Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Note that the Associated Press is aligned with the dominant narrative of Western corporate media and politicians calling the Israeli war on Palestinians ‘an Israeli-Hamas war’.

This cannot be accurate, for these kind of surveys do not show the wide difference between classes in major issues.  Such a survey is merely a snapshot that refletcs the blockage towards full capitalist  "development" and therefore the dominance of bourgeois norms (e.g. sexual and gender norms), the failure of modernisation of the 1950 and 1960s, the development of rentier economies, especially in the Gulf, instead of industrialisation  on the one hand and the defeat of the 2011 revolution on the other. As for the threat of the US and Israel, the Arab world is still a very strategic battleground where local ruling classes and international ones have major and common interests in restructuring or preserving the existing order. Major questions that could be included in the survey, and that could   provide a picture beyond the symptoms, are the type of politcal regime and economic system the Arab countries need, and how should the wealth be exploited and distrib...

“Turkey’s authoritarian turn is often portrayed as a by-product of President Erdoğan’s vainglorious personality or as the inherent telos of political Islam. But rather than signifying a stock competition between religion and secularism or between Islam and the West, the current fault lines in Turkey, as in much of the world, are emblematic of a slow-moving structural breakdown and reordering of the global capitalist system and the resurgence of nationalist, nativist and authoritarian politics in response to this." Middle East Report (288) editorial

Kurdish struggle "It was the international community of states that abandoned the Kurds. But the word “abandoned” is misleading, for the Kurdish freedom movement in Rojava never counted on international support in the first place. We all knew very well that US support was tactical and that it would conclude as the US pursued its imperialist, profit-driven agenda. We knew that as soon as ISIS, the so-called common enemy, was defeated, the Kurds would be left vulnerable to all manner of hostility." Is the Rojava's Dream at Risk An interview with Dilar Dirik

A rarity from the London School of Economics. I don't necessarily agree with the idealization of Rojava 'revolution' , though. American imperialism is involved in it, among other problems. Syria and our brutal world order This is a summary of the predicament: “It is the capitalist-statist-nationalist-patriarchal system that forces people around the world and at the moment especially in the Middle East to choose between lesser evils in the name of freedom. Forcing millions of people to pick between ISIS or Assad; religious fundamentalism or secular militarism; monarchy, caliphate or racist nation-states; women's pornification or complete veiling; Sisi or Morsi; Atatürkism or Erdoğanism; etc are not choices but perfect weapons of breaking the people's will. To force people to settle between death by drowning or by burning is the perfect way to make them lose the most fundamental human power: hope." — Dilar Dirik

Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, says official

??? Tous les totalitarismes se valent

"It is Turkey’s tilt towards Russia and, to a degree, Iran, which is the main change in the strategic equation on the crowded battlefield of north-west Syria. During five years of civil war that has killed up to 500,000 Syrians and displaced half the population, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, sought to topple Mr Assad, backing rebel forces against him and allowing jihadi volunteers to use Turkish territory as a launch pad into Syria. That sharp focus is fading out as Ankara has turned to more pressing considerations — especially since the violent attempted coup against Mr Erdogan in mid-July. Turkey’s main goal in Syria now is to prevent Syrian Kurdish fighters from consolidating an autonomous territory below its border.  One element in this new equation is that Moscow and Tehran were quicker to condemn July’s attempted coup than Washington and most European capitals, even though Turkey is a Nato ally and EU candidate member." — David Gardner, Financial...

Between 'Sultanism' and Liberal Democracy: The Peculiarities of a Failed Coup in Turkey

Erdogan is not Chavez, but one should remember how a few of the Guardian columnists vilified Chavez using the same jargon of populism and authoritarianism .