Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Britain The Violence of Austerity

No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago. Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime. Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of Trumpism and a mostly amnesiac citizenry. (A year ago, I watched Mr. Bush on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dancing and talking about his paintings.) The pundits and “experts” who sold us the war still go on doing what they do. I never thought that Iraq could ever be worse than it was during Saddam’s reign, but that is what America’s war achieved and bequeathed to Iraqis. "Fifteen Year Ago, America Destroyed My Country" Sinaan Antoon in The New York Times

Non-violence? "terrorism"? The writer, an ex-soldier, refers to the Palestinian violence as "terror" and "terrorism", but no where he use use the same words to refer to the structural violence of the settler-colonial state. Apartheid, occupation, oppression, etc are all fine but "terrorism" is restricted to those who retaliate against "democracies". "Palestinians' new doomsday weapon"

"The use a loan is put to is not fundamnetal for characterizing the debt as odious. Financial support for a criminal regime, even if it happens to build a school or a hospital, amounts to consolidating the said regime. The nature of the regime aside, the use of funds should suffice to qualify debts as odious whenever these funds are used against the populations's major interests or when they directly enrich the regime's inner circle. Thus, debts incurred within the framework of structrural adjustments fall into the category of odious debts, since the destructive character of the SAP [Structural Adjustment Program] has been clearly shown, including by UN agencies." Toussaint and Millet, 2010, pp. 249-50

A good take on Putin's Russia with no mention of Syria.  A bit soft on the American-led political-economy of "inevitability".  "Americans and Europeans have been guided through our new century by what I will call  the politics of inevitability  – a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American, capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought the nation, which learned from war that peace was good, and hence chose integration and prosperity." "Vladimir Putin's politics of eternity"

"Facebook let a firm called GSR  scrape 50 million user profiles  and sell the data to another firm, Cambridge Analytica, whose express purpose was to  manipulate electoral behaviour  in favour of Donald Trump. That’s the one-paragraph summary of a story that will unfold with increasing complexity this week. Cambridge Analytica will be in the frame, basically, for lying to British MPs – and is now being investigated by the authorities in Massachusetts where it are based. But the scandal is just the latest in a series for Facebook, creating an existential moment for the world’s biggest social media corporation." Source: novaramedia.com A good analysis here (you only need to enter an email address to read it): You are the product: it zucks!

"Fuck neliberalism" by Simon Springer "while a quieter and gentler name for this paper could tone down the potential offence that might come with the title I’ve chosen, I subsequently reconsidered. Why should we be more worried about using profanity than we are about the actual vile discourse of neoliberalism itself? I decided that I wanted to transgress, to upset, and to offend, precisely because we ought to be offended by neoliberalism, it is entirely upsetting, and therefore we should ultimately be seeking to transgress it. Wouldn’t softening the title be making yet another concession to the power of neoliberalism? I initially worried what such a title might mean in terms of my reputation. Would it hinder future promotion or job offers should I want to maintain my mobility as an academic, either upwardly or to a new location? This felt like conceding personal defeat to neoliberal disciplining. Fuck that." — Simon Springer .  Well, that absolves capitalis