Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“For all its rhetoric around ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights,’there is an inexcusable free pass given to Modi’s violence by the Biden administration and American liberals. This selective attention is inextricable from a robust  defense relationship : over $4 billion in arms sales to India in the past decade, along with FBI-run trainings for police in Indian-occupied Kashmir, the world’s most  militarized  region… Liberals and conservatives alike will glorify the unity between the “world’s largest” and the “world’s oldest” democracies. Violence, repression, and authoritarianism will be ignored in the name of friendship, progress, and security.” Biden’s tacit endorsement of repression, authoritarianism, and religious intolerance

Andrew Bacevich is a conservative critical of American ‘foreign policy’/imperialism. Note the absence of the political economic factors of the US involvement in supporting Ukraine. In fact, not a single economic factor is mentioned, which – even when the reader doesn’t believe in “democracy vs. autocracy” or “rules of internal order” rhetoric as Bacevich correctly highlights – is left wondering about the reasons of American involvement in the war.  Furthermore, he is treating the involvement as exclusively directed against Russia, excluding the main threat for Washington’s imperialist hegemony – China . “ In the present moment, however, Russia is anything but America’s principal global adversary,” Bacevich states. It is a narrow way of looking at the global geopolitics. There is no reference either to the domestic social factors in the US in influencing the state’s decisions in going to war. Quoting a critic of Bacevich, there has been a "very powerful, cross-class social constitu

This is an example of obvious political selectivity: I wonder why David Hearst singles out some ‘dictators’ and ignores others who have much more money and wealth and have been investing and wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in the West.  Since the people who take the route of migration do it because of lack of development and prospects in their native countries, imagine if the petro-gas-dollar money of the last 4/5 decades have been shared and invested in the region. Hearst is short-sighted, for the issue is structural and has roots in the natures of the MENA’s states, the form of ‘development’ pursued and imposed and the dynamic of global capitalism.

 “ These are not the refugees we are used to…These people are Europeans…These people are intelligent, they are educated people…This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists." The limitations of humanity

Let’s not forget that state and social movements relation are governed by the political economy of a given period and how confident – and far – could the state go in repression and beyond the daily oppression. We should also differentiate between security states where regimes use all necessary means to survive and the advanced capitalist states where maintaining the status quo means rotation of governments, which have significant resources at their disposal, powerful media and interest groups that marginalise and vilify dissent. That also apply globally where international capital, international institutions and organisations and states work together to support or divert and co-opt this or that social movement when it suits their interests.  ‘ How elites are crushing dissent ’ in Britain or France should be read differently from how regimes in Egypt, Iran or Russia exercise repression. After all, the title of the article does not apply to Britain, Germany, or even to France, where ther

Someone has just mentioned Singapore comparing its economic development with some Arab countries. So, I felt I should add a note to an old post . Referring to a capitalist country with a small population  – 2 million in 1970 and 2.4 million in 1980 when  Singapore’s economic development was apace – is not a good way of comparing countries. “ Only 7  years after its independence (1972), Singapore had become a  foreign investment magnet .  More than one-fourth of Singapore's manufacturing firms partnered with or were owned by a foreign entity.  The majority  of the investors came from the United States and Japan.  The country also achieved a  double-digit economic growth rate every year.” For internal and external reasons countries like Tunisia (the one my interlocutor compared to Singapore), Morocco, Syria and Egypt did not enjoy such foreign funding.  In 2022, Singapore was ranked 139th out of 180 nations by  Reporters Without Borders  on the global  Press Freedom Index .  Freedom

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A very good summary

“The BBC has obtained evidence casting doubt on the Greek coastguard's account of the migrant shipwreck in which hundreds are feared to have died .  Analysis of the movement of other ships in the area suggests the overcrowded fishing vessel was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized. The coastguard still claims that during these hours the boat was on a course to Italy and not in need of rescue.”