Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ Why do the majority of Western mainstream media outlets continue to adopt and defend the Israeli narrative? Why is there a tendency towards dehumanising Palestinians and placing disproportionate blame upon them for current events? What interests do Western mainstream media organisations have in maintaining this type of coverage?”

“It is … urgent to re-examine the Derna tragedy in light of a long history of colonialism, confiscation of natural resources and destruction of living and non-living things for Western hegemonic purposes via war and militarism.” Related When you hear the buzzwords ‘our way of life’, ‘our values’, ‘democracy or authoritarianism’, not to mention ‘there is a jungle over there’ (Josep Borrell), ‘wasps in the Middle East’ (Thomas Friedman), ‘terrorism’, etc. think of this: The Imperial Mode of Living

Emmeline Pankhurst, probably the most venerated in the mainstream British media, defended the presence and reach of the British Empire:  Some talk about the Empire and Imperialism as if it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of an Empire like ours ... great in territory, great in potential wealth. ... If we can only realise and use that potential wealth we can destroy thereby poverty, we can remove and destroy ignorance. For years she travelled around England and North America, rallying support for the British Empire and warning audiences about the dangers of Bolshevism. Quoted in Purvis, June, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography, London 2002 Why is a London School of Economics’s building named after her?   There is a Memorial of her in Victoria Tower Gardens, south of Victoria Tower at the southwest corner of the Palace of Westminster

Au lieu de a book In one sense, there is nothing extraordinary about this Zionist brutality. It is not, in its geo-political structure, very different from other imperialisms with which it shared during the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course Israel came to play a unique role in the world: its colon status on behalf of England and the United States marked a considerable aspect of its future course. But in its sense of entitlement to the land, resources and lives of another people, it merely replicated the horror of European and even American assumptions of superiority and secularized “divine right.” Crimes and state terror committed by the British and American imperialisms, the Zionist organisations, the ‘United Nations’ and the state of Israel

The objective of the US-UK imperialism strikes on Yemen is to stop the disruption to one of the arteries if capital accumulation and support Israel’s goals on its war on the Palestinians. The strikes on the Houthis might actually embolden the Houthis and see they support strengthened .  Everything that was worth striking has been struck by the Saudi coalition in the past nine years,” al-Iryani said, referring to the war waged against the Houthis by a Saudi-led coalition that began fighting the Houthis in 2015 after they had overthrown President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, head of the internationally recognised government. “I don’t think [US attacks on Houthi targets] are going to act as a deterrent to the Houthis,” Raiman al-Hamdani, a researcher at the ARK Group said.

Dogs life is long. —a Tunisian proverb “If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, then Henry Kissinger is the ghoul haunting its hallways. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. And breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs. This newly-released book , published in partnership with  Jacobin , follows Kissinger’s fiery trajectory around the world—not because he was evil incarnate, but because he, more than any other public figure, illustrates the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless war-making that still plagues us today.”

“Years of impunity for Israeli crimes against civilians have bred a culture of disregard for international law.” Alice Speri on The Intercept follows the mainstream – delusional belief and misleading – concept of ‘international law’. As a counter-argument I have chosen a selection from Between Equal Rights “The debate between jurists is not whether this or that action is a reprisal and therefore illegal, but whether reprisals as a category are illegal. Here, the importance of ‘authoritative’ decision is key. After all, the majority of writers agree that reprisals are illegal. However, as long as Israel, for example, is able to interpret reprisals as legal, openly to claim its activities as reprisals, and to be a strong enough power (with the US’s support) to defeat or silence any dissenters, then it is nonsensical to claim that reprisals are functionally illegal. The same unresolvably structured arguments – again with the weight of opinion against the US – have been batted back and for

Economy, Society, and Hegemony

From 2021 Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960

Lessons from the struggles in Sudan, Syria, and Palestine

A very insightful essay by Fred Holiday . What can pre-1978-79 Iran tell us about 2011 revolutions/uprisings in the ‘Arab world’?

The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine There is a preview here

Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis

Growing utopian crack

Imperial Encore  a text that should be on the reading list of anyone interested in colonialism, material culture as a tool of empire and attempts to extend imperialism through the use of soft power. Review of  Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire

Get the good old syringe boys and fill it to the brim We’ve caught another nigger and we’ll operate on him  Let someone take the handle who can work it with a vim Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom.  Hurrah. Hurrah. We bring the Jubilee. Hurrah. Hurrah. The Flag that Makes him free.  Shove the nozzle deep and let him taste of liberty Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom. An interview with the author and excerpt from the book Related

How food is used as a weapon

I disagree with Callinicos’s position on Syriza though. It sounds an ultra-leftist stance for me, and he does not specify when Syriza should have been opposed before the capitulation of Alexis Tsipras or after. A reply to Paul Mason

Irish law maker speaks out

How the experience of Syrian exiles can inform resistance to the invasion