Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.    When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.   – Bertolt Brecht,  Selected Poems

The BBC probably never mentioned John Pilger before until he died. Using google, one cannot find his name on the BBC.  I did not always agree with Pilger’s way of reporting, but he was one of those who opened my mind to how I should relate to and analyse the corporate media and how crimes and complicities are hidden or ignored. That was the time Chomsky's and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media fell in my hands. Here is something the British Broadcasting Corporation and Jessica Murray of the Guardian have deliberately, in their usual selectivity, ignored to mention: The War on Democracy   The War On Democracy (English subtitles) from John Pilger on Vimeo .

When evil-doing comes like falling rain Like one who brings an important letter to the counter after office hours: the counter is already closed. Like one who seeks to warn the city of an impending flood, but speaks another language. They do not understand him. Like a beggar who knocks for the fifth time at the door where he has four times been given something: the fifth time he is hungry. Like one whose blood flows from a wound and who awaits the doctor: his blood goes on flowing. So do we come forward and report that evil has been done us. The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summe...

‘Israel has the right to defend itself against such heinous attacks,’ 

 “The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellowmen, ‘Do not listen to this imposter.” — Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality  (1754)  Constructing partition Related Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Control

The role the monarchy played in the service of UK’s imperial interests

It all happened in, you know, “other places.”  So it doesn’t count.

We should add the international economic situation to this good analysis. Heading for victory, despite dismal record

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians. –Bertolt Brecht The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.  When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.   – Bertolt Brecht,  Selected Poems General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. But it has one defect: It needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechan...

" It is rare for a state to be held liable for failures in UN peacekeeping work ." Extend this: Forget UN peacekeeping work. Within the capitalist legal framework, will ever the U.S. regime and its allies be held liable for their crimes and the destructive consequences of those crimes in Iraq since 1991, for example?  I guess it will never happen. One has to look only at the crimes of the British empire. The chance that the British state will be held liable is almost zero. There is more chance that Bashar al-Asad might one day stand trial, but not the "democratically-elected leaders of the free world."

George Bush Snr.:  Death of another criminal موت مجرم آخر: عن بوش الأب Example 1: The Amiriya shelter bombing A piece by the Iraqi Musician Naseer Shamma Example 2:  Highway of death

What do the states and the rulers of US, Britain, Russia, France, Iran... have in common?

" In relevant part, under the applicable Convention, genocide means "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; or (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". Each and every one of these sign-posts of genocide has been perpetrated by Israel, seemingly with almost proud boast, and no accountability, for almost 70 unbroken years." Israel's never-ending crimes

" Assad and his wife have a remarkably similar background to many elite figures in the West . Like Libya's Gaddafi dynasty, the House of Assad has strong connections to the United Kingdom. Bashar was studying ophthalmology in London when his brother Bassel dashed his chances of becoming president by smashing his Mercedes into a roundabout at 80mph. His wife, Asma, is British-Syrian, went to a private school, studied at King’s College, London and spent time working as a banker before becoming First Lady. The regime has sought to capitalise on Asma and build up an image for her as a sort of Syrian Princess Diana, including through her involvement in charity work. Her philanthropy, alas, does not extend to asking her husband to stop gassing Syria's civilians. Even the regime's poisonous propagandist, Bouthaina Shaaban, was educated at the University of Warwick, and the language she uses in interviews with western media outlets suggests the extent to which she unde...

"Prospective imperialists can turn to his  authorized biographer  Niall Ferguson for answers. Harvard’s specialist in restoring the devil’s reputation — having done so previously for the  House of Rothschild  and the  British  and  American  empires —  argues  that if we weigh the good (the United States winning the Cold War) against the bad (the “loss of life in strategically marginal countries”), Kissinger comes out a hero. Fortunately, those of us unwilling to perform that calculus have Greg Grandin’s  Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman .  The book avoids the trap of simply enumerating Kissinger’s crimes and actually takes its subject’s worldview seriously. Since the actual trial of Kissinger will never happen and the intellectual trial has  already  taken place, Grandin follows a different path: he traces how Kissinger’s ideas have come to dominate American fore...

"From the start  of the  hideous Saudi bombing campaign   against Yemen 18 months ago, two countries have played active, vital roles in enabling the carnage: the U.S. and U.K. The atrocities committed by the Saudis would have been impossible without their steadfast, aggressive support." US and UK have participated in Saudi war crimes

The Wikileaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire

" I asked Kadhim what he would do if he could meet Tony Blair.   "I would say to him you are a criminal, and I'd spit in his face." And what would he say to George Bush? "I'd say you're criminal too. You killed the children of Iraq. You killed the women and you killed the innocent. I would say the same to Blair. And to the coalition that invaded Iraq. I will say to them you are criminals and you should be brought to justice." ( Bitterness in Baghdad ) Yes, Khadim. And people in Britain and the US not only don't really care, they even vote the criminals back in office! They call it democracy, something you and your people cannot understand or have.

From the archive The Truth about the Criminal Bladbath in Iraq