Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"[W]ith  Macron the void is not in contradiction with fullness of content, even if at the present moment when he does have to show something to the outside world, the void is greatly preferable. For the substance is the oligarchy’s: this is the fullness of a class’s project to persevere, in the very moment that everything condemns it, testimony to an era that has perceptibly reached its tipping point. In these conditions, for the oligarchic substance to maintain itself in the face of — and against — everything else, it needed an empty candidate, a candidate who said nothing, for what truly had to be said would be too obscene to present openly: the rich want to remain rich, and the powerful to remain powerful. That is this class’s only project, and that is its candidate Macron’s  raison d’être . In this sense, he is the spasm of a system pushing back its own death. He is its final response, the only way of disguising a continuity that has become intolerable to the rest of soci...

Should we vote?  "Fundamentally, we should be indifferent to this demand, coming from the state and its organisations. By now, we should all know that to vote is but to reinforce one of the conservative orientations of the existing system. Brought back to its real contents, the vote is a ceremony that depoliticises peoples..." — Alain Badieu

By the author of Fields of Blood — Religion and the History of Violence. The myth of religious violence and An interview with Karen Armstrong

The other side of/the contradiction in "civilisation" Agriculture had also introduced another type of aggression: an institutional or structural violence in which a society compels people to live in such wretchedness and subjection that they are unable to better their lot. This systemic oppression has been described as possibly “the most subtle form of violence,”   and, according to the World Council of Churches, it is present whenever “resources and powers are unequally distributed, concentrated in the hands of the few, who do not use them to achieve the possible self-realization of all members, but use parts of them for self-satisfaction or for purposes of dominance, oppression, and control of other societies or of the underprivileged in the same society.” Agrarian civilization made this systemic violence a reality for the first time in human history. K. Armstrong, 214, pp. 13-14

"Percy Schramm a montré comment les cérémonies du sacre étaient le transfert, dans l’ordre du politique, de cérémonies religieuses.  Si le cérémonial religieux peut se transférer aussi facilement dans les cérémonies politiques, à travers les cérémonies du sacre, c’est parce qu’il s’agit, dans les deux cas, de faire croire qu’il y a un fondement au discours qui n’apparaît comme autofondateur, légitime, universel que parce qu’il y a théâtralisation — au sens d’évocation magique, de sorcellerie — du groupe uni et consentant  au discours qui l’unit." La fabrique des debats publics

Rewriting of history, erasing memory Jewish students killed in the Holocaust to be honoured — unless they fought the Nazis

One-third of the deal would be paid by German tax-payers as defense aid to Israel. ThyssenKrupp was originally Krupp, the one that collaborated with Hitler in both arms production and using the Jews as slave labour. Thyssen was one of the industrialists who funded Hitler. Germany doesn't recognize the Palestinians right of return. German-Israeli submarines deal

" War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but meaning. And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.  Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become  apparent. Trivia dominates our conversation and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us a resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble." — Chris Hedges, What Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning , 2003  "The warrior in battle may feel connected with the cosmos, but afterward he cannot always resolve these inner contradictions. It is fairly well establish...

الاستشراق في تأويل إدوارد سعيد ونقد مهدي عامل

"Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea"

" As I listen I am so conscious that for me this is just one more terrible thread in a pattern I am still learning how to read. For them it is a nightmare that will never go away, an inescapable agony at the very centre of their lives. How must it be to wake every day into the knowledge that they, along with their whole society, have no place of refuge, nor expectation of respite, from these deep injustices and horrific crimes." "All that is human in me recoils from this" A background note : " By the beginning of the ninth millennium BCE, the settlement in the oasis of Jericho in the Jordan valley had a population of three thousand people, which would have been impossible before the advent of agriculture. Jericho was a fortified stronghold protected by a massive wall that must have consumed tens of thousands of hours of manpower to construct.38 In this arid region, Jericho’s ample food stores would have been a magnet for hungry nomads. Intensified agricul...

I thought that Paul Mason's focus was "Post-capitalism". "Post-capitalism" or barbarism should be accurate if one always keeps in mind how human society moves. Being thrown into barbarism on a bigger scale than in Syria or Rwanda, is thinkable. Is Mason kidding himself when he hopes that Theresa May should abide by the non-proliferation treaty? I think he knows better than me how national interests to be protected and how geopolitics necessitates having a monopoly or near monopoly of the means of violence. "Nuclear war has become thinkable again"

"Civilisation is face to face with militant Mohammedanism", Winston Churchill asserted.  — Quoted in Frederick Woods, Young Winston's Wars, 1972, p. 30

The British PM calls for a snap eelection. — They are not only criminals, they are also clever and they know when to change their minds and to strike  when it is hot. — Another chance for "the public" to elect the criminals (again).

How the Bible Belt lost God and found Trump

Five films on the modern Arab world

That "secular" regime, that lesser-evil ... 

Al-Assad's Syria is not secular, sovereign or independent

A reminder from the aftermath of the Paris attack This article, which I had reposted before, mentions state terrorism in passing without making it a fundamental point besides/part of/a determinant "in the nine truths". Instead, it calls state terrorism "counter-terrorism".  That is aside,  the arguments ("the truth") are quite valid and accurate, I think.  The threat is already inside

"الاستشراك"

France: the choice

Iraq's Shi'a clerics show no love for al-Assad

Economic well-being and brexit

BBC Radio 4 Rosa Luxemburg

State terrorism " The UK has conducted more than 1,200 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since it became involved - more than any other coalition country bar the United States. In 2016 alone, the US dropped 12,192 bombs in Syria and 12,095 in Iraq, according to the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations." Keep bombing them so they don't kill us here ...