Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

One of the men who has made America great. One of the architects of American imperialist adventures.  A diplomat responsible for millions of deaths Related Does Kissinger require rehabilitation? Henry Kissinger in the Middle East How One Man Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Crisis in the Middle East

A coup at 50

“ Anyone who has read Widgery’s report on Bloody Sunday or Hutton’s report on David Kelly will recognize the methodology at work. Instead of beginning with the evidence and proceeding step by step until you reach a set of conclusions, you begin with the conclusions you want to reach and torture the evidence until it signs a full confession. This methodology can be used to condemn the innocent just as easily as it can be used to absolve the guilty.” Lawfare in the UK

Let’s not forget that state and social movements relation are governed by the political economy of a given period and how confident – and far – could the state go in repression and beyond the daily oppression. We should also differentiate between security states where regimes use all necessary means to survive and the advanced capitalist states where maintaining the status quo means rotation of governments, which have significant resources at their disposal, powerful media and interest groups that marginalise and vilify dissent. That also apply globally where international capital, international institutions and organisations and states work together to support or divert and co-opt this or that social movement when it suits their interests.  ‘ How elites are crushing dissent ’ in Britain or France should be read differently from how regimes in Egypt, Iran or Russia exercise repression. After all, the title of the article does not apply to Britain, Germany, or even to France, where ...

The pink left has also gained ‘power’ in Chile. Unlike Honduras , the country is the richest in Latin America. Will Boric’s government fare better than the previous leftist governments in the region? I doubt it . “It  is worth remembering the  experiences of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in the Spanish State . Both these parties, with some of the same ideological foundations as the Broad Front in Chile, promised an end to neoliberalism via elections. But once they arrived in government, they implemented many of the  neoliberal policies demanded by the institutions of the ruling class. 

 1960’s covert activities in Latin America

The  Times , on the morrow of the coup, was writing: “Whether or not the armed forces were right to do what they have done, the circumstances were such that a reasonable military man could in good faith have thought it his constitutional duty to intervene.” Professor Hugh Thomas, from the Graduate School of Contemporary European Studies at Reading University: the trouble was that Allende was much too influenced by such people as Marx and Lenin, “rather than Mill, or Tawney, or Aneurin Bevan, or any other European democratic socialist.” This being the case, Professor Thomas cheerfully goes on, “the Chilean  coup d’état  cannot by any means be regarded as a defeat for democratic socialism but for Marxist socialism.” Ralph Miliband (October 1973): The Chilean experience “offers a very suggestive example of what may happen when a government does give the impression, in a bourgeois democracy, that it genuinely intends to bring about really serious changes in the social order a...

For years those who spoke about how the American state directly and indirectly established a 'world order' through violence and blood were, and still are, dismissed as anti-Americans, attacked as lunatic leftists, or apologists for the crimes of 'communism'. Now some of the empire's violence can be explicitly painted on the New York Times pages. We are really living in interesting times! The 'Liberal World Order' Was Built With Blood Related Are We ISIS? How the West won

How 'Jakarta' Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing

When a senior editor of a right-wing magazine argues for "taxing the better off" and "more public provision", it says something about the unease of the (international) ruling class. Counting the cost of neoliberalism in Chile

An excellent account! Rebellion, Reformism, and Reaction in Latin America

Chile: 11 September 45 years ago "The contrast between the beauty and the brutality that people are capable of was inescapable. The social power people invest in music became a permanent part of my thinking. Notable for its absence in the time after the coup was the  nueva canción  (new song) folk music movement. Urban musicians had taken rural traditional music and transformed it into inspirational expressions calling for human dignity, equality and compassion. The military regime outlawed it, and it disappeared entirely from the public Chilean soundscape. Overnight,  peñas —gathering places for  nueva canción  musicians and fans—became a thing of the past. It was risky to play or even possess instruments such as the  quena  flute or the  charango  guitar because of their association with the socialist movement." An Eyewitness of Pinochet's Coup

The Book That Exposed the Cynical Politics of Donald Duck

Warned us about the shock doctrine then he was assassinated

The Battle of Chile

A 9/11 Retrospective: Washington's 15-Year Air War The Coup in Chile: 11 September 1973

Allende's Poet

Viva La Revolución by Eric Hobsbawm review – Latin America from leftwing hopes to bloody dictatorships