Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Against Diversity This was written in 2008. It is good to remember what has produced Trumpism.

Walter Benjamin: Critique of the State

Proctor explains that ignorance can often be propagated under the guise of balanced debate. For example, the common idea that there will always be two opposing views does not always result in a rational conclusion. “Although for most things this is trivial – like, for example, the boiling point of mercury – but for bigger questions of political and philosophical import, the knowledge people have often comes from faith or tradition, or propaganda, more than anywhere else.” The man who studies the spread of ignorance

"The State is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence." — Max Weber, 'Politik als Beruf' (1919) Note: Weber, unlike Marx ang Engels, substitutes "class" by the individual/individuals.

An interesting analysis albeit some narrative of politically blaming mainly the Tories.

Like any commodity, she is subject to supply and demand. "In recent decades it has become a trend in China for a man to give his wife-to-be's family a cash sum, like a reverse dowry. But the "bride price" has been rising, particularly  in poorer rural areas  where there are fewer potential wives, reaching more than 100,000 yuan ($14,000; £12,000) in some places." 

After all, big business worked with Hitler. "War is terrible, but is also terribly profitable." The tip of the ice-berg: Lafarge as an example

French farmer on trial for helpng migrants across the Italian border See also Let them drown

From World War II to Vietnam and Syria, drugs are often as much a part of conflict as bombs and bullets

Three Films, a Spectator, and a Polemic

Here is how a terrorist settler-colonial state justifies its actions and portrays itself: " top military figures were quick to say that his actions did not reflect the values of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)." " In their indictment, prosecutors said Sgt Azaria "violated the rules of engagement without operational justification as the terrorist was lying on the ground wounded and represented no immediate threat for the accused or others who were present". The victim is a terrorist and the terrorist upholds the law! Background "Hebron, the Occupation's Factory of Hate" Israel's never-ending crimes

An Aleppo-Like Landscape in a Kurdish Redoubt of Turkey

Women's resistane in Syria

John Berger dies aged 90 A Moment in Ramallah (an extract) Reproductions Distort’: A Note on the Culture Industry An obituary on the Financial Times

كُلُّ الذين ماتوا نجوا من الحياةِ بأُعْجوبة محمود درويش    — All those who have died have miraculously escaped life. Mamoud Darwish

Violences de l'idélogie publicitaire

Perspectives "Though new technologies will not completely erase the benefit of cheap labor, they will reduce the number of opportunities countries have to industrialize, diversify and grow their economies... As advanced, industrialized countries no longer have to rely on low-wage labor in far-off places, they will take advantage of new technologies and start producing low-end goods closer to home. States that have not yet begun to industrialize will have the hardest time; the longer it takes them to develop over the next few decades, the more difficult it will be for them to do so as the growth of advanced manufacturing elsewhere shrinks the opportunities available for emerging manufacturers." One can imagine what the fall-outs are in the "developping" countries: higher unemployment, more erosion of social services, more migration, social unrest, uprisings, coups, wars, etc . The rise of manufacturing marks the fall of globalization

"You sanctimonious philistines, who scoff at me! What has your politics fed on since you've been ruling the world? On butchery and murder!" — Charles de Coster, Till Ulenspiegel

" In relevant part, under the applicable Convention, genocide means "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; or (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". Each and every one of these sign-posts of genocide has been perpetrated by Israel, seemingly with almost proud boast, and no accountability, for almost 70 unbroken years." Israel's never-ending crimes

Syria "Some harsh lessons for the international left" See also "Standing against barbarism"

" Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded." — John Steibeck, 01 January 1941 Necessary contradictions of the human nature