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From: lazarus@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Andrew J &)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Frenchmen getting bombed, why them?
Message-ID: <15866@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 17:46:08 EDT
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Posted: Mon Sep 29 17:46:08 1986
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Reply-To: lazarus@brahms.UUCP (Andrew J Lazarus)
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In article <1034@gilbbs.UUCP> mc68020@gilbbs.UUCP (Thomas J Keller) writes:
>    Try studying some for yourself.  The peoples of the Mid-East, many of them,
>    were tortured and degraded for decades (even centuries) by white European
>    peoples.  To disregard this fact as a factor in the current political
>    situation there is foolish and irresponsible.
>

Colonization of the Middle East by white Europeans did not take place
until after the defeat of the Ottomans in WW One.  (Unless you were
referring to the long-vanished Crusader kingdoms).

North Africa was essentially free of European control (Egypt excepted)
until the middle of the 19th Century.  Arguments over colonial influence
in Algeria caused a major pre-WWI crisis.

If you mean that the white European peoples considered their societies
to be more advanced in some sense than the Middle Eastern societies,
this is correct, but I don't think it is that important a factor.  

andy