Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Down with the regime and the opposition... Down with the Arab-Islamic nation ... down with the Security Council... Down with the world... Down with everything." (A banner held by protesters in Kafr Nabl, 14 October 2011) Life of a mother fleeing bombardment in Idlib (North Syria 2018-2019)

The other Saudi war

بدي غني للناس

Brazil's state violence Last October, Wilson Witzel, a 51-year-old conservative former judge and marine, was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro state, promising to be tough on crime. During his campaign, he said the authorities would “dig graves” to bury criminals if necessary. 
Days after being elected, he vowed to “slaughter” anyone caught carrying a rifle. “The police will do the right thing,” he told a newspaper, “aim at their little heads and fire! So there’s no mistake.” Legal experts argue that shooting at people is unlawful if officers are not acting in self-defence. Witzel has an ally in Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain and congressman for Rio, who also took office in January. They agree on many things, including that officers should not face charges if they kill on duty. “A policeman who doesn’t kill,” Bolsonaro once said, “isn’t a policeman.”
 "Between January and July, police operations resulted in 1,075 deaths, an averag

"Salvini is attempting to mould an aggressive Catholicism around a hyper-masculinised personality cult. The crucifix and the rosary become emblems of far-right Crusader-style military erotica, to be wielded by real men against the limp humanitarianism of Pope Francis who has spoken out on behalf of refugees and, most famously, in 2013  lamented ‘ the globalisation of indifference’  at an open-air mass in  Lampedusa, held against the backdrop of the hulks of shipwrecked migrant boats." Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology if Fascism comes to mind. White supremacy, racial patriarchy: two sides of the same coin

"Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement. Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes, all under the guise of promoting the public interest." The philanthropists of today, who are they working for? Who will be working for when the shit hits the fan? Like Krupps, Siemens, Hugo Boss ...   The Koch brothers who helped build the Nazi's third largest refinery

Arundhati Roy, Pakistani military, 1971 genocide Two years ago, Arundhati Roy made a blunder , and some blunders are unforgivable.  "The Pakistani military was never used against its own people in the way the Indian army was," she declared.   In 1971 the Paksitani army carried out a genocide , with  U.S complicity .

Karl Marx Walks London There is some exaggeration in the wordings on the front page. However, I was in two walks a few years ago and I recommend you go on one, for it inspires to read Marx and to question the prevalent perceptions about his ideas.

Capitalism's violence (against nature, against us)   Plundering Cambodia's Forests

England The power of capital is portrayed as being in the interest of "the people" How to smash the last pockets of resistance

Global capitalist economy A well-known economist, Nouriel Roubini, with a career at the World Bank and IMF (notorious institutions), is unable to provide a solution! Could it be because there might be something flawed in determining the causes? After all, when someone is well into the system and merely wants to help managing it is not supposed to question the fundamentals. Related: It's all going pear-shaped

The nation-state: e.g. Britain "The liberal-nationalist hope is always that one can have the fantasy of social harmony and enjoying-together without the exclusionary Othering. Even if nations are, by definition, exclusive, the hope is that they need not be chauvinist about it." "Behead those who insult the nation-state"

Algeria Here is one of the reasons that the Algerian protest movement is unable to carry out a revolution: The protesters "call for" and "demand" . That is not what the history of revolutions inform us about how to "remove a ruling elite."   Here are some conditions: A regime has to face a mounting pressure that makes it implode from inside. A revolutionary movement that paralyses the economic machine through a general strike. A split in the military/winning of a significant section of the armed forces. The regional and foreign intervention is weak or unable to prolong or co-opt the revolutionary movement. On the contrary, favourable international conditions have to exist. That is absent today. The movement has a strong mass support because the majority/at least a coalition of social strata, including a section of the middle classs, not only desire change, but also believe in the viability and achievability of an alternative. The movement p

Manufacturing consent and views Here is an interesting and a telling comparison one should make: the way the mainstream, corporate media (from the Times to the BBC) have reported about some Westerners killed or kidnapped and the genocide* in Myanmar.  Compare how many articles, number of words and images have been used to report on one British Muslim woman who had joined ISIS and the genocide against Muslims in Myanmar.  *The United Nations and a Havard researcher, for example, have used the word genocide. 

A picture about Hong Kong, which incorporates sociology, political economy and international relations in one short piece is rare to find. A must read. Hong Kong's resistance

The failed repatriation efforts come as  a UN report  revealed the extent to which the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, systematically used sexual violence, including the gang rape of men and women, as part of a strategy to intimidate the Rohingya during “clearance operations” in 2016 and 2017. It was these crackdowns that precipitated the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh, where they still live in squalid camps. Rohingya refugees turn down second Myanmar repatriation effort

The Meaning of Israel's Massive House Demolition in East Jerusalem Related: My interview with Jeff Halper in June 2008

In Russia, the Fight is Alive

Stray Dogs By Tsai Ming-Liang

" A pact between M5s and the PD carries all manner of dangers for Italy. Should a deal between them prove impossible, the country faces early elections and a likely huge mandate for Salvini. This would finalise the Lega’s capture of the conservative middle classes, while reducing Berlusconi’s old party, Forza Italia, to a mere rump entity after its quarter-century domination of the right. Victory would also propel the Lega’s march into the once hostile southern regions." Oh, those "middle classes", the engine of progress!    Why Italy is heading for crisis once more

2019 presidential elections in Tunisia The lines below are from Reuters (21 August 2019) and what is between brackets is mine. The struggling economy is at the top of many voters' priorities and Ennahda [the Islamist Party usually dubbed "moderate" in the Western mainstream media which defines what "democracy" is and where it exists and doesn't exist] and other secularists [whatever that means] support market-oriented reforms urged on Tunisia by the International Monetary Fund [in order to industrialise the country and make it propserous and competitive with South Korea, Italy and Taiwan] but strongly resisted by unions and the population [who think they know their interests better than the IMF and World Bank men and women do]. And [Nabil] Karoui [a media tycoon, "Tunisian's Berlusconi"], backed by his Nesma TV station, has positioned himself as champion of the poor in the neglected hinterland outside the capital -- Ennahda's strongh

Vassal States "So Macron is worried that Britain might become a vassal state of the US. Which planet has he been on these last four decades and more? A process that began in 1956 after the Suez debacle was lovingly completed by Thatcher and Blair. Britain has been a fully-fledged vassal for a long time. And France, especially under Jospin and Hollande, was/is moving in the same way. Militarily, ideologically, culturally the US dominates most of Europe. Britain's vassal status is enshrined on many levels and partially explains the hysteria that greeted Corbyn's election as Leader of the Labour Party and the non-stop attempts to denigrate and defeat him, of which the 'anti-semitism' campaign is the most recent. Even Corbyn will find it very difficult to break the shackles." —Tariq Ali, 22 August 2019

"In September 2017 a YouGov poll commissioned by the Arab News and the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding illustrated worrying attitudes and misunderstandings of Arabs and Muslims in Britain. Of the 2142 British voters polled in the survey, 63% stated that they believe Arabs have failed to integrate themselves into British Society, and 41% believed that their presence has not been beneficial. Despite these strong opinions, 81% admitted that they knew little or nothing about the region." (The British Arab Centre) 
Is it surprising? 
To my life experience in Britain, it is not. The sheer level of prejudice and lack of knowledge is horrifying. One begins with "oh, you don't look Arab!" Arabs are only brown-skinned people she thought. Another was when an educated person who told me in 2010, when I mentioned Edward Said and Orientalist views, "that was long time ago." Presumably because she felt we were living in a triumphing lib

Arab cinema In Papisha soon the "high energy wears off, as the story descends into repugnant cliches and orientalist pigeonholes. Meddour's world view is black and white: all men are bad, nearly all religious people are blood-thirsty monsters, and all the liberal-minded girls are valiant heroines. There is no subtlety in her characterisations nor hint of intelligence in how she tackles Islamic radicalism, which is personified by a bunch of liberal men-hating women and women obsessed with having every girl in the country veiled.  On the evidence of   Papicha , Meddou's world view comes over as little different from the average white Western film-maker in its antagonistic stance against non-white masculinity, a toxic feminist stance which frowns down on anyone who does not share its ideals. By a long margin,   Papicha  was the low point of the Arab selection at Cannes this year." Review of seven new Arab films " Cannes, after all, is an awfully cl

"More migrants are threatening to jump overboard" This should be considered use of violence by migrants who are terrorising the emotions of Europeans in order to force the latter to take them in. This use of blackmailing and arm twisting is not the method of a civilised people but a stronger race invading our shores.

Like the World Bank, the IMF and others, Google is deepening its involvement with Egypt's repressive regime

"Israel illegal arms trade in South Sudan" It would be interesting to find a study about which has been more destructive and criminal, "legal" or "illegal" arms trade .

The Financial Times calls it "free market liberal democracy" Costa Coffee is just one example. Two facts not mentioned in the article are: Costa is owned by Coca Cola and it does not allow trade unions. Not allowing trade union in some businesses to represent workers and defend their rights, etc has been going on for a long time in Britain, since the Maasricht Treaty in fact. That means EU labour rules have been applied differently in Britain. The zero-hour contract is another example. Related: What happens in order to maintain a minimum rate of profit and when productivity is not high enough. Ungrateful Costa workers, many of them are foreigners who came to our country and gave them jobs, but they dare complain, saying that " they are not treated like humans ."

Last week's most read post

"The Arab Spring" Lives on in Algeria

In the unjust state of society the powerlessness and pliability of the masses increase with the quantity of goods allocated to them. "The enslavement to nature of people today cannot be separated from social progress. The increase in economic productivity which creates the conditions for a more just world also affords the technical apparatus and the social groups controlling it a disproportionate advantage over the rest of the population. The individual is entirely nullified in face of the economic powers. These powers are taking society’s domination over nature to unimagined heights. While individuals as such are vanishing before the apparatus they serve, they are provided for by that apparatus and better than ever before. In the unjust state of society the powerlessness and pliability of the masses increase with the quantity of goods allocated to them. The materially considerable and socially paltry rise in the standard of living of the lower classes is reflected in the hypoc

Capitalism's violence The profoundest moments of iniquity are not performed by psychopaths, but by ordinary people as they come to accept the premises of the existing order.  "Within neoliberalism’s vision of a prosperous global village, what remains unsaid is the desire for homogeneity, an compulsion to remake the ‘Other’ in ‘our’ image, whereby the space of ‘the peculiar’, ‘the exotic’, ‘the bizarre’ is repeatedly (re)produced through the relation of the ban in order to create a world with a single trajectory. Blaming ‘others’ for neoliberalism’s failures and for its violence consequently becomes a primary mechanism in the articulation of power.  Although violence is of course fragmented by variations and irregularities as part of its complex and unfolding nature, within the current moment of neoliberalism, violence is all too frequently imbued within the chaotic landscapes of globalized capitalism. In the case of Operation

How convenient for the liberal pundits to attack the far-right and the ideology of hatred. They tend to ignore the role of "identity politics" that has been used to plague the minds. This was uttered by a liberal columnist in the Financial Times in 2009: “Immigrants also bring a lot of disorder, penury and crime … Muslim culture is unusually full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation … If you walk north across the Piazza Della Repubblica in Turin, you see, mutatis mutandis, what the Romans saw. To the east, two well-preserved Roman towers remain, and so do the walls built to separate citizens from barbarians. Today, in the space of about 60 seconds on foot, you pass from chic shops and wine bars through a lively multiethnic market into one of Europe’s more menacing north African slums.” This was uttered by the perpetrator of the attack in El Paso, US, in August 2019:  “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the inst

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crises." —Dante Alighieri, The Devine Comedy

Al-Jazarī الجزري With English subtitles

Libya A good beginning in putting the situation in a big picture of "civilisational" context. However, I always wonder why most writers do not qualify "democracy" as if everybody agrees with the existing order. The socio-economic formation in which this "democracy" functions is rarely questioned, especially in today's "neoliberal" form of capitalism that even liberal sccholars have attacked as a source of violence and destruction. The social groups/strata that formed the former Libyan regime and how the regime came about and why it took the features it took is fundamental in understanding why Libya could not have a capitalist democracy. Neither Egypt, Syria or China. The focus on individuals doesn't help that much because the individuals themselves work within the trappings they found before them. There is a difference between structure and moment. Furthermore, one should not conflate the ideals of the French revolution and how capit

Kar Marx was not flawless, but the question of methodology and approach in analysing social phenemona have always been crucial, not only for a scientific understanding of what is happening around us, but also in determing the social factors and groups responsible of this or that outcome and the actions (or the form of actions) carried out by those who advocate and work for a meaningful change. So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx, will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the frangmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment.  (my emphasis) — Mark Mazower, the Financial Times, 05 August 2016

Countering Christian Zionism in the Age of Trump

India-Kashmir "What the BJP government has done is akin to what Serbia's Milosevic regime did in 1989 by unilaterally revoking Kosovo's autonomy and imposing a police state on Kosovo's Albanian majority.  But the BJP government's approach to Kashmir goes beyond what Milosevic intended for the Kosovo Albanians: subjugation." A point of no return?

Qatar: Migrant Workers Strike Over Working Conditions

Union secretary Reni Desmiria , a young mother, has been successfully enrolling BMI workers in the government's mandatory health insurance program since she returned from maternity leave. In retaliation, Reni was arrested and jailed at the company's insistence on May 17, and is currently on trial. The indictment in this kangaroo court offers the judges multiple options on which to convict her. BMI is demanding 6 years' imprisonment – the maximum penalty – for an infraction she committed 8 years ago, when she submitted a fake high school certificate in order to get the job. It was never an issue – until the company had to start contributing to employee health care. BMI has told Reni she can go free if she resigns from her union position. She has refused. Meanwhile in Germany...

Jerusalem is your Arab nationalism's pride?

Giroux reminds us of Horkheimer and Adorno’s insights that liberalism and capitalism have inherent fascist potential, that fascism is a terroristic version of capitalism, that fascist potential has not ceased to exist after the end of World War II, and that “whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism” (Horkheimer). For almost 19 years in London, the people I have met have never wanted to talk about capitalism. Most of the students I got across hold a strong belief in it. What is mainly required is for capitalism to be managed properly by the right people and, in countries in Africa, Asia and the MENA region, it is mainly about the state and the institutions and the right implementaion of recipes. People want to hear about the "freedom" they enjoy, how "tolerant" their society is, the cheap flights, iphones, music, a T.V series or a sitcom......and don't want to feel uncomfortable hearing about capitalist violence m

"Utopians used to insist that the internet would be a paradise of connectivity, “where minds, doors and lives open up”. Instead, it is, at best, a virtual Las Vegas casino, enticing us to enrich the big tech behemoths by playing their inane games; at worst, it has become a sickbay for neurotics addicted to “cyber-crack”, a training camp for alt-right crazies and a battlefield." —Peter Conrad, reviewing The Twittering Machine , the Guardian 11 August 2019

Yes, I am a terrorist أنا إرهابي (na’am ana' irha'bii) The West cries in fear when I make a toy from a matchbox While they [the West] make a gallows of my body using my nerves for rope  The West panics when I announce one day that they have torn my galabia   While it is they who have urged me to be ashamed of my culture  And to announce my joy and my utmost delight when they violate me! The West is sorely grieved when I worship One God in the stillness of the prayer niche. While from the hair of their coattails and the dirt of their shoes  They knead a thousand idols that they set atop the dung heaps made of the titled ones  So that I become their slave and perform amongst them the rituals of flies.  And he, they will beat me if I announce my refusal.  If I mention among them the fragrance of flowers and grass  They crucify me, accusing me of terrorism!  Admirable are all the deeds of the West, and of its tails  As for me, as long as I am related to freedom  E

Some good points here, but I think it lacks a crucial aspect. There is also contradiction among the ruling class(es) . Currently, the US-China trade war, the major Western and regional powers role in Libya and Syria are only two examples of conflicting interests. Climate crisis means the ruling class has failed

The Iranian Revolution 1979-2019 "Saffari’s methodological approach to Shariati’s and neo-Shariatis work is that of dialogical comparison. Drawing on this framework as developed by comparative political theorist Fred Dallmayr, Saffari seeks out the border-crossing and binary-shattering implications of Shariati and his followers who, in conversation with other critics of Western hegemony and Eurocentrism, offer responses to modernity that challenge rather than reproduce global relations of power." Beyond Ali Shariati

"Now the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, almost all British troops are back home and the Americans are even about to do a peace deal with the Taliban, surely there’s nothing left to drive recruitment to the cause. That argument is fundamentally flawed. British involvement on the ground is minimal, yes, but consider the huge shift in the last decade to remote warfare, the use of strike aircraft, armed drones, special forces and surrogates rather than tens of thousands of boots on the ground. Operations like these are scarcely reported in the mass media and you have to go to more specialised sources to understand what is happening. Oxford Research Group’s  Remote Warfare Programme  is one of the very few groups analysing this change, with  Airwars  and  Every Casualty  reporting on the consequences.  From late 2014 through to the present – though the first three years were the most significant – a classic and largely unreported remote war, led by the US, has been fought

If you are not radical enough Lessons from Nicaragua to the Arab uprisings, Syriza, Venezuela ... "The achievements of the Sandinista government between 1979 and 1990, while they allowed for significant improvements of the living conditions of most of the Nicaraguans, did not break with the export-oriented extractivist model dominated by big capital. Nor did they promote active citizen participation in the economic and political decision-making processes. The fact that the political institutions and internal organization of the FSLN were left undeveloped allowed neoliberalism to regain a foot­hold. Further, there were no tools people could use to prevent the Ortega regime from corrupting the other government institutions." Nicaragua 1979-2019

Foxconn has done it again So that Amazon can supply us with what we need.

Apocalypse Now at 40 “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike." Apocalypse Now wasn't an anti-war movie, says Coppola

Toni Morrison To be a good writer matters. To know on what side you are on also matters, and in some cases it is more important than being a good writer. "Sad to read that Toni Morrison has passed away. Last met her and her son in Paraty, Brazil at a literary festival some years ago. While we were there Israel launched a serious attack on Gaza. A Palestinian poet an Egyptian novelist and myself wrote a short manifesto denouncing Israel in sharp language that would have failed the Labour Party test. Toni was the first to sign despite Christopher Hitchens attempt to stop her and others. Before I spoke I read out our statement and names of those who had signed it to loud applause. Met her again in New York and warned that Obama would be a huge disappointment to people like her. She wouldn't hear any of this, alas." —Tariq Ali, 06 August 2019

The Time of Our Lies

Egypt An opinion in the liberal Haaretz disagrees with the liberal free market reforms imposed by IMF.  The solution is "real free market reforms"! Basically, it doesn't matter the dictatorship and the repression. The "right" free market reforms would avert a new uprising because overthrowing the regime means instability in Egypt and it that is not good for Israel, either. The IMF is "the real danger to the Egyptian regime"

Working-class people don't need to "break into the elite" A critique of BBC2 broadcast (I find it funny, but telling that the BBC classified this topic in Entertainment and Arts section) Yes, it is about social structure. Nathalie Olah in her critique advocates social justice instead of social mobility. But could "social justice" be achieved within the existing capitalist socio-economic relations?

Sorrows of the Black City By Mohammed Elfitory

"The prison camps are not just an anomaly from a nativist Trump administration, they are something that has been happening for years and years. I’m not only referring to short-term Border Patrol detention, but also the mass round-up, incarceration, expulsion, and banishment of non-citizens that has been happening in a sustained way in the United States since the 1990s, and through a variety of huge operations before then. And it’s not something that is just limited to the United States. While the concentration camp may vary from country to country, it is one of the cornerstones of a global border system designed to arrest and confine uprooted, displaced, and dispossessed people. Many are on the move because of the current global economic and political system (globalization and the free market neoliberal economic model) that has long privileged the wealthy elite and protected the interests of multinational corporations, all else be damned." Empire of the Borders

Russia A meaningful change in Russia is not coming after/through these coming elections, but there is discontent and there is some dynamic going on. " Society should not perceive the situation as having only the authorities and the liberals, who support the same economic system but are unhappy with corruption. Our task is to show that there is a big role in the democratic process for left ideas and social demands. On the whole, the society tends toward left social democracy. For me personally, that may be too moderate. But in any case, people want social transformations and a mixed economy." The situation on the ground is not allowing more than being "too moderate".  It is also good to be "too moderate"; otherwise, the bulk of Western media and "leaders"  would call you either an extremist or populist! "Russia Needs Its Own Bernie Sanders."

This is a very interesting publication by Oxford. Michael Roberts has reviewed some chapters with a focus on profitability, crises and financialisation. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx

Berlin, Germany It seems that the police of the strongest economy in Europe, which exports submarines, trains and surveillance equipments lacks the technologies to make arrests of far-rights criminals! Ferat Kocak believes this is one reason why the violence here has flared up. "This is traditionally a very white middle-class area, but that's now changing, it is becoming more multicultural, with people with different lifestyles. These far-right guys don't feel comfortable with that." I thought the problem was with the uneducated, the unenlightened! Far-right violence in a Berlin district

"The professional who moves to a neighbouring city for work is not usually described as a migrant, and neither is the wealthy businessman who acquires new passports as easily as he moves his money around the world. It is most often applied to those people who fall foul of border control at the frontiers of the rich world, whether that’s in Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa or elsewhere. That’s because the terms that surround migration are inextricably bound up with power, as is the way in which our media organisations choose to disseminate them." How the media contributed to "the migrant crisis"

Bab El-Maqam ("Passion") by Mohamed Malas The story of the film takes place in a conservative neighbourhood in Aleppo, Syria, and with the loming 2003 war on Iraq. The murder of the woman in the film was based on a real event that occurred in 2001.  Very good filming and outstanding acting.

State violence in France and America compared

"The problem with the 'cheap food' system is that, it is only 'cheap' for capital: it really isn't remotely cheap for most of the world's populations of people, animals and plants. It is in fact enormously expensive, and we are beginning to pick up the tab." What, or whom, will we eat? Related article: Capital's hunger in abundance

Guendelsberger lays out in awful detail how a pathological desire for maximum profit over almost all regard for workers has trapped people like rats in circumstances where companies would rather install painkiller vending machines than alter their meat-grinder operations. Low-wage work in America

This is a good picture of Britain's political-economic situation There is a historical background prior to 2016 and the crisis that led to Brexit. "There was now a clear division between those leaders who represented the interests of big business and the City of London wanting ‘free trade’ and a big role in the EU and rank and file Conservatives who    represented small businesses and the narrow nationalist and racist elements in small provincial towns. They wanted no truck with ‘Europe’ and harkened back to ‘good old days’ of a white imperial Britain ploughing its own furrow – something, of course, that had disappeared even before the UK joined the EU. This division was heightened by the bulk of the ‘popular’ press, whose moguls were either Australian-Americans like Rupert Murdoch, or aristocratic empire believers like the Rothermeres or the Barclay brothers." The analysis also includes the impacts of "no-deal Brexit" on business and labour. A crucial ar

Syria Despite the length of the war and the catastrophes it has brought, the deeper forces behind Syria’s conflict remain poorly understood, even on the Left. The protagonists are too often seen in the culturalist terms of “Sunnis vs. Shias,” or “Islamists vs. Secularists.” Just as often, the war is reduced to pure geopolitics, with the lead actors assumed to be mere proxies for America and its international opponents (or allies). Rarest of all is any developed discussion of the class dynamics that shaped the Syrian state and society even before the 2011 conflict. Yet these had a decisive effect on the uprising and the regime’s ability to withstand it. Grasping these social elements of the conflict is just as important today if we want to understand the Assad regime’s strategy for the “new Syria,” and how it intersects with the plans of his Russian and Syrian allies.

Very interesting development  in Nigeria "Mr Sowore’s Coalition for Revolution movement is calling for Nigerians across the country to take to the streets to demand an end to insecurity. They also want free education and healthcare for all as well as for key economic sectors to be nationalised."