Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Football: a people’s sport?

I have always thought that this is the norm and part of ‘our values’. Should Egyptian gymnasts campaign to ‘liberate’ their European sisters? European gymnasts Egyptian gymnasts

The roaring twenties repeated? Related Why the threat posed by Covid to the global economy is not over

The prison population and prison conditions

The IMF is Hollowing out Pakistan’s Sovereignty

I watched this movie many years ago. My second view has given me a very different understanding of such a beautiful and well-directed film. The actors are outstanding.

For totally ignoring Western human rights abuses A good slam, but ... He is the same Jeffrey Sachs who advised on how to violate the human rights of eastern Europeans after 1991 by ‘liberalising’ (read plundering) their economy, and we know the disastrous outcomes of Western policies implemented. “Shock Therapy has been popularized by Sachs, the  IMF and others as the three ‘-izations’, which ... are now familiar to every schoolchild in Eastern Europe: liberalization, stabilization and privatization. More recently a fourth, final step has been added: institutionalization.”  —Peter Gown, Neo-Liberal Theory and Practice for Eastern Europe, New Left Review, September-October 1995

“ Debates about blasphemy and apostasy laws among Muslims are naturally influenced by international affairs. Across the globe, Muslim minorities – including the Palestinians, Chechens of Russia, Kashmiris of India,   Rohingya   of Myanmar and   Uighurs   of China – have experienced severe persecution. No other religion is so widely targeted in so many different countries. Alongside persecution are those  Western policies  that discriminate against Muslims, such as laws prohibiting headscarves in schools.” Two Muslims identify with each other regardless of their nationality or ethnicity. That is their ‘imagined community’. In addition, many Muslims regarded the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq as a ‘wars on Islam’. It is a socio-psychological question when we see them support executing an apostate or wanting the implementation of shari’s laws. Thus authoritarian regimes in alliance of Muslim sc holars find support among many when it comes to blasphemy and aposta...

A New Consensus?

Related In England and the United States, the police were invented within the space of just a few decades — roughly from 1825 to 1855. The new institution was not a response to an increase in crime, and it really didn’t lead to new methods for dealing with crime. The most common way for authorities to solve a crime, before and since the invention of police, has been for someone to tell them who did it. Besides, crime has to do with the acts of individuals, and the ruling elites who invented the police were responding to challenges posed by collective action. To put it in a nutshell: The authorities created the police in response to large, defiant crowds. That’s — strikes in England, — riots in the Northern US, — and the threat of slave insurrections in the South.

Jenkins’ last sentence is meaningless.  – Jenkins  “can safely write this whilst the Taliban kill and torture in Afghanistan with impunity.” – “If the Taliban can ''torture and kill with impunity'' after twenty years of western war against them what exactly is the point of continuing?” As for Britain, it invaded Afghanistan twice in the 19th century, once in the 20th and–with the US–once in the 21st. Four times and yet the British have been unable to bring ‘democracy’ to the Afghans! What did Wester intervention achieve? Related Who cares about what happened to the Afghans? ‘We’ confronted terror with more and bigger terror, and attacks took place in France, England, Germany, the US ... We shouldn’t forget though that ‘we’ gave Malala the Nobel peace prize, helped her go to Oxford University, and even met Obama. And ‘we felt happy with it. How great we are in bringing freedom to women and kites to kids!

An interesting liberal take on Jordan and how liberals now are saying enough with supporting authoritarian and monarchical regimes. The Arab uprisings have exposed everything, including many hypocritical liberals. A U.S. satellite and protectorate on the verge of implosion 

Rojava’s Suspended Future

 A New Myanmar?

 The Myth of the Israeli Nuclear Deterrent

“The insurgents are primarily Muslims from the coastal zone of Cabo Delgado, recruited by local fundamentalist preachers with a basically socialist message - that Sharia, or Islamic law, would bring equality and everyone would share in the coming resource wealth.“ A Peasant Uprising Related Jihadists and the curse of gas and rubies in Mozambique