Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Down with the regime and the opposition... Down with the Arab-Islamic nation ... down with the Security Council... Down with the world... Down with everything." (A banner held by protesters in Kafr Nabl, 14 October 2011) Life of a mother fleeing bombardment in Idlib (North Syria 2018-2019)

The other Saudi war

بدي غني للناس

Brazil's state violence Last October, Wilson Witzel, a 51-year-old conservative former judge and marine, was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro state, promising to be tough on crime. During his campaign, he said the authorities would “dig graves” to bury criminals if necessary. 
Days after being elected, he vowed to “slaughter” anyone caught carrying a rifle. “The police will do the right thing,” he told a newspaper, “aim at their little heads and fire! So there’s no mistake.” Legal experts argue that shooting at people is unlawful if officers are not acting in self-defence. Witzel has an ally in Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain and congressman for Rio, who also took office in January. They agree on many things, including that officers should not face charges if they kill on duty. “A policeman who doesn’t kill,” Bolsonaro once said, “isn’t a policeman.”
 "Between January and July, police operations resulted in 1,075 deaths, an averag...

"Salvini is attempting to mould an aggressive Catholicism around a hyper-masculinised personality cult. The crucifix and the rosary become emblems of far-right Crusader-style military erotica, to be wielded by real men against the limp humanitarianism of Pope Francis who has spoken out on behalf of refugees and, most famously, in 2013  lamented ‘ the globalisation of indifference’  at an open-air mass in  Lampedusa, held against the backdrop of the hulks of shipwrecked migrant boats." Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology if Fascism comes to mind. White supremacy, racial patriarchy: two sides of the same coin

"Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement. Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes, all under the guise of promoting the public interest." The philanthropists of today, who are they working for? Who will be working for when the shit hits the fan? Like Krupps, Siemens, Hugo Boss ...   The Koch brothers who helped build the Nazi's third largest refinery

Arundhati Roy, Pakistani military, 1971 genocide Two years ago, Arundhati Roy made a blunder , and some blunders are unforgivable.  "The Pakistani military was never used against its own people in the way the Indian army was," she declared.   In 1971 the Paksitani army carried out a genocide , with  U.S complicity .

Karl Marx Walks London There is some exaggeration in the wordings on the front page. However, I was in two walks a few years ago and I recommend you go on one, for it inspires to read Marx and to question the prevalent perceptions about his ideas.

Capitalism's violence (against nature, against us)   Plundering Cambodia's Forests

England The power of capital is portrayed as being in the interest of "the people" How to smash the last pockets of resistance

Global capitalist economy A well-known economist, Nouriel Roubini, with a career at the World Bank and IMF (notorious institutions), is unable to provide a solution! Could it be because there might be something flawed in determining the causes? After all, when someone is well into the system and merely wants to help managing it is not supposed to question the fundamentals. Related: It's all going pear-shaped

The nation-state: e.g. Britain "The liberal-nationalist hope is always that one can have the fantasy of social harmony and enjoying-together without the exclusionary Othering. Even if nations are, by definition, exclusive, the hope is that they need not be chauvinist about it." "Behead those who insult the nation-state"

Algeria Here is one of the reasons that the Algerian protest movement is unable to carry out a revolution: The protesters "call for" and "demand" . That is not what the history of revolutions inform us about how to "remove a ruling elite."   Here are some conditions: A regime has to face a mounting pressure that makes it implode from inside. A revolutionary movement that paralyses the economic machine through a general strike. A split in the military/winning of a significant section of the armed forces. The regional and foreign intervention is weak or unable to prolong or co-opt the revolutionary movement. On the contrary, favourable international conditions have to exist. That is absent today. The movement has a strong mass support because the majority/at least a coalition of social strata, including a section of the middle classs, not only desire change, but also believe in the viability and achievability of an alternative. The movement p...

Manufacturing consent and views Here is an interesting and a telling comparison one should make: the way the mainstream, corporate media (from the Times to the BBC) have reported about some Westerners killed or kidnapped and the genocide* in Myanmar.  Compare how many articles, number of words and images have been used to report on one British Muslim woman who had joined ISIS and the genocide against Muslims in Myanmar.  *The United Nations and a Havard researcher, for example, have used the word genocide. 

A picture about Hong Kong, which incorporates sociology, political economy and international relations in one short piece is rare to find. A must read. Hong Kong's resistance

The failed repatriation efforts come as  a UN report  revealed the extent to which the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, systematically used sexual violence, including the gang rape of men and women, as part of a strategy to intimidate the Rohingya during “clearance operations” in 2016 and 2017. It was these crackdowns that precipitated the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh, where they still live in squalid camps. Rohingya refugees turn down second Myanmar repatriation effort