Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Not for the those who were born in the right place, for example. Boom time in Norway Related Turkey’s defence exports to Kyiv

Ukraine: complexity and war

From cats to Dostoevsky

Early Islamic description of Russia and Ukraine

An openly racist Europe defeats most of what we claim is at stake Related Suddenly UK homes are open to host refugees, a certain type of refugees

On the brink

How the experience of Syrian exiles can inform resistance to the invasion

Written after Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Huntington’s Class of Civilisations , but before the ‘war on terror’, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the rise of China, the 2008/09 Great Recession, the Arab uprisings, the rise of the far right, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ————- Why then do the European states claim for themselves the right to spread civilization and manners to different continents? Why not to Europe itself? – Joseph Roth, 1937 “Modern democracy, like the nation-state it is so closely associated with, is basically the product of the protracted domestic and international experimentation which followed the collapse of the old European order in 1914. In the short run, both Wilson and Lenin failed to build the ‘better world’ they dreamed of. The communist revolution across Europe did not materialize, and the building of socialism was confined to the Soviet Union; the crisis of liberal democracy followed soon after as one country after an...

A good read. From the virtual office to the ‘Great Resignation’

From Marketisation to Armed Conflict

Nothing is more anarchical than power. Power does whatever it wants. And what power wants is completely arbitrary, or imposed by economic needs that escape common logic. –Pier Paolo Pasolini

More of the honest European politicians

Facing biggest fall since 1950s

Vladimir Putin’s savage attack on Ukraine has brutally brought to the fore the phenomenon known as “Londongrad”. Much excellent reporting in the past decade has revealed how corrupt elites from around the world launder looted money in the west. In  Butler to the World , [Oliver] Bullough takes the UK to task.  Butlering goes far beyond accepting deposits from the world’s corrupt: it extends to procuring (palatial) housing for them, educating their children, honouring them in every way from naming rights at Britain’s world-class universities to royal patronage, as well as catering to all the minor needs the super-rich might need. Bullough describes a postwar City of London determined to insulate itself from government regulation, ready to embrace innovations that would mean good business for financiers. He also highlights how in a world of hard currency shortage — withholding dollars was the means by which Washington made London give up Suez — there was a lot to like in allowin...

Europe’s Twentieth Century

 A very good analysis. From the Tsar to Today, via Stalin, the Imperialist Will Marks the History of Russia

Has the fear of a wider war made the BBC acknowledge the Western imperialism’s role?  “But the dark energy that drives Vladimir Putin is the other side of that coin. He saw Russia diminished, humiliated and stripped of what he saw as its right to a buffer zone of subordinate states.

Are Ukrainians more deserving of sympathy than Afghans and Iraqis?

A free ebook by Howard Zinn

Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity. –John D. Rockefeller