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I wonder how many of the people who will be coming to flag you also blame Middle East strife on drawing lines without regard to ethnic territories?
by coryrc 5y ago
I wonder how many of the people who will be coming to flag you also blame Middle East strife on drawing lines without regard to ethnic territories?
- benreesman 5y agoI don’t think I’ve ever flagged anyone, I rarely even downvote. With that said are you trying to make a case that analogies to the conclusion that some German cartographer drawing nice straight lines on a map of Africa in 1860 or whatever was a win for Africa? The Middle East is a mess for a number of reasons, and in fairness some of them (like sitting on the tectonic fault line between Europe and Asia) predate predatory colonialism. But most of them don’t predate predatory colonialism. The world powers of whatever era slicing and dicing it, toppling stable regimes, setting up pliant authoritarian regimes to extract resources cheaply, and generally raping the region senseless plays uh, a meaningful role in it being a mess.
- coryrc 5y agoIn almost every mention of Sykes-Picot, not laying lines along "actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions" is brought up as a contributing reason to present-day strife. I believe that in the US, people who publicly champion diversity typically also align with political movements which partly blame where the borders are for strife. An I wrong? Is it a big tent ideology and they don't share the same views? Or do people hold both ideas simultaneously? If so, how do you reconcile them? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25299553 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25299553 https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sy...