Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Webinar – The “Arab Spring” Lives On: Uprisings in times of a pandemic Friday 12 June 2020 at 4pm  (CES T, Amsterdam time) . Register here:  https://bit.ly/3h7zrWk Ten years ago, the Arab uprisings were celebrated as world changing events. The emancipatory experience was so contagious that people were inspired all over the world. Occupiers from London to Wall Street and the Indignados were proud to “Walk like an Egyptian”. The revolutionary process that has swept North Africa and West Asia, driven by demands for bread, freedom, dignity and social justice, has seen ups and downs, gains and setbacks, which materialized in a liberal democratic transition in Tunisia and bloody counter-revolutions and imperialist interventions in other countries. This led some pundits to pronounce a death sentence on the so-called “Arab Spring”. A decade on, this protracted revolutionary process is well into the second wave of revolt, triggered by the same features of governance and political e

An interview with Gilbert Achcar Pandemic and oil crisis could make second Arab spring return with a vengeance Related The seasons after the Arab spring

A very, very short account that doesn't include economic and cultural aspects. Note that more recent studies put the numbers of Iraqis killed by the sanctions to an estimate between 200 and 300 thousand. Chomsky then was still relying on studies done by journals like The Lancet, for example, which put the number in "the hundreds of thousands".

Immigrant UK doctors died from coronavirus Related Bloody Foreigners, a book by Robert Winder

Return to Revolution

The deal with the military means that the uprising has stopped short from becoming a revolution; it means that the balance of forces has tilted more than ever since the begining of the uprising towards the military leadership and genocidal militia; it means a win for the regional reactionary forces such as the Egyptian regime and the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE ; it means that the opposition has not been able to split the army, produce a revolutionary figure and create revolutionary organisations that could continue the struggle.

Muslims, like those of 2011 uprisings before the counter-revolution, and like those in Algeria, are not led by Islamists and are not demanding an Islamic state. Weird, isn't it? Sudan's military rulers  "responded to a draft constitutional document presented to it by a coalition of protest groups and political parties." The Transitional Military Council's leaders said " the document omitted Islamic law , which they said remained the bedrock of all laws."    David Pilling from the Financial Times  wrote: "there is a retro-revolutionary feel to a movement that has both a secular and a syndicalist tinge." I am not opitmistic though when it comes to toppling the regime. There is no strategy to either take over state institutions or build a dual power. The army is still intact and there is no organisation to carry pit an insurrection. Putting pressure would at most achieve modest reforms (see Tunisia). Genuine change requires a radical mo

The recent events in Algeria and Sudan are more or less similar to what happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.  How do we account for the dynamics of transition... that lie somewhere in between, where powerful revolutionary mobilisation forced dictators to abdicate [or removed] but fail[ed] to capture the governmental [state] power, thus leaving the interests and institutions of the old order largely unaltered? How should we read the logic of transition in such political upheavals that were both revolutionary and nonrevolutionary, reflecting both transition to democracy and revolutionary desires for economic distribution, social inclusion and cultural recognition? —Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring , 2017, p. 209 I do not believe, as so many disillusioned or broken by actual revolution have come to believe, that the suffering can be laid to the charge of the revolution alone, and that we must avoid revolution if we are to avoid sufferin

Educating Britain I have just read this book. The following excerpts are no replacement in reading the whole account. Excerpts From John Newsinger’s  The Blood Never Dried, A People’s History of the British Empire

Victor Jara paid hommage to Salvador Allende Sameeh Shukair paid hommage to Abdel Khaliq Mahjub