Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Tunisia "There is an obvious correlation between drivers of migration and origin of migrants, as the June 2 sea accident showed. Many of the victims in the drowning were identified as originating from the country's south including Gabes, Medenine and Tataouine. Marked by a long history of economic and political marginalisation and frustration since before the 2011 revolution, these regions have continued to suffer." And the IMF continue to impose its criminal diktats Marginalisation driving Tunisians to migrant boats

"Trial runs for fascism are in full flow" Exageration? 

Italy "One country is widely viewed as the most acute of all cases of European dysfunction. Since the introduction of the single currency, Italy has posted the worst economic record of any state in the Union: twenty years of virtually unbroken stagnation, at a growth rate well below that of Greece or Spain. Its public debt is over 130 per cent of GDP. Yet this is not a country of small or medium size in the recently acquired periphery of the Union. It is a founder member of the Six, with a population comparable to that of Britain, and an economy half as large again as that of Spain. After Germany, its manufacturing base is the second biggest in Europe, where it is runner-up too in the export of capital goods. Its treasury issues form the third largest sovereign bond market in the world. Nearly half of its public debt is held abroad: the comparable figure for Japan is under 10 per cent. In its combination of weight and fragility, Italy is the real weak link in the EU, at which i

Italy " Social phantoms always emerge in moments of crisis. Hatred of the foreigner is the result of a lethal cocktail of bad politics, irresponsible information and economic crisis. Now in Italy all bearings have been completely lost and a climate of endless electoral campaigning has triggered a chain reaction that no one seems able to keep in check: the entire political campaign is focused on the subject of immigration." Keep silent. Don't talk about it

"Virtually all existing countries have to face difficult questions over how to relate to past instances of violence, injustice and oppression – often publicly sanctioned." I still think that moving statues to museums is a much better way. How to diffuse controversial   monuments So, a statue of Mussolini is considered controversial?

To foreign ministries in the global north, Sisi is a familiar face in an ever-more unfamiliar region – and one that they’re ready to do business with. In the past two years Egypt has signed major new arms deals with both the US and France. Donald Trump has labelled his Egyptian counterpart ‘a fantastic guy’. In late 2015, David Cameron rolled out the red carpet for Sisi at Downing Street; Theresa May has promised ‘a new chapter in bilateral relations’ between the UK and Egypt and as I speak Boris Johnson is in Cairo, drumming up trade deals. Italy did, thanks to popular pressure on the ground, temporarily withdraw its ambassador to Egypt in protest at Giulio’s murder. But between 2011 and 2013 alone, Italy sold Egypt more than half a billion euros worth of guns and bullets. The police trucks that many of the journalists and political prisoners I mentioned earlier found themselves locked up in after being dragged from their homes in the night are manufactured by the Italian company Ive

21st century slavery propping up in Sicily: rape, beating and exploitation

In late nineteenth-century  " [i]n the Muslim world, the Islamic  burkah , the full body covering of Muslim women, was growing in popularity. Often wrongly regarded as a mark of medieval obscurantism, the burkah was actually a modern dress that allowed women to come out of the seclusion of their homes and participate to a limited degree in public and commercial affairs. Even in this insistence on tradition, therefore, one glimpses the mark of growing global convergence." Uneven and Combined Development (Part 1)

French farmer on trial for helpng migrants across the Italian border See also Let them drown

The Long Depression in Italy

[Upon] closer scrutiny, the operation of retrieving, commemorating and mourning proves to be deeply problematic and hypocritical. For this tragic loss of life was not an unfortunate “accident” but the result of political decisions taken, amongst others, by the very state actors who are now claiming a high moral ground by recovering and mourning the dead. The forgotten 22,000 First of all, the 18th of April shipwreck is only one among many more incidents that have led to more than 22,000 documented deaths at sea over the last 25 years. These have been the structural product of EU migration policies that have denied legal access to EU territory to the impoverished citizens of the global South since the end of the 1980s. The militarization of border controls and their externalization to North African states has forced migrants wishing to reach EU territory to resort to smugglers and to take longer and ever more dangerous routes. Italy, as a “frontline” state of the EU, has for many

Breaking Bread with Terrorists