Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Algeria 09 March 2019 All signs indicate so far that another social movement will be co-opted (by the regime and the imperial powers), diverted (through a manoeuvre by the military) and if not, crushed. "The people want the overthrow of the gangster regime" "Leave" (one of the slogans that had been raised in the Tunisian uprising) Algeria's angry youth (the Guardian) and a view of an Algerian activist: "A few thoughts on developments in Algeria as well as the way they are being represented in both Algerian and international (social) media.  First, it goes without saying that we are living through incredibly exciting times. Just yesterday, 15 MILLION Algerians took to the country's streets and even more if we take into consideration protests taking place in solidarity elsewhere across the world. Second, it also goes without saying that for those of us who have been involved  in social movements over the past several yea

"Invoking collective ownership of former colonial property for individual gain is not an isolated incident in Algeria. The widespread occupation of colonial-era properties and refusal to pay state rent in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in addition to more recent examples -- including SIFFAN, UNIAL, and several cases of former colonial agricultural land claimed by tribes in the High Plains  -- underscore a consistently held perception of colonial-era property. When Algerians invoke the colonial period to justify access to land and properties whose value has exponentially increased as Algeria has become increasingly embedded in the international economy, they are not mnemonically reciting tropes and slogans of the past, as French president Emmanuel Macron seemed to have hinted during a recent visit to Algiers.  Rather, they are making a very clear set of claims based on collective memory. They are invoking colonialism in order to appropriate and claim the spoils of the Algerian war of

What a story! Life on the front line

"Algeria's angry young men! Racism in all its splendour. These orientalist cliches of the Arab-Berber man are really hard to dislodge even in the most "progressive" spaces (and I am not talking about the Guardian here). When, as an Arab, you speak up your mind, you show your anger and emotions, you are being upfront and direct in your behaviour, you are dubbed unreasonable, difficult to communicate with, not rational (not cartesian like the European), too emotional and above all you need to be controlled, tone-policed, disciplined and in need of civilising and enlightening in the European ways. I go through this almost every day and it is exhausting and painful!"  — Hamza Hamouchene,  commenting on this . Indeed, you wouldn't see Ms Hannah speaking about the British or Wetsern youth as narcisistic, football addicts,  commody lovers, their ignorance of their history,  indifferent to other people's sufferring, to their governments wars, support of the

Sex, France, and Arab Men

"30 years later, the point of conflict between Said and de Beauvoir is still hotly debated following Western assaults on hijabs, niqabs, burqas and other traditional Muslim attire. The defense of these garments, taken on by thinkers like Saba Mahmood and Lila Abu-Lughod is often deeply indebted to Said’s work on racist Western conceptions of the East." "A bitter disappointment": Edward Said on his encounter with Sartre, de Beauvoir and Foucauld and  Edward Said's diary 

Forgetting Fanon, remembering Fanon

Immigration will remain a toxic issue until Britain faces up to its colonial past

This is a good long read.  I have a thought though on the last parargraph: the writer delves into what formed Fanon, especially the context of colonization and how it shaped the mind, pshycology and plight of the colonized. The author, I think, fails to use the same method when it comes to "Davos" and "Dabiq" or Globalisationa and the so-called Islamic State. Is not the latter a product of globalization (global capitalism and imperialism). Davos is the context, Dabiq was spawned by Davos like the violence directed by Algerians against the colonizers and the settlers was born in the context of colonisation. Is it not the context of global capitalism and its functions that creates wars, invasions, dictatorships, neoliberalism, power struggles, geopolitics, "civil wars", uneven-development, neofascism etc? Where Life is Seized

Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people? Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.  — The Battle of Algiers The BBC bunkruptcy in equating two completely different attacks of two completely different contexts .

Fanon as Example and Figure: A Conversation Between Oscar Guardiola-Rivera and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Winter , chapter 2 from Banquet of Seaweed by Haydar Haydar

Concerning Violence ends on a powerful note bound to leave you with a knot in your stomach. Lest our daily brush with the news, with the forces of globalisation, consumerism and capital, with all this new inter-connectedness and our (however valid) criticism of the United States’s imperial ambitions distract us, Fanon reminds us that Europe is at the root of all our problems today, and it is Europe to which we are ideologically and materially enslaved. The camera moves swiftly through the centre of a massive gathering of people in tattered clothing, emaciated, looking expectantly into the camera – the wretched of the earth, literally – as Fanon’s most damning words appear on screen: "From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the third world. The wealth which smothers her

Algeria:  The political economy of regime survival

Racism, Pure and Simple

"Marx the Moor" There is an interesting reading of Marx on Islam and Muslims in History of Islam in German Thought by Ian Almond “And without total abandonment of the law of the Koran [argues opposition MP Cobden], it was impossible to put the Christians of Turkey upon an equality with the Turks.” We may as well ask Mr Cobden whether, with the existing State Church and laws of England, it is possible to put her working-men upon an equality with the Cobdens and the Brights? —Marx, The Eastern Question , p. 260 

Mitterrand's War

Sunday between noon and 1pm on 104.4 FM (London) Or resonancefm.com (worldwide) The presidential elections in Algeria. Review of the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir . Obituary: The violinist and composer Abboud abdel Aal.