Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Lawyer Michael Mansfield: “ If one of our nationals is committing ​an offence , we ought to be doing something about it​. Even if we can’t stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.” It means “our government” is not behaving badly, i.e. the denial of British regime's tacit support of genocide. It means only 10 bad apples, 10 bad dual nationals, have 'behaved badly'. Barrister Sean Summerfield: “ The public will be shocked…”  Would they?

By Richard Seymour On the one hand, it is obvious that the recent rise of right-wing nationalism has something to do with the economy, and specifically with the global financial crash of 2008. The electoral record in Europe between 1870 and 2014 suggests that voters generally respond to financial crises by moving to the right, with the far right gaining the most. On average, far-right parties increase their vote share by 30 per cent after such a crisis. On the other hand, decades of research have failed to find any evidence that voters respond to personal economic suffering by punishing the incumbent. Belonging to a group whose economic interests have been directly harmed seems only rarely to change political preferences. We are passionate animals. Passion, as Karl Marx wrote, is our ‘essential force’. To understand what’s happening today, we must return to the passions. Among the passions, the most important for this chapter is resentment. For good reasons, resentment is seen as a dis...

“In reality, the liberal European "civilised" rhetoric about how Europe and its white settler-colonies have supposedly learned their lesson from the Nazi genocide and become "enlightened" is nothing more than drivel, something the peoples of Asia and Africa have long recognised. The genocidal Israeli and US policies and plans for the Palestinians today are simply a continuation of the centuries-long European and American savagery against the colonised .”

Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza : “If you are going to remain a person with a conscience, then you've got to reconsider many of your alliances and professional relationships, or you stay within those institutions and become dead inside.” Pankaj, you have stirred your finger in my wound, as I carry on being complicit in genocide unable to break away from the web I am entangled in.

Yes, I Am A Terrorist By Ahmad Matar  The West cries in fear When I make a toy from a matchbox  While they [the West] make a gallows of my body Using my nerves for rope. The West panics when I announce one day That they have torn my galabia While it is they who have urged me to be ashamed of my culture And to announce my joy and my utmost delight When they violate me. The West is sorely grieved when I worship One God in the stillness of the prayer niche [ 1] While from the hair of their coattails [ 2] and the dirt of their shoes They knead a thousand idols that they set atop the dung heaps made of the titled ones  So that I become their slave And perform amongst them The rituals of flies. And he, they Will beat me if I announce my refusal. If I mention among them the fragrance of flowers and grass They would crucify me Accusing me of terrorism! Admirable are all the actions of the West, and of its tails As for me, as long as I am related to freedom Everything I do is...

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. — Karl Marx and Frederich Engels , The German Ideology

Marco D’Eramo We are growing habituated to the savagery, day by day. Then we wonder how the Germans could have ignored the genocide that was being perpetrated all round them. We, unbending guardians of Western values, implacable defenders of international law: we dine on mass murder  bien chambré . We are deeply pained by the deaths of ‘innocent civilians’, of course, saddened by the hospitals razed to the ground. Our hearts go out to the ragamuffins with no future who assail the few aid trucks that reach the Strip. We are distressed by the number of journalists being slaughtered. But the ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Gaza does not stop us sleeping at night, even as the situation worsens week by week. We supply the bombs and we feel sorry for their victims. Call it compassionate bombing. It is little wonder that the global South finds the West hypocritical. This would be less apparent if the Israeli government and its supporters would simply state outright that Israel has the right...