Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Submit, surrender, commit suicide"

Out of Africa

To obliterate means to destroy utterly; to wipe out. Do we really need Iran? What have the Iranians done for us? A revolution and women in black? Why don't just have friends ruling Iran like those in Egypt? At least the Americans have brought us Elvis and Michael, Jeans, Sharon Stone and porno, Hollywood and Schwarzenegger, Marlboro, MacDonald's and Donald Duck, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates... Putting aside geopolitical economy, protecting allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel), having control (not the need) over hydrocarbons, limitng the expansion of China's and Russia's spheres of influence, capital expansion and markets... one should look at it in another way: It could be that a new spectatcle is in the making. Imagine how many people will be watching, even discovering where Iran is! Imagine how many discussion will take place and how many articles will be written!  And let's shout with the pacifists: "Stop the War", "Peace Now!" And in ...

It is good to remember that it was through struggle, an uprising-like action, including the use of violence, that gays won theirs rights, not because "our Liberal" regime granted them those rights as many today think.  It was through people's own struggle, not like today's missionaries touring Asia and Africa, lecturing gay people about "their identity" as gays. It was withinin a context of the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the influence of other militant groups such as the Black Panthers'. It was within socio-economic conditions of a fully developed capitalist relations, not a Uganda-like one or a dictatorship . Historian John D'Emilio provides good insights on the subject. *** The BBC calls it "a fury years in the making", i.e. a movement. But it chose a title that reduces it to a "riot"!! Broidy thinks something has been lost in the process. "I think it's much more powerful without the fl...

A recent  press release  from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) quotes Frédéric Penard, director of operations of the NGO SOS Méditerranée: “The reality is, even with fewer and fewer humanitarian vessels at sea, people with little alternatives will continue to undertake this deadly sea crossing regardless of the risks.” Penard continues: “The only difference now is people are nearly four times more likely to die compared to last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.” Fortress Europe is Sociopathic Related: Scott Daniel Warren

Britain "I work in the civil service – and it will resist a Corbyn government" Note: " Where will you be when Labour wins the next general election?" It should be "if", not "when".

Provided the economic basis of the social order is not called into question, criticism of it, however sharp, can be very useful to it, since it makes for vigorous but safe controversy and debate, and for the advancement of “solutions” to “problems” which obscure and deflect attention from the greatest of all “problems,” namely that here is a social order governed by the search for private profit. It is in the formulation of a radicalism without teeth and in the articulation of a critique without dangerous consequences, as well as in terms of straightforward apologetics, that many intellectuals have played an exceedingly “functional” role. And the fact that many of them have played that role with the utmost sincerity and without being conscious of its apologetic import has in no way detracted from its usefulness. Ralph Miliband pledged himself to the socialist cause at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery as a sixteen-year-old, shortly after fleeing the Nazis in Belgium. It led him to s...

The more I know, the more angry I get.  "Oh, what a sweet and soft and healthy pillow is ignorance and incuriosity, to rest a well-made head!" —French philosopher Michel de Montaigne

The International Trade Union Confederation is releasing to the world the results of its annual Global Rights Index: Trade unionists were murdered in ten countries - Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Zimbabwe.  85% of countries have violated the right to strike.  80% of countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining. The number of countries which exclude workers from the right to establish or join a trade union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019. Workers had no or restricted access to justice in 72% of countries. The number of countries where workers are arrested and detained increased from 59 in 2018 to 64 in 2019. Out of 145 countries surveyed, 54 deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly. Authorities impeded the registration of unions in 59% of countries. Workers experienced violence in 52 countries.  Full report: ITUC Global Rights Index 2019

The Astounding Eyes of Rita

The British government might have broken the law?  Oh, please, give me a break!  On a 2016 trip to Yemen, the Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell visited a school in the capital. It had been built, he said, with British aid – only to be destroyed, in all likelihood, by a British bomb. “I asked my host what the children were chanting,” he recalled to me in his Westminster office. His host translated for him: “‘Death to the Saudis’, ‘Death to the Americans’ – and in respect for your visit today, they have cut out the third stanza.” ' The Saudis couldn't do without us '

Uprising and Massacre in Sudan

Uncommodified, unclassified music

Egypt Mohammed Morsi was not a revolutionary. On the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood made deals with SCAF during the heyday of Tahrir Square mobilisation, he and his movement did not have a programme for the development of Egypt, he embraced Obama and co., he attacked the workers movement, etc. But he was not a "terrorist", nor is the MB.  He did not die ; he was slowly killed by the military.

The Book That Exposed the Cynical Politics of Donald Duck

Essays by Arundhati Roy

The nation state and civilisation Just one of the absurdities that characterises our "civilisation". If a stray dog crossed a border and was sheltered, given food and water by a caring American, it would have received a million+ likes on facebook.

"In almost every national situation where counterrevolution has triumphed, it has been allowed to do so without any hindrance by the democratic West – in fact, in many cases it’s with direct or indirect support from it. One came to realise that it didn’t matter how many times the dynamic proved itself to be, no matter the various contradictions, one of democracy versus tyranny. There was never any true support for democracy from those who pretended to be its bastions and patrons, all while powerful foreign anti-democratic forces, such as Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, mobilised viciously on the side of counterrevolution to crush nascent democracy. In the shadow of the Iraq war,  anti-humanitarian  intervention has come to define the modern era." "The Arab Spring is still alive"

Economic growth: a short history of a controversial idea