Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 A review of The Perfect Fascist

A ‘democracy’ that condemns the Chinese dictatorship  Remains of 215 children found in indigenous school Update 751 unmarked graves found

Marx’s Law of Value

Vekuii Rukoro, a Herero paramount chief who tried to sue Germany for compensation in US courts, said the deal is not enough to cover the "irreversible harm" suffered at the hands of colonial forces.   "We have a problem with that kind of an agreement, which we feel constitutes a complete sell-out on the part of the Namibian government," he told Reuters. Germany acknowledges colonial era Namibia genocide Related Link between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust

How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing it Related My interview with Khaled Hrub , author of A Beginner’s Guide to Hamas

It will exceed $600 billion in the next decade

  We’re Loving Our Favourite Cities to Death

Interesting, but how to create the alternative is not convincing. Some main pillars of big agriculture are not tackled in the article: the big corporation, the profit system and productivity. Big Agriculture is Leading to Ecological Collapse

I first knew Bob in 2001 when I started going to Speakers’ Corner in London.  It did get worse  —for many people. R.I.P., Bob.

Ten Myths About Israel An Army Like No Other

Poll: 72% of Israelis believe Gaza operation should continue, with no ceasefire yet In fact, there is nothing new here.  Occupied Minds: A Journey Through Israeli Psyche by Arthur Nelsen My interview with the author

 

Good satire, but ...   Another pundit calling it a conflict

"There is a striking discrepancy between the lack of feeling aroused by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty." — Stathis Kouvelakis Endemic racism One photo shows a volunteer with the Spanish Red Cross comforting a migrant (above) on a beach in Ceuta. The young woman, identified as Luna, told Spanish TV she did not know the man's name, only that he had come from Senegal. "He was crying, I held out my hand and he hugged me," she told RTVE. After the image of th

How Imperial hopes for the Commonwealth led to British citizenship redefined along racial lines

The Crisis of European Social Democracy

It’s a good summary. However, I think another dimension should have been added: the political economy and the geostrategic importance/role of Israel as an imperialist state allied with the major Western powers.  “ A whole lexicon of white liberal ideological vocabulary was marshalled over the decades to the task of defending the Zionist regime in its ongoing colonial war against the Palestinian people. White liberal (and conservative) apologists for Israel insist that what exists in Palestine is not a colonial war of conquest and a native anti-colonial liberation struggle, but rather a "conflict", a term which began to be used since the early 1920s at least by the Zionists and later by the British, and appears in earlier Zionist documents, presented as a neutral descriptor.” Why the West supports Israel’s ‘right to defend’ its apartheid regime Related From Balfour to Johnson

  “I  do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right.   I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.' They had not the right, nor had they the power.” —Winston Churchill  To the   Palestine Royal Commission   (12 March 1937) on a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.   Quoted in Gilbert, Martin: "Winston S. Churchill, Volume 5, Companion Part 3, Documents: "The Coming of War, 1936-1939" . He

 

This is a good take on the political economy of occupation/colonisation. Confronting the Reality of Power in Palestine

Can the Other, in light of all that is happening, still be regarded as my fellow creature? When the extremes are broached, as is the case for us here and now, precisely what does my and the other’s humanity consist in? The Other’s burden having become too overwhelming, would it not be better for my life to stop being linked to its presence, as much as its to mine? Why must I, despite all opposition, nonetheless look after the other, stand as close as possible to his life if, in return, his only aim is my ruin? If, ultimately, humanity exists only through being in and of the world, can we found a relation with others based on the reciprocal recognition of our common vulnerability and finitude? In a world characterized more than ever by an unequal redistribu- tion of capacities for mobility, and in which the only chance of survival, for many, is to move and to keep on moving, the brutality of borders is now a fundamental given of our time. Today we see the principle of equality being und

A search of the media aggregator Factiva finds that the five US newspapers with the highest circulation — the  Wall Street Journal ,   USA Today , the  New York Times , the  Washington Post , and the   Los Angeles Times  — have run 343 articles this century containing the phrases “Israel’s right to self-defense,” “Israel has a right to defend itself,” or “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Querying the same outlets in the same period for “Palestinian right to self-defense,” “Palestinians have a right to defend themselves,” or variations of “Palestinians’ right to defend themselves,” produces just two results, nearly identical pieces about an ex-guard at a US Air Force base reputed to have said that Palestinians have such a right. Palestinians Have the Right to Defend Themselves

  Achille Mbembe

 The BBC: It’s not a conflict. But we have seen headlines similar to this one, about Syrian children, for instance.  Now let’s change the headline above to “Animals feared killed and missing in Israel-Gaza conflict” and see how many likes we get. Or, let’s have those mothers and their children seeking refuge at the gates of civilised England, Poland, France or Hungary and see what happens. and On the land of  Liberté, Égalité,  Fraternité An Arab problem?

After a few days of deliberation, Boris Johnson, a racist PM , has finally managed to show courage and condemn ‘anti-Semitic abuse’ in London. Apparently, some protesters have used guided missiles to penetrate the Iron Dome* of the nation, killing more than 180 people.  The brave PM has also expressed his resolve to hunt down the perpetrators. “We will bring them to justice,” he added with a smile. Courage also means holding your ground as an imperialist with a great empire in your psyche and national pride, standing firm with the state terror of an ally.  * The Iron Dome was developed in the aftermath of Brexit to protect the frontline workers and the healthcare system, to eliminate corruption and nepotism, to prevent any radicalism or any revival of trade union power, and to ward off the undesirable from entering the country. It has been alleged that contracts for construction of the Dome went to friends and associates. I, for one, don’t believe it. 

I have just finished reading Global Middle East Into The Twenty-First Century . Apart from a couple of essays which I have found dry, the collection of 24 short essays is really worth reading.   It is accessible to both students and those who are eager to read about different topics related to the region in its global context, from music, food and Levantines in Latin America to oil, Egyptian cotton, Mo Salah and ports of the Persian Gulf...

Blasphemy Wars

State and vigilante-style violence Related My interview with Jonathan Cook back in 2006

Many of the laws criminalising homosexual relations originate from colonial times.  And in many places, breaking these laws could be punishable by long prison sentences. Out of the 53 countries in the Commonwealth - a loose association of countries most of them former British colonies - 36 have laws that criminalise homosexuality. Countries that criminalise homosexuality today also have criminal penalties against women who have sex with women, although the original British laws applied only to men. Related “Honour killing”

Does she believe Europe will want her, I ask, given that she arrived through illegal passage. "Let them say that I came in an illegal way," she replies "but if they ask me and hear my story, they will understand my pain." They will not understand your pain; they will apply “the law” in a hostile climate of a Europe that has seen a rise of the far-right and economic stagnation. They will look at you as the Other, the undesirable, and a threat to their standard of living, and their superior nation-state.  They have already forgotten what the immigrant workers have done during the pandemic.

Some good news at last! More than a thousand protestors forced the Home Office to release two men they had detained in a dawn raid

  Why he cannot even condemn Israeli violence Related “If Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent one.” It’s “a three-billion-dollar-investment.” He said that in 1986. And “the Saudi are not bad guys; they’re fine people.” Listen to him

Historical records and appraisals are not always reliable. Many are deceitful. As we all know, in a long dynasty, heroes abound; in a short one, most are villains. Why? Because a long dynasty chronicles its own history, hence eulogy; a short dynasty has its history written by its conqueror, hence denunciation. Lu Xun told his audience, in one of his 1927 lectures on the Wei-Jin era (coinciding roughly with the late Roman Empire). This is interesting but access to the full review is not free. Meanings of June the Fourth

Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. Who are we to argue against their potent hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been turning the land and villages in which they and their forefathers lived into our own inheritance... We are the generation of settlement, and without steel helmets and the maw of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree or build a home. Our children will not live if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire fences and machine guns we will not be able to pave roads or drill for water. Millions of Jews, annihilated because they had no country, gaze at us from the dust of Jewish history and command us to settle and raise up a land for our people. Rise and Kill First  (2018) by Ronen Bergman, p. 49. Citing  Moshe Dayan  (09 April, 1956) by Mordechai Bar-On, p. 128-129 There is no more Palestine. Finished . . . As quoted in  TIME  Magazine (30 July 1973)

How a state that was established as a settler-colony treats children seeking refuge  Related War crimes by Australian elite troops

  Political Assassinations and the Revolutionary Impasse in Lebanon and Iraq

A tweet

A must read A Gramscian Perspective

Interesting as always to see how leftists are up in arms screaming at another crime of the Israeli-settler state, posting one article after another, one image after another, resuming their ritual of marching and chanting ... These are the same leftists who hardly lifted a finger against the Asad’s regime crimes in Syria, or even supported it. 

Poor Denmark! It doesn’t have either the money, the houses or the moral obligation to accept 100 more Syrian refugees. Denmark is providing a model on how to deal with unwanted refugees. Other European states might/will follow suit, especially in right-and-far-right-led countries. Copenhagen will not renew residency rights

This book is definitely a must read. It implies though that there is no alternative to capitalism. State intervention should remedy the ills of the system. The review concludes with a typical misleading suggestion: “If Biden truly intends to establish a more just and egalitarian economic order, he would do well to consult both the achievements and the tragedies of U.S. development documented in Levy’s book.” The use of the comparative form implies that there is already a sort of ‘just and egalitarian economic order’, which an absurd thing to say. Biden could make that order more just and egalitarian. Why does one not just state: “if Biden truly intends to establish a just and egalitarian order...”? Portrait of the United States as a Developing Country

Another excellent article by Joseph Massad. Admitting it now is too little, too late Related A liberal argument. The United States Ignoring Israel’s Violence Against Palestinians

A leading liberal economist’s latest book. The wrong assumption, and not hardly questioned by the reviewer, is that socialism and communism existed in modern times. “ Capitalism, Alone  demonstrates the limits of studying capitalism’s empirical effects without a theory of how the system actually works—or especially, how it doesn’t.” Surely, without (referring to) theory–the Marxist tenets and analysis–then our description of the socio-economic system that existed in the Soviet Union, would be the mainstream one: socialist/communist. A fundamental pillar of capitalism is the rate of profit, not just profit-making. This also has not been even hinted at. How any form of capitalism that is dominated by private capital invests and therefore achieves growth is determined by the rate of return.  “ Where the globalization literature of the 2000s was exultant with promise, Milanovic’s book frankly admits the limitations of actually existing capitalism and resigns itself to making the best of th

“Jean-Daniel Lévy, managing director of Harris Interactive, which conducted the poll, said: “Overall, the French have the same views as those that were expressed by the generals. Researchers say that support for Le Pen in the army has been running at just over 40 per cent, which is not far off the level in the wider population given the far-right’s support among the young and the relative youth of active soldiers. In the police, support exceeds 50 per cent.”

A comparison between the left’s programme and Biden’s

“ Real wealth concentration is about the ownership of productive capital, the means of production and finance. It's big capital (finance and business) that controls the investment, employment and financial decisions of the world.    A dominant core of 147 firms through interlocking stakes in others together control 40% of the wealth in the global network according to the Swiss Institute of Technology.   A total of 737 companies control 80% of it all.   This is the inequality that matters for the functioning of capitalism – the concentrated power of capital. And because inequality of wealth stems from the concentration of the means of production and finance in the hands of a few; and because that ownership structure remains untouched, any increased taxes on wealth will fall short of irreversibly changing the distribution of wealth and income in modern societies.”

U.S. Jim Crow Israeli Apartheid

This is not news; it’s been going going for years. “Rather than selling off the NHS  outright – a decision politicians know would be unpopular – they are instead doing this through the backdoor, by stealth.” The NHS is being privatised by stealth under cover of the pandemic

As France celebrated victory in Europe on 8 May 1945, its army was massacring thousands of civilians in Sétif and Guelma - events that were the real beginning of Algeria’s war of independence. Massacre in Algeria

A Dystopian Lebanese Thriller

  Saqi Books Selections

Tahrir revolutionaries famously chanted for “bread, freedom, and social justice.” Ten years on, hopes for freedom and social justice are quite far from most Egyptians’ minds. The vast majority are far too busy chasing after the daily bread that led off that short list of demands, struggling day in and day out to feed themselves and their families, and desperately trying to cling to what’s left of their basic human dignity, before even that is stripped from them. There is no denying that the situation is bleak. But at least for one night, Egyptians were able to celebrate and take pride in their cultural heritage, even as that too becomes little more than another weapon in the hands of the regime. The Military Mobilisation of History

The lingering fall out from nuclear tests in the Sahara

  Orientalism and Its Afterlives

“Countries that consistently aim for elimination—i.e., maximum action to control SARS-CoV-2 and stop community transmission as quickly as possible—have generally fared better than countries that opt for mitigation. Evidence suggests that countries that opt for rapid action to eliminate SARS-CoV-2—with the strong support of their inhabitants—also better protect their economies and minimise restrictions on civil liberties compared with those that strive for mitigation.” Elimination creates best outcomes

Opposing the  saber-rattling and militarism of the US’s China hawks without downplaying the oppression of the Uyghur

What an FT columnist means by “economic radical on the left” is Keynesians and new Keynesians. The left is winning the economic battle of ideas

America must now lift its knee from the world

The history of protest songs in Tunisia and their link to popular culture

Beautifully written by Gabriel García Márquez in 1987. Let it be known that we knew love

“A Harris Interactive opinion poll for LCI showed 58 per cent of French voters polled supported the military officers who signed the controversial declaration , compared with 42 per cent who were opposed.  Among respondents who said they supported a political party, 86 per cent of RN [ Rassemblement National]  sympathisers backed the soldiers. For the centre-right Les Républicains party, support was at 71 per cent, and even in Macron’s La République en Marche party it was at 46 per cent.”

A Tale of Hypocrisy