Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The USA dropped over 266 million bombs in Laos from 1964 to 1973 . Over 80 million failed to explode and continue to kill and maim people to this day. Related Operation Barrel Roll  [it looks like the wiki page is written and edited by Americans]

 An apartheid state

A rhetoric of "justice" that has never been heard of by an American presidential candidate. However, what strategy does Bernie have to fundamentally change the foreign policies of the strongest imperialist state in the world, and thus to lay down the conditions for a possible "justice" for the Palestinians. Why Arab Americans and Muslims are voting for Bernie 

A major improvement in workers' conditions Qatar dismantles kafala system of modern slavery Meanwhile, in a "democracy" it took a union more than a year to reach a collective bargaining agreement .

Still relevant "The uses of Al-Qaeda"

"Here is the biggest problem with elevating sexism to the defining explanation of Mrs. Clinton’s loss: It lets her machine and her failed policies off the hook. It erases the role played by the appetite for endless war and the comfort with market-friendly incremental change, no matter the urgency of the crisis (from climate change to police violence to raging inequality). It erases the disgust over Mrs. Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street and with the wreckage left behind by trade deals that benefited corporations at the expense of workers." — Naomi Klein

Between Rojava and Washington

To understand where the so-called liberal democracy stands since ots inception and why the BB has just called one Islamist preacher "one of the most dangerous men in Britain", one should read a historical account. "From the 1970s, however, liberal revolution revived on an unprecedented scale. With the collapse of communism, bourgeois liberty once again became a crusading, force, but now on a global scale. In the twenty-first century, the armed forces of the United States, Britain, and NATO became instruments of 'regime change', seeking to destroy dictatorship and build free-market democracies. President George W. Bush called the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a 'watershed event in the global democratic revolution'. This was an extraordinary turn-around, with the middle classes now hailed as the truly universal class which, in emancipating itself, emancipates all society. The debacle in Iraq, and the Great Recession from 2008, revealed all too clearly that hu...

"What does it mean that Trump has done well among middle-income and higher-income voters but not the most-educated? This suggests that his real base of support is small-business owners, supervisory and middle-management employees, franchisees, landlords, real estate agents, propertied farmers, and so on: those who are not at the executive pinnacle of corporate America (who largely have MBAs and other similar degrees) and those who are not credentialed professionals (doctors, lawyers, and the like), but the much wider swath of those people whose livelihood is derived from independent business activity or middle-band positions in the corporate hierarchy." From Slump to Trump

Our Ignorance and our Interests

" "Only nations which liberate themselves can be free." Malalai Joya "really is one of the bravest women in Afghanistan". She told the 300-strong audience at Conway Hall in central London last week that she has survived five assassination attempts and is still not safe with personal security guards or by wearing a burkha to cover her identity. Yet she continues to campaign against foreign occupation and fundamentalist warlords, and for women's rights and education. She believes all NATO troops must leave Afghanistan immediately. On July 16 thousands of quarry workers in Egypt went on strike in the central province of Al-Minya, in opposition to a decision by the authorities to impose a tax of E£40 on each ton of quarried rock. The tax had led some quarries to close and lay off their workers. The dispute is only one of several ongoing textile workers’ strikes since privatisation, despite the brutality with which last year’s strike at Mahalla al-Kubra was put...

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) Listen to Jonas, the youngest pro Israel Jew I ever met. He is 12 years old, but able to hold a meeting at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, London. Iran : Mourad Shirin from the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency speaks on the current situation in the country. Articles: Iran Falls to US PSYOPS The New York Times and Iran The New York Times and the Iranian elections

Imran Aslam, veteran Pakistani journalist and President of Geo TV, Pakistan’s premier television news channel, and Kamran Ali, Associate Professor Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Austin in Texas talked to Shahram Aghamir of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radion in Berkeley in the United States. Imran Aslam and Kamran Ali discuss the U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the role of regional players such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and India in the war in Afghanistan.

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) The class nature of the Iranian Revolution. According to Edward Mortimer of the Spectator the Iranian Revolution was "a genuine popular revolution in the fullest sense of the word: the most genuine, probably since 1917." But was it an Islamic revolution? Interviews with Torab Saleth from the journal Critique and member of Hands off the People of Iran (hopi) and Chris Moore from The Socialist Party (Britain). Listen to Torab Saleth Listen to Chris Moore

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or www.resonancefm.com (worldwide) An interview with Richard Seymour about his book "The Liberal Defence of Murder" (Verso, May 2008). "Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of “humanitarian” intervention, The Liberal Defence of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the...