Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"The coming together of Qatar, Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and its allies, showed that coalitions now forming to compete with each other are not strictly based on the Shi’a-Sunni divide.  The alliances currently confronting each other are fighting over the control of the region, its capital,  and aim  to repress any movements for social justice." The threat of wider wars in the Middle East

"Take a step or two further back in the production process, and the picture gets bleaker still. To function at all, the smartphone—like all electronic devices—requires raw materials that have been wrested from the Earth by ruthlessly extractive industries. The cobalt in its lithium-ion batteries was mined by hand in the Congo, often by children; the tin in the soldered seams that bind it together most likely comes from the Indonesian island of Bangka, where the water table is irreparably fouled, 70 percent of the coral reefs have been destroyed by mine runoff, and on average one miner a week is killed on the job. The damage caused by the processes of extraction fans out across most of a hemisphere, mutilating lives, human communities and natural ecosystems beyond ready numbering. And so the polluted streams, stillborn children and diagnoses of cancer, too, become part of the way in which the smartphone has transformed everyday life, at least for some of us. Though these facts ...

"As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time." The British ruling class is in full panic mode

"The promise of Brexit was steeped in ideology from the very beginning, a fairy tale based on dark chauvinism. The Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Hitler and now the Polish plumbers who allegedly push down wages..." "A wave of anger crashes over Britain"

Hobsbawm's long century

A very political tragedy

McJihad: Empire and Islam between the US and Saudi Arabia The full chapter could be read here: McJihad

" Fewer than one in five perpetrators was a convert to Islam, with a significantly higher percentage in North America than in Europe.   However, the converts were significantly more likely to have a criminal background and to have served time in prison. Overall, most of the attackers had a prior criminal background." "Who was behind the jihadist attacks in Western Europe and North America?"

Morsi may die in prison, but Peter Osborne keeps banging on about "British values", "freedom", "human rights", etc

The buildng is not in Egypt or India.  The main causes are: - The developer - The cuts in the fire brigade services - People with authorities did not listen to the warnings of an action group in last November Playing with fire in London

"Communists believed that organizing the working class would work only if white workers realized that their liberation, too, was bound up with the fate of black workers. Facing this threat, anti-Communists and segregationists worked hard to sustain the fractures. They blamed Communists for fomenting "race mixing," evoking sexualized fears that social equality would mean black men having sex with white women--the very fears that put the Scottsboro Boys on trial. In turn, when black people agitated for civil rights, the Bull Connors of the world called such demands Communist-inspired, returning to the same narrative of dangerous outsiders." "The unexpected afterlife of American communism"   (NYT)

"The whole theme of Lebanese partying and consumerism that so many Western observers dutifully inflict on their respective audiences serves an important Orientalist function: Beirut may be “exotic” and different in its own way, but it’s also enough “like us” to render it a safe space for those wishing to travel without risking any fundamental alteration to their worldviews." How not to write about Beirut

" The most cherished myths of American culture tell us that, while war is terrible,  our  wars are noble, fought only under duress, and in the service of freedom, human rights, and democracy. If we fail in our ventures, as we did in Vietnam and Iraq and probably will in Afghanistan and Syria, that failure was not in our intentions, which were righteous, but merely in our execution. Our worst sins, in these myths, are not ambition, cruelty, or greed, but hubris and lack of foresight. Against such myths, which can be found articulated in the latest Hollywood movies, in the editorial pages of  The New York Times , in Brookings Institution essays, and in Amazon’s “Hot New Releases in World War II History,” Brecht’s ideological critique, which is founded in its own mythology of good and evil, can do little or nothing. Indeed, it’s not clear what one can do about such myths at all, since the power they have is precisely that which deforms and obscures reality into something co...

Led by Islamists, thousands of Moroccans rally in support if northern protests

Egypt's economic crisis 

Qatar-Gulf stand off: Is it a crisis?

"The high Conservative vote, and some signal defeats for Labour in the areas where working class xenophobia is entrenched, indicate this will be a long, cultural war. A war of position, as Gramsci called it, not one of manoeuvre. But in that war, a battle has been won. The Tories decided to use Brexit to smash up what’s left of the welfare state, and to recast Britain as the global Singapore. They lost. They are retreating behind a human shield of Orange bigots from Belfast." "Corbyn has won the first battle in a long war" But he is "A mainstream [Scandinavian] social-democrat"

 "Liberalism is okay with reducing murderously oppressive structures into mistakes and shrugging off the oppression of Indigenous people, as long as it has a progressive face." The Success of Wonder Woman proves liberals are OK with imperialism

In Kashmir, India is Witnessing its General Dyer Moment

Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism

Climate change and capitalism

Qatar crisis: A new era of thuggery?