Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“Marc*: “We believe that there is no material problem … that cannot be solved by more technology. We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution.”  Göran**: “Sixty years after the Green Revolution, around 733 million people were hungry and undernourished in 2023, according to the World Health Organization — an increase of 152 million since 2019.” Marc: “We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting.”  Göran: “Almost half of sub-Saharan Africans — 600 million — live without electricity.” Marc: “We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating.”  Göran: “There is still a pattern of increased winter mortality in the UK.“ Marc: “We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.”  Göran: “Social isolation remains a debilitating human condition.” Marc: “We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines.”  Göran: “Excess mortality as a result of COVID-19 has been found to cor...

What Sinclair Lewis “is trying to do here is to trace the way these ideologies develop and how the negligence of liberal or tolerant ‘ordinary’ people allows monsters to emerge. What he’s also keen to do is to illustrate just how seemingly civilised, decent people can transform into brutal oppressors when they are given permission to behave in that way. “But this is not an issue that is exclusive to Trump’s rise in the USA. What Lewis has to tell us might well apply equally to the rise of the populist Right in Poland, Hungary, Holland, Italy and France. It should also have echoes for us here in the UK as we try and understand the way in which a populist Right is being allowed to set the political agenda – Brexit and all.”

A genocidal state says the truth: The "world map won’t change if all the people of Gaza were to vanish.” "No one will notice you, no one will ask about you. You are left alone to face your inevitable fate," the leaflets read . "Neither the US nor Europe care about Gaza. Even your  Arab states  don’t care, they are now our allies, they provide us with money, weapons and oil. They only send you shrouds."

Shaul Magid, Peter Beinart, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Pankaj Mishra

  “[I]f Cuba does not respect its citizenry’s human rights, it is necessary for the beacon of said rights across the water to starve those citizens into revolt. This is a special kind of tough love for the ordinary Cuban that emanates in particular from Florida and New Jersey fogies still embittered over things lost in the revolution; one deep enough to perdure for two thirds of a century, despite being forever in vain – those ordinary Cubans having bafflingly failed, decade after decade, to overthrow their government, however much hunger and desperation they are subjected to.” Abject gesture

The Trump administration's top diplomat appeared delighted yet stunned by the fact that President Nayib Bukele should have "agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world".

"You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you," [the Colombian president Gustavo] Petro said , referring to former Chilean socialist President Salvatore [sic] Allende, who was overthrown with the help of the US.

“[ I]nvocations of human rights and humanitarian intervention are selective.” It s like the West’s selective reading of history . “It can be difficult to understand why there was ever so much faith in such an order” – the international liberal order preached in and after Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo. “[N]o Western government has invoked R2P [the Right to Protect] in response to ethnic cleansing campaigns in Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh or Gaza.” “[A]s the British political scientist Richard Sakwa has stressed, Russia’s aversion to R2P was not because Vladimir Putin is ‘the crude defender of sovereignty as so often presented’, but rather the West’s selective deployment of it .” (My italics N.M.) “[W]ill the death of the liberal order clear the way for a more democratic, accountable and egalitarian world?” I am not optimistic. One of the reasons is that articles like Lynch’s are so critical and an antidote to amnesia, a help for students, etc. but does not delve into structu...

It is business as usual at the neoliberal university

Rashid Khalidi: “What has been done to Gaza is far worse than what was done to any part of Palestine in 1948, and what is being done to Lebanon is far worse than what was done to Lebanon in 1982 or 2006. This is a war of extermination — it’s a genocide. I was reading a play by Marina Carr talking about the razing of Troy after the Trojan War. Quoting Hecuba, she says, ‘This is not war — in war there are rules, laws, codes. This is genocide. They’re wiping us out’.” “ I think there is a threat to the entire international legal order if this is allowed to continue, as it has been by the United States.”  Unfortunately, it seems that Khalidi, like a few other scholars, believe in international law. Unsurprisingly, the concept has been a powerful one and even sections of the left still believes in it. Khalidi: “ I do think that there has been a major, consequential shift in public opinion; I don’t think there are likely to be consequences on the political level in the short term. Whoeve...

When all the women were dead, the jihadists burned their bodies inside the houses. After they had finished with the women, the jihadists went back to …where they had locked the children. ‘They brought out the little kids – two, one and a half, three years old – they took them out holding on to each other. They took the groups and killed them with knife stabs’. The jihadists ripped open the children’s bellies with knives and tore out their intestines… ‘It was possible they killed the children like that so as not to waste their munitions, or perhaps as a game for the jihadists'. "Although the scene above is entirely true and based on eye-witness accounts, one element of it is complete fabrication. The atrocity has nothing to do with jihadists, nor is it set in the Middle East. It took place in Guatemala, in the 1980s. I have merely substituted the real culprits—U.S.-financed counter-insurgency troops—with the word “jihadists” each time. The real passage is taken from a Virginia ...

You cannot say:  “ We must mourn all civilian deaths ” because some civilians are ‘human animals’. “In this time of  extraordinary  repression  in academia , Finkelstein appears to be the first professor to be dismissed from a tenured job over anti-Zionist speech since the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.”

“The Great Hope of Social Democracy stood and  championed the funders of a genocide with nary a word of criticism  — indeed, she even defended Harris on the question of the genocide, saying she is ‘working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home’. “With this speech, AOC solidified once and for all which side she is on the struggle to end the genocide in Palestine — the side of the establishment, the side that wants a temporary cease-fire and the continuation of the occupation and oppression of Palestine. She doesn’t want to end the apartheid system of Israeli domination; she stands with the Zionist oppressors and strongly endorses some of their strongest backers. AOC has betrayed the movement for Palestine; she is an enemy of that movement. We cannot continue to support politicians who may propose progressive domestic programs but support imperialism abroad . ]my emphasis N.M.] “ The incorporation of AOC into the establishment i...

Interview with Kevin B. Anderson Related A multi-polarity: a new alignment?

José Martí lived for much of his life as an exile in the United States.  Here is what he said about the US:  I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair – and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.

Achieving objectives: Four Israeli lives worth hundreds of Palestinian ones.  Western complicity in crime continues

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/a-global-war-regime

“It’s no secret that Biden’s push for a Saudi deal is largely about escalating its proxy war against Iran and “great power competition” with China .”

It is not a radical analysis, but it  is an important development/attempt to maintain American hegemony, supremacy over China and stability at home .