Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crises." —Dante Alighieri, The Devine Comedy

Al-Jazarī الجزري With English subtitles

Libya A good beginning in putting the situation in a big picture of "civilisational" context. However, I always wonder why most writers do not qualify "democracy" as if everybody agrees with the existing order. The socio-economic formation in which this "democracy" functions is rarely questioned, especially in today's "neoliberal" form of capitalism that even liberal sccholars have attacked as a source of violence and destruction. The social groups/strata that formed the former Libyan regime and how the regime came about and why it took the features it took is fundamental in understanding why Libya could not have a capitalist democracy. Neither Egypt, Syria or China. The focus on individuals doesn't help that much because the individuals themselves work within the trappings they found before them. There is a difference between structure and moment. Furthermore, one should not conflate the ideals of the French revolution and how capit...

Kar Marx was not flawless, but the question of methodology and approach in analysing social phenemona have always been crucial, not only for a scientific understanding of what is happening around us, but also in determing the social factors and groups responsible of this or that outcome and the actions (or the form of actions) carried out by those who advocate and work for a meaningful change. So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx, will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the frangmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment.  (my emphasis) — Mark Mazower, the Financial Times, 05 August 2016

Countering Christian Zionism in the Age of Trump

India-Kashmir "What the BJP government has done is akin to what Serbia's Milosevic regime did in 1989 by unilaterally revoking Kosovo's autonomy and imposing a police state on Kosovo's Albanian majority.  But the BJP government's approach to Kashmir goes beyond what Milosevic intended for the Kosovo Albanians: subjugation." A point of no return?

Qatar: Migrant Workers Strike Over Working Conditions

Union secretary Reni Desmiria , a young mother, has been successfully enrolling BMI workers in the government's mandatory health insurance program since she returned from maternity leave. In retaliation, Reni was arrested and jailed at the company's insistence on May 17, and is currently on trial. The indictment in this kangaroo court offers the judges multiple options on which to convict her. BMI is demanding 6 years' imprisonment – the maximum penalty – for an infraction she committed 8 years ago, when she submitted a fake high school certificate in order to get the job. It was never an issue – until the company had to start contributing to employee health care. BMI has told Reni she can go free if she resigns from her union position. She has refused. Meanwhile in Germany...

Jerusalem is your Arab nationalism's pride?

Giroux reminds us of Horkheimer and Adorno’s insights that liberalism and capitalism have inherent fascist potential, that fascism is a terroristic version of capitalism, that fascist potential has not ceased to exist after the end of World War II, and that “whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism” (Horkheimer). For almost 19 years in London, the people I have met have never wanted to talk about capitalism. Most of the students I got across hold a strong belief in it. What is mainly required is for capitalism to be managed properly by the right people and, in countries in Africa, Asia and the MENA region, it is mainly about the state and the institutions and the right implementaion of recipes. People want to hear about the "freedom" they enjoy, how "tolerant" their society is, the cheap flights, iphones, music, a T.V series or a sitcom......and don't want to feel uncomfortable hearing about capitalist violence m...

"Utopians used to insist that the internet would be a paradise of connectivity, “where minds, doors and lives open up”. Instead, it is, at best, a virtual Las Vegas casino, enticing us to enrich the big tech behemoths by playing their inane games; at worst, it has become a sickbay for neurotics addicted to “cyber-crack”, a training camp for alt-right crazies and a battlefield." —Peter Conrad, reviewing The Twittering Machine , the Guardian 11 August 2019

Yes, I am a terrorist أنا إرهابي (na’am ana' irha'bii) The West cries in fear when I make a toy from a matchbox While they [the West] make a gallows of my body using my nerves for rope  The West panics when I announce one day that they have torn my galabia   While it is they who have urged me to be ashamed of my culture  And to announce my joy and my utmost delight when they violate me! The West is sorely grieved when I worship One God in the stillness of the prayer niche. While from the hair of their coattails and the dirt of their shoes  They knead a thousand idols that they set atop the dung heaps made of the titled ones  So that I become their slave and perform amongst them the rituals of flies.  And he, they will beat me if I announce my refusal.  If I mention among them the fragrance of flowers and grass  They crucify me, accusing me of terrorism!  Admirable are all the deeds of the West, and of its tails  As for m...

Some good points here, but I think it lacks a crucial aspect. There is also contradiction among the ruling class(es) . Currently, the US-China trade war, the major Western and regional powers role in Libya and Syria are only two examples of conflicting interests. Climate crisis means the ruling class has failed

The Iranian Revolution 1979-2019 "Saffari’s methodological approach to Shariati’s and neo-Shariatis work is that of dialogical comparison. Drawing on this framework as developed by comparative political theorist Fred Dallmayr, Saffari seeks out the border-crossing and binary-shattering implications of Shariati and his followers who, in conversation with other critics of Western hegemony and Eurocentrism, offer responses to modernity that challenge rather than reproduce global relations of power." Beyond Ali Shariati

"Now the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, almost all British troops are back home and the Americans are even about to do a peace deal with the Taliban, surely there’s nothing left to drive recruitment to the cause. That argument is fundamentally flawed. British involvement on the ground is minimal, yes, but consider the huge shift in the last decade to remote warfare, the use of strike aircraft, armed drones, special forces and surrogates rather than tens of thousands of boots on the ground. Operations like these are scarcely reported in the mass media and you have to go to more specialised sources to understand what is happening. Oxford Research Group’s  Remote Warfare Programme  is one of the very few groups analysing this change, with  Airwars  and  Every Casualty  reporting on the consequences.  From late 2014 through to the present – though the first three years were the most significant – a classic and largely unreported remote war, l...

If you are not radical enough Lessons from Nicaragua to the Arab uprisings, Syriza, Venezuela ... "The achievements of the Sandinista government between 1979 and 1990, while they allowed for significant improvements of the living conditions of most of the Nicaraguans, did not break with the export-oriented extractivist model dominated by big capital. Nor did they promote active citizen participation in the economic and political decision-making processes. The fact that the political institutions and internal organization of the FSLN were left undeveloped allowed neoliberalism to regain a foot­hold. Further, there were no tools people could use to prevent the Ortega regime from corrupting the other government institutions." Nicaragua 1979-2019

Foxconn has done it again So that Amazon can supply us with what we need.

Apocalypse Now at 40 “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike." Apocalypse Now wasn't an anti-war movie, says Coppola

Toni Morrison To be a good writer matters. To know on what side you are on also matters, and in some cases it is more important than being a good writer. "Sad to read that Toni Morrison has passed away. Last met her and her son in Paraty, Brazil at a literary festival some years ago. While we were there Israel launched a serious attack on Gaza. A Palestinian poet an Egyptian novelist and myself wrote a short manifesto denouncing Israel in sharp language that would have failed the Labour Party test. Toni was the first to sign despite Christopher Hitchens attempt to stop her and others. Before I spoke I read out our statement and names of those who had signed it to loud applause. Met her again in New York and warned that Obama would be a huge disappointment to people like her. She wouldn't hear any of this, alas." —Tariq Ali, 06 August 2019

The Time of Our Lies

Egypt An opinion in the liberal Haaretz disagrees with the liberal free market reforms imposed by IMF.  The solution is "real free market reforms"! Basically, it doesn't matter the dictatorship and the repression. The "right" free market reforms would avert a new uprising because overthrowing the regime means instability in Egypt and it that is not good for Israel, either. The IMF is "the real danger to the Egyptian regime"

Working-class people don't need to "break into the elite" A critique of BBC2 broadcast (I find it funny, but telling that the BBC classified this topic in Entertainment and Arts section) Yes, it is about social structure. Nathalie Olah in her critique advocates social justice instead of social mobility. But could "social justice" be achieved within the existing capitalist socio-economic relations?