Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Lebanon and beyond:  Meet Haifa Wehbe, Lebanon’s Foremost Conceptual Art Group 

55 years ago, the CIA murdered Patrice Lumumba, Congolese revolutionary leader

A Corner of Europe Frozen in Time

Tunisia Cinéma Amilcar: movies and resistance

"Britain has been cozying up to Russian money for years, and a dead spy isn’t going to change that." "The present era has been defined by globalization, financial globalization above all, and true to form, Britain has positioned itself in recent years as the global capital for capital. The city of London has become a  hub  for the world’s money, clean and dirty; London property is now the  investment  of choice for the world’s leading plutocrats and kleptocrats. Dean Acheson’s 1962 quip that Britain has lost an empire and not found a role is pretty but untrue — the role is evident in the glass skyscrapers and condo buildings now planted across the capital city." Initially, the British government "blocked all efforts for a public inquiry, seemingly for fear of jeopardizing its trade ties with Russia." "Foreign Secretary William Hague preemptively submitted a public interest immunity certificate, a move designed to keep the government’s classifie...

'I chose the colour of peace': the asylum seeker who repainted his red front door

"We were walking through Neukölln, a former West Berlin neighborhood and longtime immigrant enclave... Today, people from  more than 160 countries  call Neukölln home, andjournalists and politicians take Uzun’s tours to better understand one of Berlin’s most diverse neighborhoods. This is where Uzun takes her tour groups. Here, she tells them how the Rixdorf quarter of Neukölln has actually been home to immigrants for centuries: In the 18th century, King Friedrich invited Bohemian Protestants to help settle the land here, even freeing them from taxes and exempting them from military service. “They were allowed to keep their language,” said Uzun, pointing out a street sign still in Czech. “It took them 140 years to really integrate.” Today, more than 40 percent of the neighborhood’s 325,000 residents have an immigrant background, which Germany defines as either being from a different country or having foreign parents or grandparents; about a quarter of the residents...

A liberal analysis. Some good arguments though. ISIS: The 'Islamic State' between Orientalism and the Interiority of MENA’s Intellectuals

تونس: خارطة الإحتجاجات: بعد القصرين، 16 ولاية تنتفض

Brothers in barbarity. US Response to Saudi Wars & Human Rights Violations? $49 Bn. in new Arms Sale

What happened in Cologne?

Empire state of mind – why do so many people think colonialism was a good thing?

Avec Thomas Piketty, pas de danger pour le capital au XXIe siècle

Is Tunisia on the brink of another uprising يوميات الانتفاضة عن منظمة العمل الشيوعي تونس ـــــــــــــــــــ - القصرين : تواصل اعتصام أصحاب الشهائد المعطلين عن العمل بمقر الولاية ، تجدد الاحتجاجات بالقصرين المدينة و تواصل المواجهات في مفترق حي النور و حي الزهور أساسا. كر و فر بين المحتجين و بين وحدات التدخل التي تجابههم بالغاز المسيل للدموع و خراطيم المياه الساخنة.  - تالة : تجدد المواجهات بين المحتجين و البوليس صبيحة اليوم 20 جانفي ثم انسحاب كلي لوحدات تدخل الشرطة و الحرس من المعتمدية و الجيش يتدخل لحماية المؤسسات. الاحتجاجات تعم الولاية بأغلب معتمدياتها : سبيبة و فريانة (و تلابت ) و الماجل بالعباس و فوسانة و حرق العجلات المطاطية بكافة الطرق الرئيسية. - قفصة : غلق الطريق و احتجاز شاحنات نقل الفسفاط في بلخير و القطار.  - المزونة : الأهالي يحتجون و المعتمد ينسحب من مقر عمله.  - المكناسي : الاحتجاجات المطالبة بالشغل تعم المعتمدية و مواجهات مع قوات الحرس - زغوان : المحتجون يغلقون الطريق الرئيسية رقم 3. - الفحص : محتجون يطالبون بإسقاط الحكومة....

A response to an Ellen Meiksins Wood article in Jacobin Ellen Meiksins Wood: The Separation of the  Economic and the Political in Capitalism

How a Medieval Muslim thinker invented Sociology History is "the record of human society, or world civilization; of the changes that take place in the nature of that society...; of revolutions and uprisings by one set of people against another, with the resulting kingdoms and states with their various ranks; of the different activities and occupations of men, whether for gaining their livelihood or in various sciences and crafts; and in general, of all the transformations that society undergoes by its very nature.." Ibn Khaldoun, a 14th-century Arab historian

Isn't it Europe that is overpopulated, rather than Africa? A better picture here: Europe and Population Decline The Refugee Crisis in Europe

British People are Proud of Colonialism and the British Empire, poll finds See also " Interrogation under torture was widespread . Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound." The British Empire in the Middle East (From a book launch I recorded in 2006 and broadcast on Resonance FM radion) 5 of the worst atrocities carried out by th...

Capitalist "democracy" The 62 billionaires and the truth about inequality A note by Michael Roberts This is what Oxfam say in a footnote in their report: “The total wealth of the top 1% in 2015 was $125 trillion, approximately $1.7m for each of the 72 million people in the top 1%. The total wealth of the bottom 90% was $31 trillion, approximately $5,000 for each of the 648 million people in this group. Oxfam calculation based on Credit Suisse (2015) ‘Global Wealth Databook 2015’. http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=C26E3824-E868-56E0- CCA04D4BB9B9ADD5″ This is clearly wrong. It should be 6.48bn not 648m, I think.

The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures

Just 62 people now own the same wealth as half the world's population, research finds

95 % of Brit Expats Sent Back to UK for Failing Language Test

Egypt's Hidden History of Dissent

"Has Cameron forgotten that it was his government which cut funding for English classes in 2011? So why the U-turn? On the one hand his latest statement on Muslim women learning English is a blatant threat: 'if you don't improve your fluency, that could affect your ability to stay in the UK ', or again that women on spousal visas could be deported if they failed to learn English by the tim e that visa ran out. At the same time, while he claims 'white-saviour' fashion to be protecting women from the effects of 'Muslim patriarchy' he is imposing the vicious patriarchy of the British state to threaten them with deportation for not learning English as a result of this same 'Muslim patriarchy'. These are the Tories' well-known 'British values'. The new rules (which Cameron justifies using incorrect figures) will cause enormous trauma and insecurity for newly married women who arrive in this country and also for older women who find it di...

The diverse origins of Britain's Muslims

Egypt: Five years after the uprising " We shouldn’t reduce 11 February 2011 to a coup. It wasn’t a revolution, but it wasn’t just a coup either. It was a popular rising that lost the initiative because it had no positive agenda or demand. ‘Bread, freedom, social justice’ aren’t political demands, just aspirations and slogans. A social movement might have made these slogans into demands by pressuring the government to take specific steps. But a movement that wants these desiderata provided by government and, at the same time, wants the government to clear off has a coherence problem. The only demand that mattered politically was ‘Mubarak, irhal!’ The army commanders captured the initiative by co-opting that demand to make it work for them. Almost certainly they did so because it had been their own undeclared objective for some time." Hugh Roberts, LRB. Read full article here

Egypt: a background. The 2011 coup — sponsors, coaches and players

I too remember very well the moment when my dad woke me up that night to see the images of the bombing on TV. I too still feel anger and hatred towards that barbarism of the "said democracies" as Antoon put it.  I feel more anger now when I remember and read about what followed: the sanctions, the invasion and occupation, the civil war, ISIS, the indifference and complicity, the hypocrisy and denial... "Watching one’s country and hometown get destroyed sears one’s soul and psyche forever. Those years  showed me how barbarism was at the heart of our modern world. Not the barbarism of dictatorship, the barbarism of western liberal democracies, delivered through remote-control and watched comfortably by the citizens of said democracies." An interview with the Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon The Gulf War 25 Years Later

"Yes Israel Is Executing Palestinians Without Trial" "In 2016 one doesn't have to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed in Israel — it's enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors [or a boy/man with a stone or a knife]. We should call it like it is: Israel executes people without trial nearly everyday. Any other description is a lie...." Gideon Levy, Haaretz , 17 January 2016.

The Great Greek Bank Robbery ... and financial terrorism

Poland " There are two confronting Polands of roughly equal strength. One, including the PiS supporters, finds its base in eastern Poland among small, pious farmers and working-class families who have lost jobs and income through the change from a state economy to an often ruthless neoliberalism. The other Poland, usually better educated and better off, is desperate to preserve what it sees as the historic achievement of 1989: the first reasonably stable and prosperous liberal democracy in Polish history. In western Europe, onlookers hear snatches of Law and Justice rhetoric and conclude that the party can be dismissed as “fascist”. It is not. It stands for an old-fashioned authoritarian nationalism, invoking traditional Catholic values (imprudently, some in the Catholic hierarchy lend PiS support). And, strangely for westerners, this frantically rightwing party is also the party of what remains of the welfare state, standing up for those millions for whom the transition to c...

The Far Right Comes to Sweden " Today, 55 percent of Swedes  say  immigration is the most important issue; the environment ranks a distant second at 13 percent. This in a country where until just a few years ago no issue could compete with education, health care, or jobs. Swedish politics is now trapped in a vicious circle. The larger the Sweden Democrats grows, the larger immigration looms in the public’s mind, and vice versa. Three of the four parties that make up the center-right parliamentary bloc have concluded that they can stem the leakage of voters to the Sweden Democrats by taking positions that resemble the new party’s, and now vie to outpace one another in a race to the authoritarian side. The Sweden Democrats actively cultivate the counter-jihadist conspiracy theory that Europe is facing an invasion of Muslim immigrants, who in time will destroy the welfare state and Swedish culture. Muslim immigration, party leader  Jimmie Åkesson ...