Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Muslims who cannot bring themselves not to legitimise a murderous regime.  If they think they are punishing Biden, they are not.

Against amnesia “Consider the rhetoric in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The swagger and liberal triumphalism. The arc of history bends towards progress and enlightenment. The world is flat. Market-driven globalisation is inevitable. No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other. Economic liberalisation will lead to political liberalisation. The kaleidoscope has been shaken and now is the time to reorder the world.” Note though that when writing about the ‘Iraq war’, Jason Cowley is ‘Western centric’. He is more concerned with his compatriots killed in an ‘unjust’ war .

“No one who has paid attention to Biden’s political career and his position on Israel has been shocked at his full-throated support for Israel's action in Gaza. I’ve closely watched Biden for decades, and following his election in 2020, The Intercept conducted a deep-dive, multipart investigation into Biden’s foreign policy record. That reporting revealed a man best described as an ‘empire politician’, someone who believes that questions of war don’t really matter on a moral level, but only how they affect America’s own power and prestige. On Israel, Biden has earned a reputation as ‘Israel’s man in Washington’ going back to his earliest days in the Senate in 1973. At times, even some Israeli officials have been shocked at how radical his positions were, including on the killing of civilians in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.” —Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept email of 04 November 2023.

The US and European governments are reinventing a “new and improved” Israel: the perfect image of their sustained history of colonial and imperial savagery around the world. What Israel is doing now in Gaza echoes what the  French ,  British , Portuguese, Germans, Spanish, Americans and others have done around the globe throughout history.  Even for a committed Zionist, it would be hard not to notice the innate imperial brutality of Biden’s assertion about “inventing” Israel - not as a Jewish haven from a sustained history of European brutalisation culminating in the Holocaust, but as a military base to protect the best interests of a dysfunctional empire.  A reflection of American and European savagery around the world A child injured in Israeli attacks is taken to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on 23 October 2023 (Reuters)

Casting doubt on Gaza’s statistics Related

“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

Unlike Putin, in the current global power relations they are not considered war criminals because they belong to the ‘democratic, free world’. “The men and women who launched this catastrophic, criminal war have paid no price over the past two decades. On the contrary, they’ve been showered with promotions and cash. There are two ways to look at this. The following list doesn’t include anything about the Iraqis who’ve died since 2003. Partly, this is because it’s traditional for the U.S. media to pay no attention to the lives of foreigners.” For context one should read Howard Zinn Peter Gowan Ellen Meiksins Wood David Keen Andrew Bacevich

The meaning of the ‘unbreakable bond’ Related Biden in 1986:  “The best three-billion-dollar investment”  

Present failure lies in past designs

“ Whilst attempting to show his leadership on climate, Biden was at the same time trying to persuade the OPEC oil producers to increase production, so as to keep petrol prices down for US consumers.” — Jon Sopel, the BBC Then Biden was seen asleep. ‘Mission accomplished’.

Using ‘imperial’ and avoiding imperialism and capitalism. America isn’t ‘back’. Here’s why Related “ About 42 percent of Americans are now either unaware of the fact that their country is still fighting wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa or think that the war on terror is over. Consider that for a moment. What does it mean to be fighting wars for a country in which a near majority of the population is unaware that you’re even doing so?” “I tell my son that people die in wars because so many of us turn our backs on what’s going on in the world we live in.” Andrea Mazzarino from Cost of War Project

 “ Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden  by Branko Marcetic, exposes the forgotten history of Joe Biden, one of the United States’ longest-serving politicians, and one of its least scrutinized. Over nearly fifty years in politics, the man called “Middle-Class Joe” served as a key architect of the Democratic Party’s rightward turn, ushering in the end of the liberal New Deal order and assisting the political takeover of the radical right. Far from being a liberal stalwart, Biden  often outdid even Reagan, Gingrich ,  and Bush, assisting the right-wing war against the working-class, and ultimately p aving the way for Trump.   The most comprehensive political biography of someone who has tried for decades to be president,  Yesterday’s Man  is an essential read for anyone interested in knowing the real Joe Biden and what he might do in office.” Americans must fight Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s neoliberal agenda. —Jacobin Magazine “We are now likely to witness the cycle repea

“ From the outside, it must seem strange to watch the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world choose its path by means of moral scolding and sanctimonious posturing, both positions washed in on millions of litres of high-octane American tears. This must be particularly annoying when you are also aware that whatever this country chooses to do will have enormous consequences for your nation and your life, and that your tears will count for nothing in our majestic deliberations. I feel your pain. Really, I do. I weep.” Make them cry

 Written in June: The candidate who emerged from this jumble of discontent was the man who promised to do the least. His party is now preparing to give us a national election that will be little more than a referendum on the hated Donald Trump. Finally we have a climate in which the American public would unquestionably choose dramatic change were it offered to them, and the party of change has contrived to ensure that it will not be offered. Instead our choice is between two elderly and conservative white men, both with a history of stretching the truth, both with sexual harassment accusations hanging over them, and neither representing any possibility of energetic democratic reform. The old order has been miraculously rescued once again. Such is the climate of opinion in America that, with the right leader, remarkable things would be possible. Instead we are presented with Joe Biden, an affable DC veteran with a hand in many of the defining disasters of the last 30 years: worker-crush

  On the future of US relations in the region

  Joe Biden’s America is [another] myth

A long round up of almost all what’s happening Roaming Charges: Sometimes They Choke

The Democratic National Convention Private healthcare, imperialism and other things the Democrats support

Biden-Harris ticket is a win for Israel