Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"A look at the multiple fronts on which U.S. imperialism is operating — in particular the Middle East, Latin America and the growing confrontation with China — shows widely differing scales of strategic importance, but with some common elements. One of the most important and too little appreciated facts is the brutal use of economic sanctions against less powerful countries designated as enemy regimes. While a handful of Democratic poli­ticians have spoken in opposition to U.S. invasion,  hardly any have called attention to the murderous effects of sanctions — which as we know from the example of Iraq are not a substitute for war, but preparation for it." How many wars?

This is the kind of analysis we need: a well-established journalist at the Financial Times argues that there is a risk of "accidental" war in the Middle East. History, and the history of the region in particular, following Gardner's logic, tells us that wars happen by "accident", not by a cumulative process within a historical juncture and with a backgroound at home and abroad of the social-political forces at play. What might be called an "accident" could be a trigger, but not the mechanism. Necessity is the main/fundamental factor, i.e. the cumulative process(es) of drives and contradictions  make war a necessity. I am curious to find how many historians and analysts have found that 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, the Iraq-Iran war (1982-1988), 1991 and 2003 wars/invasions happened "accidentally". That's apart from the simplistic but convenient mainstream description of the "sectarian" nature of the conflicts. Risks rise o...

Venezuela "While the official line was that the uprising was the work of the Venezuelan masses, everything the Trump administration did reinforced the message that it had been made in Washington." Note that the liberals who wrote the article did not put the words "uprising" and "liberation" in inverted commas., and they don't seem to condemn the attempted coup. After all, Western regimes and some others have supported the interim president. That would enough to make a successful coup a "liberation".  1. An "uprising/revolution", if it exists, should be judged by its class or social groupings character. It should be decided by the balance of forces inside a country. 2. An imperialist state is reactionary by its nature. And the American one nowadays is even more reactionary that 5 years ago. A reactionary force cannot by its nature support a radical progressive change. It would an anomaly if it does. 3. The support of Russia ...

The on-going coup in Venezuela By Jorge Martin (Hands off Venezuela) Even though the coup has not yet succeeded, the impression one gets is that there is an inexorable march forward in its implementation which is pushed mainly from forces abroad rather than in Venezuela itself. There are now plenty of newspaper reports which detail the way this coup plot was hatched, in the US, with the collaboration of Marco Rubio and top Trump administration officials. The hawks now control the whole operation (having removed "moderates" like Tillerson), Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, all of them cold war veterans committed to putting an end to anything which smells of revolution in Latin America. Meetings which have been reported go back nearly two years, but more recently, the plans around Guaidó were discussed in Washington in December, that is BEFORE he was even elected president of the national assembly.  At a rally with reactionary Venezuelans in Florida on Feb 2, Mike Pence p...

Venezuela

Baptism Could an eccentric group, born out as a reaction to state violence, now ineffective, be  "our" new born-again "freedom fighters"? At the annual “Free Iran” conference that the group stages in Paris each summer, dozens of elected US and UK representatives – along with retired politicians and military officials – openly call for the overthrow of the Islamic republic and the installation of Maryam Rajavi as the leader of Iran. At last year’s Paris rally, the Conservative MP David Amess announced that “regime change … is at long last within our grasp”. At the same event, Bolton – who championed war with Iran long before he joined the Trump administration – announced that he expected the MEK to be in power in Tehran before 2019. “The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself,” he declared. The main attraction at this year’s Paris conference was another longtime MEK ...

Here is what John Bolton wrote in May 2015 " The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran." "To stop Iran's bomb, bomb Iran"