Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

تونس لاشك أن الأمر لا علاقة له بالوعي أو الفهم لكنني كنت منذ طفولتي لا أحب "تحية العلم" أو ما يسمونه "النشيد الوطني" باستثناء ذلك البيت الشهير (اذا الشعب أراد الحياة....) حين كان يخرج من حناجرنا زمن المظاهرات والمصادمات مع البوليس. كما أنني بصراحة لا أحب الوطن (وطني) إلا بالقدر الذي يرتبط فيه هذا المكان أو ذاك بذكريات وأشخاص أعزاء. ومنذ نعومة أظافري ،كما يقولون ،كنت أشعر أن كلمات مثل الوطنية وحب الوطن ليست سوى كذب ونفاق (أو بلهجة "شعبية" حشوات). والعلم ، الوطني هو أيضا، لم يكن ي عني لي سوى رمز لمؤسسات السلطة، المتسلطة كما هو اسمها.... وهكذا فالتشوه الأخلاقي الذي أعانيه في علاقة بالوطن والوطنية لا علاقة له بطبيعة الوعي الذي راكمته خلال كل هذه السنوات بل أظنه تشوه يتعلق بالجينات والكروموزومات التي تتجول في أعماق جسدي، أو ربما الأمر يتعلق بما يسميه فرويد اللاوعي الذي يخضني بدون حتى أن أعلم بوجوده...... لذلك ليس غريبا أن كل العقارات التلفزيونية لم تعالج تشوهي الأخلاقي ذاك. فقط أصبح الأمر يتعلق بقناعة: الوطنية هي العبودية الطوعية والتحرر الفعلي ليس تحر

Ces gents là ...

"There is no such thing as imperialism-lite" A soft take by Jenkins

" It was remarked that of the $150bn (£105bn) spent in aid globally,  still only 1%  directly reaches southern civil society organisations. I know from experience how frustrating southern NGOs find it when there’s always money to write a report or host a workshop; but never enough for more local staff. If poverty could be overcome from report writing, then we would have solved it long ago."  — Deborah Doane, the Guardian, 13 March 2016 The Anti-Poverty Swindle The Power of a Dollar NGOs: In the service of imperialism

The ruling class has to reproduce its kind and its ideas: the dominant ideology of every society is the ideology of the ruling class. The students of elite institutions are part of that repoduction. They defend the system and justify its functions. " The type of institutions attended by the global mega rich are also much more likely to be elite institutions, rather than local colleges. Harvard in the US is the single most likely name to be found on the CV of a billionaire, with Harvard Business School also popular. Reflecting the rise in Russian wealth, Moscow is among the most popular university cities for these billionaires, including Moscow State University and a range of Moscow specialist institutes. Stanford University in California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have become the launchpads for a rising number of tech billionaires. Google's Sergey Brin was a postgraduate at Stanford. Among UK universities, the London School of Economics and Cambri

Joseph Messad in 2011:   " The US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance in the region today is following the same strategies they followed in late 1960s and early 1970s and continuing the strategy they followed with the PLO in the early 1990s. They are crushing those uprisings they can crush and are co-opting those they cannot. The efforts to fully co-opt the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have made great strides over the last few months, though they have not been successful in silencing or demobilising the populations. On the other side, Bahrain's uprising was the first to be crushed with the efforts to crush the Yemenis continuing afoot without respite. It was in Libya and in Syria where the axis fully hijacked the revolts and took them over completely. While Syrians, like Libyans before them, continue their valiant uprising against their brutal regime demanding democracy and social justice, their quest is already doomed unless they are able to dislodge the US-British-Saudi-Qat

How Greeks Opened Their Hearts to Strangers

Of course Hillary Clinton "is against people fighting bigots collectively. She knows that if they carry on, it's only a matter of time before the protests start showing up at her venues. In other news, it would be good if the protests started showing up at her venues as well. There are few things she and Trump disagree with, but on those things she manages to be the more reactionary one. And being more reactionary than Trump is actually not easy. You'd have to be the sort of person who isn't embarrassed to have campaigned for Goldwater to manage that." —  Elise Hendrick

Apple isn't your friend

Neil Faulkner’s new book, Lawrence of Arabia’s War: the Arabs, the British, and the remaking of the Middle East will be published on 21 April by Yale University Press.