Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 Spectrums of death A spectrum of violence was operating in Syria well before the revolution, but since 2011, it has been reconfigured. It allows the Syrian regime to deploy gradual techniques that create uneven death worlds. The spectrum of violence starts with the fear of being arbitrarily arrested and subjugated to torture. It includes the siege and subsequent politics of starvation. It involves the various ways Syrians are tortured and indiscriminately killed. In many of these cases, torture is not performed to gain information, but rather to actualize state power. The combination of direct and indirect violence that Syrians have experienced since 2011 has led to catastrophic humanitarian conditions.68 The Syrian regime and its allies have created a spectrum of death worlds where bodies are subjected to various forms of violence. The cruelty of a technique does not have a universal impact; its effect varies from one body to another. For example, crossing a checkpoint has an une...

Prophetic and timely Alain Badiou, June 1982 I don't much like to speak about the jewish question', as did Marx and Sartre, because the absolute atrocities the Nazis committed in the name of the 'final solution' have adversely rebounded on the very notion that there is a 'question' to which it would be appropriate to give a response. I might add that, on this issue, one ought to speak, absolutely, in one's own name, with one's own voice. As regards questions, I start from this: there are Jews. I do not ask why there are, nor where they come from, because such stories of origin and provenance are in themselves dubious. ‘Jews' is the name of our real, a glorious name of our history – especially of our philosophical, scientific, artistic and our revolutionary history. And I say this: Hitler proposed to eliminate Jews in their physicality. His will was completely criminal, including what of such a crime must remain hidden, clandestine. The Nazi administr...

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the erudite and much misunderstood Zionist leader who posthumously became the founding father of the Israeli right (one of his closest aides, Benzion Netanyahu, was the father of the current prime minister) in his famous 1923 essay : My readers have a general idea of the history of colonization in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent. The native populations, civilized or uncivilized, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilized or savage. And it made no difference whatever whether the colonists behaved decently or not. The companions of Cortez and Pizzaro or (as some people will remind us) our own ancestors under Joshua Ben Nun, behaved like brigands; but the Pilgrim Fathers, the first real pioneers of North A...

A book review There was no a Nuremberg trials for Italian fascists

Every year the corporate media reminds us again and again of Tiananmen Square massacre. How many times have we seen the same reporting and commemoration of Egypt’s Rab’a Square? It is probable that the number of those killed in the latter in the span of 12 hours was more than what the Chinese government forces killed between 3 and 4 of June. This is corroborated by Human Rights Watch itself not a leftist organisation or Chinese regime sympathisers. Most estimates cited on Wikipedia give a figure very similar to the number killed in Rab’a Square. Egypt is an ‘ally’. The regime is not a threat to ‘us’. Thus the hypocrisy.

  The Colonial Contradictions of Albert Camus

Historian Raj Pal to the BBC: We have a myth of ‘Britannia rules the waves’ and making Britain ‘Great’, but we don’t want to address the fact that Britannia ruling the waves is to do with the slave trade, colonialism, empire and massacre, as well as trade in tobacco, sugar and salt. Almost a third of stately homes owned by the National Trust have links to slavery or colonialism...

Why is there more remembrance by the BBC and similar news outlets of the Chinese regime's crimes in Tiananmen Square than of the Egyptian regime's crimes in Rabaa Square, although, according to HRW, the latter too was "one of the biggest single day massacre in recent history"? The world has forgotten Egypt's Rabaa massacre One of the largest killings in a single day War Crimes in North Sinai: HRW