Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 In Tataouine

 Five-day walkout at British Gas over fire and rehire plans

A revolt that began a year ago

 In a summary by Claudia Mende , I have found only this worth quoting: “Following initial euphoria for an Arab world on the brink of a new era, people in the West have largely lost interest.   Outmoded stereotypical views of the Arab world have re-emerged. Too religious, too backward, the region and its people are different after all – just a few widely-held western opinions. The West continues to back stability   But when issuing judgements such as these, the West should critically scrutinise its own role in the Middle East. After all, while Europe and the U.S. may have always paid lip service to democratic values and human rights, some of their policies run directly contrary to these. Arms shipments to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates prop up repressive regimes and stoke conflicts. In the name of democracy, the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled Saddam Hussein and created a fiasco. When current military leader of Egypt Sisi violently ousted the democratically

Some statements in this article are arguable, but there is an interesting analysis of the situation in the country. 30 years to the day since Nicolae and Elena Ceaucesçu were executed. “Capitalist restoration, which followed the December 1989 uprising, led to the large scale collapse of industry and agriculture, forcing millions to emigrate. The majority of those who have remained are confronted with poverty, low wages, job insecurity, precarious public services and a political caste that is solely in the service of capitalist elites.” Capitalist restoration in Romania and the alternative A better analysis cab be found here Romania Redivivus

 الاستقلال يعني السلطة والكهرباء

  Michael Roberts , 25 December 2020:

  Still mostly valid since it was written in March 2020. The virus, capitalism and the long depression

 Fashion retailer Boohoo selling clothes made by Pakistani workers ‘who earned 29p per hour’

Targeting minorities, again. The European Court of Justice bans kosher and halal slaughter

“ One might argue that, for us as historians, the principal challenge is to imagine the region outside of the commonplace assumptions about modern Middle Eastern societies, namely that they are best defined by a series of  absences or negations —the lack of “authentic” nation-states, capitalism, democracy, secularism, human rights, and so forth. Against the hegemony of these Orientalist narratives, we can encourage students to understand history as a far more complex process of contingency and contradiction, for example, by grasping the contemporaneity of modernity and tradition. This style of thinking encourages students to move away from conceiving of history in terms of simple oppositions, such as capitalism  or  socialism, democracy  or  despotism, religion  or  secularism, and instead grasp historical processes in the elegance of their complexity. History emerges, then, as the unstable play of forces, rather than the unfolding of teleological logics. More concretely, this means vi

“ The recent surge cannot be blamed on a mutant virus alone; in fact, government mismanagement of the pandemic meant that many more people became infected, creating the conditions for mutations to occur.” A string of failures helped Covid-19 to mutate

“ At an almost planetary scale, and for some years now – certainly ever since what was called ‘the Arab Spring’ – we are in a world awash with struggles, or, more precisely, with mass mobilisations and assemblies. I propose that the general conjuncture is marked, subjectively, by what I would term ‘movementism’, namely the widely shared conviction that significant popular assemblies will undoubtedly achieve a change in the situation. We see this from Hong Kong to Algiers, Iran to France, Egypt to California, Mali to Brazil, India to Poland, as well as in many other places and countries. One may revolt against the actions of the Chinese government in Hong Kong, against the power grab by military cliques in Algiers, against the stranglehold of the religious hierarchy in Iran, against personal despotism in Egypt, against the manoeuvres of nationalist and racial reaction in California, against the actions of the French Army in Mali, against neofascism in Brazil, against the persecution of

 

 1917: Black soldiers executed for Houston riots

 حفريات في جسد عربي لمختار اللغماني

من هوامش على دفتر النكسة   نريد جيلاً غاضباً..   نريد جيلاً يفلح الآفاق  وينكش التاريخ من جذوره..  وينكش الفكر من الأعماق  نريد جيلاً قادماً..  مختلف الملامح..  لا يغفر الأخطاء.. لا يسامح..  لا ينحني..  لا يعرف النفاق..  نريد جيلاً..  رائداً..  عملاق..  نزار قباني، 1967

 “We refuse to recognise the hostile verdict against Leyla Güven”

“ The left is White. It is Eurocentric. It believes itself to be materialist but it is actually idealist. For example, it is anticlerical, and this is understandable in the historical context of a powerful church at the heart of the state. But, as a materialist, you understand that neither Islam nor Muslims dominate the French state. Muslims are the poorest section of the working class. These two elements should have made the left the main allies of Muslims. Without discussion. But there was discussion, on the backs of the poorest classes. The left did not see the wretched of the earth, they saw the veil. Again this Eurocentrism. The White experience prevailed over everything. Liberation would be the way White people experience it. The experience of White women would be the experience of humanity. But the veil affair showed that this particular experience of gender relations is not the experience of everyone. When our parents came here, they were the poor relations of class struggle. T

 Why are Russians paying for bombing schools in Syria

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  I have spread my dreams under your feet;  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. —William Butler Yeats, Irish poet

المغرب وإسرائيل ... تآمر مشترك

There is little historical evidence to trust that any French leader would have done things differently.  The rights of global south populations cannot possibly match those bestowed upon the civilised masses in Europe, so why undermine the potential for profit for those who are so disposable? Or perhaps his universalism is genuine - which would explain his own commitment to violent repression of political movements and the repeated assaults  on civil liberties in France.  The French state’s relationship to "rights" is always connected to its own interests, as is the “terrorism” it claims to fight . Sisi and the hypocrisy of France’s so-called defence of human rights