps that stretched across the whole of the Soviet Union. The Gulag system was significantly de-intensified under Nikita Kruschev in 1960, but by that time, millions had – Read More

Circassia and the 2014 Winter Olympics

Cultural Geography, Geopolitics, Historical Geography, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus, Sports, The Caucasus / By

Yesterday’s post referred to the Ossetians as a people of “profound world-historical significance,” a phrase that fits their neighbors, the Circassians, even better. That members of the so-called White race are called “Caucasians” stems largely from the widespread nineteenth-century European notion that the Circassians, natives of the northwestern Caucasus, somehow represented the ideal human form – Read More