Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The nation state is anti-human.

David Bowie describes the feelings behind the song Related America, America Damascus, 1995

Along with many other Muslim women, I wonder about the feelings of  Muslim women athletes , who have been kicked out of sporting events for body-covering clothing or head coverings. Tell these Muslim athletes that the German gymnasts are being celebrated, and they may ask: Is “girl power” a function of who these women are, white and European?  Are Muslim women also celebrated for their choices when they resist sexist rules and demand control over their apparel and bodies? Quite the opposite.  Muslim women are scorned for modest dress

From Sykes-Picot to a dysfunctional ‘democtacy’

It is natural for a liberal to speak of “democracy” in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: “for what class?” —V. I. U.

A couple of points need updating–the death toll of the sanctions on Iraq, for example–but it is still accurate and prophetic. Arundhati Roy in September 2001: Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place. Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely. It will spawn more anger and more terror across the world. For ordinary people in America, it will mean lives lived in a climate of sickening uncertainty: will my child be safe in school? Will there be nerve gas in the subway? A bomb in the cinema hall? The US government, and no doubt governments all over the world, will use the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back on public spending and divert huge amounts of money to the defence i...

Here’s where they get their money from

“ From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like  boni patres familias,  they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition. [E]xploitation  and squandering of the vitality of the soil (apart from making exploitation dependent upon the accidental and unequal circumstances of individual producers rather than the attained level of social development) takes the place of conscious rational cultivation of the soil as eternal communal property, an inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of a chain of successive generations of the human race.” — Capital Vol. III Part VI

Palestinian labour, unconquered

Suspicion and prejudice

Oliver says that while he expects more commercialisation of Black and Arab hip hop in France - because “money talks” - he does not foresee it becoming mainstream like in the US. “It would fundamentally challenge the notion of what being French is if you just saw Black and Arab people everywhere and I think they’re too racist to let that happen on a mass level.” Many of the themes embedded in their music are directly influenced by struggles that shaped them, especially the inescapable life of crime they hold no pride in. According to their lyrics at least, where they once existed in a world that rejected them, they now reject the world their success has given them access to. A light in France’s dark corners