Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

      Abdel Fattah el-Sisi  and Emmanuel Macron Egypt sentences former presidential candidate to 15 years . The former presidential candidate is one of at least 60,000 political prisoners estimated to have been jailed since Sisi took power in a  coup in 2013.

In fact, America is two guns: one at home and a much bigger one abroad.

Via Middle East Eye. Notice the wording. The assault is called ‘altercation’.  Aida Saidawi, a Palestinian woman in her 50s, in an altercation with an Israeli settler in Jerusalem's Old City on 29 May 2022 (MEE/Haaretz/Ohad Zwigenberg)

“Un pays devient dépendant en poursuivant une politique agricole basée sur les avantages comparatifs qui consistent à produire pour exporter des produits agricoles hors saisons et/ou rares sur les marchés mondiaux, tels que les dattes, les agrumes et autres primeurs, et importer des produits alimentaires de base tels que les céréales.  Ainsi, non seulement on épuise les ressources locales, au détriment de la paysannerie et des populations locales, pour nourrir le marché mondial et les comptes bancaires des grands investisseurs, mais on se soumet aux mécanismes d’un système alimentaire mondial sur lequel la capacité d’influence d’un pays dépendant est pratiquement insignifiante.” Pays dont la souveraineté politique économique est réduite

 

Charged Who do the police protect? Related British policing is institutionally racist

Related ‘A corpse in a gown’

Middle East and North African countries carried out most global executions last year Meanwhile in  Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan …

Women’s role against British occupation and Zionist settlement

Some of the arguments of the capitalist ideology are deployed here.

The faces from detention camps

Directing the Brighton Festival

“The miners appeared reluctant to pass judgement on the war or President Putin directly. Many of them are Russian-speaking and appeared keen to avoid territory that could cause frictions within a tight-knit community. But several men acknowledged a strong nostalgia for the Soviet era and the times when Ukrainians and Russians worked side by side in the mines.” Ukrainian miners struggle on

Joining ‘the West’

“This isn’t just a chapter in the sad history of the 20th century, but a story of division and whipped-up animosities that has its roots in colonialism and is repeating itself throughout the world today – not least in the UK’s own grubby politics.” A tale of the man who killed Gandhi

“President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, saying the burden to protect Taiwan is “even stronger’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” I have just looked at the world map. Taiwan, in case you didn’t know, is situated between Florida and Cuba. American imperialism, after defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, is trying to reassert itself. It is contrary to what a few analysts think. The U.S. still has a superior force and supported by subordinate states/allies. Taiwan would be the excuse not the reason for any military action. The real reason and the main objective is to clip the rising technological power of China. That is the main threat to Western imperialism. 

“To truly understand the dangerous predicament India’s 207 million Muslims find themselves in today, it’s important to remember that this is the culmination of a gradual process, not a singular sequence of events. Classifying minorities and minoritised citizens as necessary threats, who are either to be disciplined or eliminated, has been a routine feature in the design and practice of modern nation-states, of which India is no exception.” Unfortunately, the writer did not elaborate on the above in the article: - “the culmination of a gradual process” - “the routine feature in the design and practice of modern nationa-states” The forsaken ones

The Tavern Jerusalem is Arab Nationalism’s Pride Related Poetry defeats authority

   بكائية على صدر الوطن

A 2015 movie available on sflix.to

Sharing via google drive

Return of the king

I think ‘Western imperialism’ in the title is an overstretch. The article does not deal with Western imperialism. Nor does it mention economic imperialism. “Starmer’s flame-war against the left has become so extreme that, as some critics have pointed out, both Pope Francis and Amnesty International would face expulsion from Starmer’s Labour Party were they members. ”

No disruption to capital accumulation. Criminalising protest

A story during the Hungarian uprising against the Stalinist regime and the Soviet invasion in 1956. The movie is not about the uprising itself and it actually never gives a voice to the socialist and democratic demands of Hungarian revolutionaries . Neither of the two characters who exchanged their views about the system represented the revolutionaries.  Trezor (Hungary, 2018 )

A new book by Caroline Elkins. A review “ With its enormous breadth and ambition, it amounts to something approaching a one-volume history of imperial Britain’s use of force, torture, and deceit around the world. As devastating as the details of these tactics are, even more damning is Elkins’s account of what she argues has been the persistent and perverse misuse of law to cast a veneer of justice and respectability over the remorseless exploitation of others. “As its title suggests, Elkins’s book argues that violence was not just an incidental feature of the British Empire, not simply its midwife, so to speak. Rather, it was foundational to the system itself, a fact borne out in considerable detail.” But Elkins’s “most original argument lies not in the violence itself but rather in London’s use and abuse of the notion of the rule of law, much touted by Britain as an elevating feature of modern Western civilization and a pillar of democracy. “ Elkins convincingly demonstrates that duri...

A campaign to release them

“You either have to be 100 percent on one side or on the other side. Any variation becomes suspect and raises questions about your loyalty and your motivations.” A self-fulfilling prophecy

Enduring entanglements

The projects, mapped across the Middle East, are an effort to consolidate the influence of American capital and rebuff competition from China by creating a physical, economic bulwark that strengthens American and European supply chains. It is about to hit the Middle East

Shireen Abu Akleh Related Israel assassinated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

A liberal with a different colour. Some countries are not mature, global capitalism, uneven development, imperialism, etc. have nothing to do with the plights of these countries. Thus, Robert Kaplan in this article echoes what some of my white Western students once said: “a benevolent dictator is a good thing for countries the Middle East and Africa,” or what a Canadian suggested when she said “we should stop talking about democracy in those countries.” What those students and Kaplan have in mind when they speak about ‘democracy’ is ‘democracy’ within capitalist social property relations. Capitalism for them is not the fundamental determiner and the fundamental problem.  Some countries are just unfit or ‘we’ – major Western regimes, corporations, international financial institutions, colonial and neocolonial powers - have not played any role in the predicaments of those countries. Furthermore, the arrogant ignores that the historical processes of Western Europe,  industrialisa...

“Those who preach socialism,” Shivji wrote in Intellectuals at the Hill , “must first learn to practise democracy.” A review of Development as Rebellion

Free to watch on onionplay.se

The growing scandal of fish waste

A book review.  The full text is subject to subscription, but what is available is enough I think to encourage us to explore the book.  Photography, War and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq

Anyone who has read Ellen Meiksins Wood’s The Origin of Capitalism (1999) should read this ‘discussion’ for update. Entering the neofeudal era

The ‘same’ headlines, attacks and vilifications uttered and published when I first arrived in England 20 years ago. The difference today is that white Ukrainians are welcome as it was with Polish labour. Johnson warns of the ‘healthy young men’ or ‘economic migrants’ who come here under false pretences, sometimes posing as minors, in place of the truly vulnerable.  Fables of migration

But most remain imprisoned or have disappeared

This book [ Genocide in Libya ] is not meant to be conclusive, but to bring out Libya and Libya’s brutal, genocidal colonial history. And to get rid of that common and really absurd way of thinking that goes “I don’t know anything about Libya, so I’m going to talk about tribalism, I’m going to talk about [Muammar] al-Qaddafi, about regionalism or religion.” Who doesn’t have regions? Who doesn’t have these social complexities? An interview with Ali Abdullatif Ahmida Related There was no a Nuremberg trials for Italian fascists

A review from 2020 by a Western-centric Marxist economist and blogger might help us understand the situation of today’s global economy. Review of Trade Wars Are Class Wars Part 1 Part 2

A book review There was no a Nuremberg trials for Italian fascists

“ All dissent has been criminalized in India. Until recently, dissenters were called anti-national. Now we are openly labelled intellectual terrorists. We are currently in that dangerous place where there is no set of facts or histories that we can agree upon, or even argue wi th.  The narratives do not overlap or even intersect with each other. It’s myth versus history. We’re on our own. No help will come. It didn’t come to Yemen, to Sri Lanka, to Rwanda. Why should we hope otherwise in India? In international politics, only profit, power, race, class, and geopolitics determine morality. Everything else is merely a posture, a shadow dance.” Arundhati Roy on religious nationalism and dissent 

By country, most Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.  Denmark is four times bigger than Lebanon. It has 40 times of Syrian refugees than Denmark . Denmark’s GDP is more than 10 times bigger than Lebanon’s.  Blatant racism. If you are white and Christian, we change the law and welcome you.

The Haymarket affair

 From citrus production to historical memory