Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 How rescuing drowning migrants became a crime

Anyone for regime change?

Time is not on our side

“[ P]rogressives remain fixated on how to revive the world that engendered the present disorder. They constructed and managed that world, and it flattered their self-image as the rational vanguard of the species. It is only to be expected that they should yearn for the return of their now bankrupt authority. Yet few aspects of the contemporary scene are more laughably grotesque than defunct politicians and advisers demanding a return to the politics of competence and expertise that produced the dysfunctional euro, the ruinous Iraq War, the financial crisis, anarchy in Libya and the regime of globalisation that is currently collapsing.” State of the nation - we are entering a new age of disorder

NATO returns to Libya to challenge Russia

"Whereas immigration controls are usually about stopping people entering a country illegally, the new imperialism requires African nations to prevent people leaving their territory if they might be coming to Europe. It’s the 21st century’s version of the Berlin Wall slung across the African continent." Europe's plan is working

Libya through Italian eyes

Libya A good beginning in putting the situation in a big picture of "civilisational" context. However, I always wonder why most writers do not qualify "democracy" as if everybody agrees with the existing order. The socio-economic formation in which this "democracy" functions is rarely questioned, especially in today's "neoliberal" form of capitalism that even liberal sccholars have attacked as a source of violence and destruction. The social groups/strata that formed the former Libyan regime and how the regime came about and why it took the features it took is fundamental in understanding why Libya could not have a capitalist democracy. Neither Egypt, Syria or China. The focus on individuals doesn't help that much because the individuals themselves work within the trappings they found before them. There is a difference between structure and moment. Furthermore, one should not conflate the ideals of the French revolution and how capit

"One might have thought that the methods applied in the days of European colonialism and the resulting patterns were a thing of the past. But that would be mistaken. These methods and patterns are now seeing a resurgence, awakening in new and grotesque spasms. We don't even dare hope that these will be the last." Late colonial convulsions See also: A rotten legacy

People as a number  The terrorist Mediterranean Sea killed up to 150 migrants in order to protect fortress Europe  

Just compare how the media has been reporting about suicide bombings in Tunisia where one person was killed and  the 80 migrants killed "by the evil Mediterranean sea"

A liberal view on migration, i.e. one that avoids to deal with the structure of global capitalism, the nation state, power relations between states, and capitalism under/uneven development. And at the present situation a major factor is the low growth of the economies of the advanced capitalist countries and its impact on the power relations at home, including the rise of the far-right. Thus the usefulness of an external enemy: the monstrous alien. How the West is withdrawing into a bunker of its making

"In almost every national situation where counterrevolution has triumphed, it has been allowed to do so without any hindrance by the democratic West – in fact, in many cases it’s with direct or indirect support from it. One came to realise that it didn’t matter how many times the dynamic proved itself to be, no matter the various contradictions, one of democracy versus tyranny. There was never any true support for democracy from those who pretended to be its bastions and patrons, all while powerful foreign anti-democratic forces, such as Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, mobilised viciously on the side of counterrevolution to crush nascent democracy. In the shadow of the Iraq war,  anti-humanitarian  intervention has come to define the modern era." "The Arab Spring is still alive"

Algeria Many Algerians taking part in the on-going social-political movement are crazy and uneducated. They speak about "a colonialism that has been oppressing them for decades." They don't know that in prestigious universities in the West students are taught about "Post-colonialism" and "Development". Algerians should learn from "the highly educated" Westerners and stop blaming the Other for their ills. The Other has been trying to help them in all sorts of manners: "aid, loans, NGOs, weapons, support of regime to guarantee stability, bying their resources at fair price, spreading liberal values," etc. Algerians should learn from the "experts" and listen to the heads of international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. الدول العربية  بحاجة الى ثورات حقيقية لا لتغيير ما يسمى رئيس الدولة، بل لاجتثاث الدولة العميقة  واستخبارات وعسكر وحيتان المال والنفوذ الخارجي، بحاجة إلى ثورات  لإنجاز الاستقلال الحقيقي عن ا

From the archive We tried to help the "Libyans" get rid of a mad man and organise  the first 'free' elections. But, they didn't understand what 'democracy' mean. So, they started killing each other in a civil war. The disaster in Libya and Who said Gaddafi had to go? Book Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya

What is common in these two stories? 1. Canadian PM " Trudeau has denied wrongdoing and says any lobbying by him or his inner circle for engineering giant SNC-Lavalin was done to protect jobs. SNC-Lavalin is one of the world's largest engineering and construction companies. The company faces fraud and corruption charges in relation to approximately C$48m ($36m; £28m) in bribes it is alleged to have offered to Libyan officials between 2001 and 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi was in power." In 2016 Canada was the second provider of weapons to the Middle East.  2. " UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia ruled lawful . Equipment sold to Saudi Arabia includes Typhoon and Tornado fighter jets, as well as precision-guided bombs. The sales contribute to thousands of engineering jobs in the UK, and have provided billions of pounds of revenue for the British arms trade."

How "liberation" is brought about. A dictator was toppled and killed 7 years ago with the help of imperialist powers. Hypocritical powers, which sometimes opposed him, other times befriended him, turned "humanist". Hypocrisy that would manifest itself more openly with the very same powers towards the Assad regime. A Syrian regime which reacted towards a peaceful uprising with much more brutal force. Although the summary below is called "the big picture", it does not include any geo-political background: the charecteristics of the relationship between the major Western powers, namely the US, Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and the Gaddafi regime. "The big picture" does not include the nature of the regime and the place of Libya in Africa and among the Arab countries, its oil, etc. Why did the major imperialist powers protect the Egyptian regime, but not the Libyan one?  The Death of Gaddafi

Midle East Monitor , which the bbc says it is pro-Hamas, is trying to tarnish "our British values", spreading hatred of "our democracy and freedoms"!  "UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee reported that British intelligence officers have been involved in human rights abuses on hundreds of occasions. According to government lawyers, there are concerns that some potential human rights abuses took place within international armed conflict and could amount to war crimes."

"what’s happening today marks a dangerous new development in European politics. Until now, the effort to filter out and deter unwanted migrants from reaching  Europe  has generally been pursued by politicians of the liberal centre, and part of their justification for doing it is that these unpleasant but necessary policies will stave off a rightwing populist backlash." The irrational fear of migrants ... But is it really irrational?

The early days of imperial decline I doubt it. I have commented on this article. I think it does not cover some other crucial areas of the war and the players involved: the nature of the Russian regime, Iran and Israel as regional players, the defeat of Western imperialsim in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ideological reasons of that section of the Western and Arab left that supports Al-Assad either actively or passively...