Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Even though slavery was abolished, it truly was just a transfer of ownership from chattel slavery and private ownership to literally state-sanctioned slavery," says Savannah Eldrige from the Abolish Slavery National Network. "The United States of America has never had a day without codified slavery.”

“ There are too many whose idea of ‘critical’ is limited to saying some development was problematic but some was quite good, if only there had been more of that ‘good’ development. The most stunning imperial formation was that the War in Afghanistan was unquestionable–whether as an act of revenge and/or care (for Afghan women). The friend/enemy distinction has been marked on to women’s bodies playing out in a fundamentalist logic of either supporting education or not supporting education, supporting the Taliban or condemning them. The Kite Runner  made everyone feel they knew Afghanistan. Like white people who watched the TV serial  The Wire  that came out about the same time as the beginning of the US war and occupation of Afghanistan.  Suddenly white liberals felt they knew the deep struggles of racialized people in Baltimore, and elsewhere, because they watched  The Wire , and liked the character Omar. The critique was only of the withdrawal, not of the ...

Fellow Citizens A wicked and unjust war is now being waged by the ruling and propertied classes of this country, with all the resources of civilisation at their back, against an ill-armed and semi-barbarous people whose only crime is that they have risen against a foreign oppression which those classes themselves admit to have been infamous. Tens of millions wrung from the labour of workmen of this country are being squandered on Arab slaughtering; and for what: 1) that Eastern Africa may be ‘opened up’ to the purveyor of ‘shoddy’ wares, bad spirits, venereal disease, cheap bibles and the missionary; in short, that the English trader and contractor may establish his dominion on the ruins of the old, simple and happy life led by the children of the desert; 2) that a fresh supply of sinecure Government posts may be obtained for the occupation of the younger sons of the official classes; 3) as a minor consideration may be added that a new and happy hunting ground be provided for military ...

 Baraye 70 feminist reasons

An interview with Mike Davis in 2018

I disagree with Dabashi in calling neofascist and far-right parties’s triumph across Europe fascist parties. Why Americans consistently misread social uprisings

“Exploitation under temporary migration regimes is far from exceptional and should be understood as structural. Certainly, we should highlight exploitation and be enraged about abuse, but this should not be exoticised as something uniquely Qatari. This, after all, is not about Qatar. It’s about the geographies of exploitation inherent in a global economy that succeeds or fails based on its ability to gain the most for the least amount of cost.” The Orientalist discourse hides structural exploitation Related Italy’s Migrant Boot Camp Raped, beaten, exploited “Italy’s Sikh Slaves” Spain: “If you don’t want to work like a slave …”

Labour MP Nadia Whittome had tweeted to say Mr Sunak was a multimillionaire who had, as chancellor, cut taxes on banks while living standards dropped in the UK and added: "Black, white or Asian: if you work for a living, he is not on your side". Labour’s leader spokesman stressed that Rishi Sunak becoming the first British Asian prime minister was a "great thing" and something the country "should be proud of". Labour instructed Whittome to remove the tweet .

It is no more a crowded country or there is no money. Some people are not put in detention centres, banned from work or sent to Rwanda. They are granted visas  and a three-year stay before even entering the country. Ukrainian refugees in the UK

“A survey for French television found that almost six out of 10 people thought those living in France without permission should be put in administrative detention.” No surprise here . Related Le Pen consistently received her best scores  [in  la France périphérique small towns, rural municipalities and declining former industrial belts, the ‘France of the Gilets Jaunes’],  precisely because she offered a discourse that resonated with the demands for security and protection found in parts of France that have most suffered from the consequences of market-led globalization. Having accepted the mantra of There Is No Alternative, the forces of ‘progressive neoliberalism’ have been signally unable to speak to these demands, instead viewing them as obstacles to modernization. This laid the terrain for the Front National to frame them in nationalist-xenophobic terms, and present itself as the ‘voice of the people’. Us and them

I’m writing because I’m hoping the people who read it don’t need dollops of hope or good endings but are reading so that they’ll know what to fight, and fight even when the fight seems hopeless. —Mike Davis I have read only one of his books – The Late Victorian Holocaust . Magisterial. Enemy of the state

Ottoman revival?

“We should contest and expose the Kremlin’s lying. But to suggest that the public assault on truth is new, or peculiarly Russian, is also disinformation .  Just as the Kremlin requires a campaign of disinformation to justify its imperial aggression in Ukraine, the  British empire  also needed a system of comprehensive lies.” Good. But I expected to also read about the contemporary lying machine not just the empire one.

Business is business. Who did provide material support to the Nazi regime? Lafarge provided material support to ISIS, a US court rules Related Lafarge in Syria

During a Conservative Friends of Israel event in August, Sunak said there was a  “very strong case”  for the UK moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and recognise the latter as Israel’s capital.  Sunak  opposed  the labelling of Israel as an apartheid state. “Like any nation, Israel is not perfect - but it is a vibrant multi-ethnic democracy with a free press and the rule of law. It stands as a shining beacon of hope in a region of autocracies and religious extremists.” “He would want to see maximum sanctions put on to see whether Iran could be persuaded or forced into a wider agreement that goes beyond just the nuclear programme," Fox said. He  announced plans  to treat those who “vilify Britain” as extremists to be referred to the controversial counter-terrorism programme.  **** And as usual, most Brits will be complicit in the British regime’s criminal actions. And more than usual, they will be busy with their immediate meeds, the co...

Clean hands:  Hand washing and car washing will never answer the key question Who speaks: The representative is bound to the existing social order Consolation prize: The metaphysics of sovereignty

Review of  The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance  

European Union foreign  policy chief Josep Borrell  declared  last week that "Europe is a garden. We have built a garden…The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica [Mogherini] – is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.” Borrell’s ignorance, some called it racism, reveals the state of mind of a unconfident ruling class, fear and uncertainty in time of economic and political crisis, fall in living standards, and war in Europe. Josep Borrell’s garden

“ Science departments today tirelessly exhort their faculty to become versed in the arcane business of funding procurement, and to pursue areas of inquiry that may be attractive to venture capital. More than a scientist-entrepreneur, the researcher today is becoming a scientific entrepreneur, in the same way one might be a real estate or a textile entrepreneur. Now it seems that this ideal is favoured by the jurors of the Swedish Academy.” Research and profiteering

“For those who like their Zionism with a side of popcorn, Marvel’s latest offering is certain to be a treat .”

But not the real thing Related Discovery of 92 naked migrants at Greece-Turkey border

Why doesn’t the BBC put this in its Business section rather than in Tech? And even a blond girl did not prevent it! Heartless! TikTok, tick tock, tick tock …

"Russia's problem is our system. A system was created here that created such a person [as Putin]. The question of the West's role in creating this system is a very serious one.” — Grigory Yavlinsky

“The Hidden Light of Objects  was banned in 2017. Since then, thankfully, that particular law has been overturned, so my book is no longer banned. But it reveals that those in power do indeed believe that literature can make a difference , enough of one to necessitate its suppression.”

This is disgraceful to say the least. Is Middle East Eye rebaptizing someone who was/is complicit in war crimes along with Blair? No a single mention of Hague’s position and defense of the war and of Blair. Related Hague and Jolie at LSE

“Despite  being funded  in a fashion beyond compare and spreading its peculiar brand of destruction around the globe, its system of war hasn’t triumphed in a significant conflict since World War II (with the war in Korea remaining, almost three-quarters of a century later, in a painful and festering stalemate).” This is a liberal nationalist view of a former American military professor and Air Force officer. All his emphasis on ‘lies’ by the military and the propaganda of war without mentioning what he calls the ‘truth’ is keeps the reader wondering, bewildered perhaps. Not a single mention of the political economy of war , especially of the nature and functioning of American capital. You just get the impression that a few liars at the top cause wars as if politicians, strategists of empire, ruling classes, advisors, etc think and work outside a socio-political frame work of power structure and power relations domestically and internationally. There is a mention of ‘honour’ a...

A British student sitting next to me is reading the epic. All I knew about Virgil before reading the critique here , was the meaning I used to describe to tourists of the famous mosaic housed in the Musée de Bardo in Tunis, Tunisia. Here is what Daniel Mendelsohn writes about the Aeneid on The New Yorker:  [T]he Aeneid—notoriously—can be hard to love. In part, this has to do with its aesthetics. In place of the raw archaic potency of Homer’s epics, which seems to dissolve the millennia between his heroes and us, Virgil’s densely allusive poem offers an elaborately self-conscious “literary” suavity. (The critic and Columbia professor Mark Van Doren remarked that “Homer is a world; Virgil, a style.”) Then, there’s Aeneas himself—“in some ways,” as even the Great Courses Web site felt compelled to acknowledge, “the dullest character in epic literature.” In the Aeneid’s opening lines, Virgil announces that the hero is famed above all for his  pietas , his “sense of duty”: hardly ...

A review of Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy Related Historical background To understand fully today’s popular protests, we need to look all the way back to the Sudan’s colonial past. Post-independence conflicts in Sudan were largely caused by ethnic divisions created by the British colonial administration between 1899 and 1956. “Divide and rule” policies pursued by the British continue to haunt contemporary Sudan, both north and south. During most of the colonial period (1899-1956), Sudan was ruled as two Sudans. The British separated the predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking north from the multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multilingual south. Britian’s “divide-and-rule” policy separated southern Sudanese provinces from the rest of the country and slowed down their economic and social development. The British authorities claimed that the south was not ready to open up to the modern world. At the same time, the British heavily invested in the Arab north, modernizing and liberalizing p...

Women and men who built a feminist revolution in the middle of the Arab Spring

The findings of the survey are indicative. It is a long document to read, but one gets an idea from the Executive Summary

After more than a decade of independent publishing and media activism

“The most radical socialist experiment in the recent history of the Middle East”

“ In my benchmark estimates, I find that the bottom 50% of the world population emitted 12% of global emissions in 2019, whereas the top 10% emitted 48% of the total. Since 1990, the bottom 50% of the world population has been responsible for only 16% of all emissions, whereas the top 1% has been responsible for 23% of the total. While per-capita emissions of the global top 1% increased since 1990, emissions from low- and middle-income groups within rich countries declined. Contrary to the situation in 1990, 63% of the global inequality in individual emissions is now due to a gap between low and high emitters within countries rather than between countries. Finally, the bulk of total emissions from the global top 1% of the world population comes from their investments rather than from their consumption.” Source: Lucas Chancel on nature.com

Most Americans never seemed to take in how much civilians suffered from our war tactics, widely publicized as “surgical” and “precise” in their targeting of Islamic extremists, even as they now take in how the Russians are slaughtering Ukrainian civilians. War is a form of terrorism Related The Violent American Century

The Royal College of Nursing is balloting all of its UK members for strike action for the first time in its 106-year history . Let’s hope this goes ahead and be effective. Related Labour leader refuses to back striking workers

Protests come as resistance to austerity is growing internationally

Imperial Encore  a text that should be on the reading list of anyone interested in colonialism, material culture as a tool of empire and attempts to extend imperialism through the use of soft power. Review of  Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire

Banning books in Texas, US

ما هو الشِّعرُ حين يصبح فأراً            كِسرةُ الخبزِ هَمُّهُ والغِذاءُ وإذا أصبح المفكرُ بوقاً                يستوي الفكرُ عندها والحِذاءُ من أحلى ما كتب نزار قباني

As Irène Félix, Chairwoman of the Metropolitan District, Bourges Plus, explains, “After a period of reconstruction at the end of the nineties, hirings in the Defence sector have risen sharply over the past five years due to orders from the French army and other countries.” The accusations of complicity in war crimes aimed at our national champion do not seem to worry this official, elected on a list “miscellaneous left.” The defence industries are perfectly familiar with the limits of their activity,“she answered us.” The local authority supports the local industrial fabric but does not interfere with diplomatic issues which are managed by the Government." Complicity in war crimes indeed. “Made in France” war in Yemen Related Yemen in purgatory The Road to War

He is now the state

Connecting women’s struggle in Iran to women’s struggle in the US

Contrary to Western corporate media reports, the protests in Iran are not simply about the “morality police”—they represent a rejection of the structural social, political, and juridical relations that systematically reproduce capitalist patriarchy combined with Islamist codes. Hijab has nothing to do with “women’s culture” in the Middle East, as some postcolonial thinkers imply. In the context of the Islamic Republic, Hijab is a method of class domination, an integral part of capitalist patriarchy, and must be criticized without compromise. Corporate media in the West (for example, the BBC Persian and Iran International) as well as celebrity activists like Masih Alinejad (who work with the most conservative forces in the United States, those in favor of prohibiting abortion and “regime change” via military intervention) are doing their best to promote the reactionary trends within the movement, reducing the whole problem to the question of “human rights.”  They mispresent the soci...

“Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition - it is dreamland.” With these words Mark Twain closed his pilgrimage to Palestine, and in them can be seen the complex attitude of nineteenth-century Americans toward the Orient. For many nineteenth-century Americans, Palestine was a dreamland, a region of the world to be visited through the Bible and travel literature. The intense spiritual connection felt between Americans and the Holy Land, the idea of Palestine, would lead them to the region first as missionaries and then as tourists. Yet, to Americans, such as Twain, coming to Palestine from the western American frontier, Palestine did not compare in beauty, size, or material progress to their homeland. This comparison reflects the influence of materialism on the new wave of middle-class American travelers of which Twain was a member. The ...

A review of A Hitch in Time Related Hitchens when he was good