Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Imagine for a second the reverse: the troops are chasing animals on the beach. What would the reaction of the ‘civilised’ world be?

“Language is politics and politics is power. This is why the misuse of language is particularly disturbing, especially when the innocent and vulnerable pay the price.“ Europe’s self-serving politics on refugees

The nation state is anti-human.

Is it changing?

The migrants hunger-strike for legal status

"There is a striking discrepancy between the lack of feeling aroused by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty." — Stathis Kouvelakis Endemic racism One photo shows a volunteer with the Spanish Red Cross comforting a migrant (above) on a beach in Ceuta. The young woman, identified as Luna, told Spanish TV she did not know the man's name, only that he had come from Senegal. "He was crying, I held out my hand and he hugged me," she told RTVE. After the image of th

Does she believe Europe will want her, I ask, given that she arrived through illegal passage. "Let them say that I came in an illegal way," she replies "but if they ask me and hear my story, they will understand my pain." They will not understand your pain; they will apply “the law” in a hostile climate of a Europe that has seen a rise of the far-right and economic stagnation. They will look at you as the Other, the undesirable, and a threat to their standard of living, and their superior nation-state.  They have already forgotten what the immigrant workers have done during the pandemic.

  Smarter Empire 

  How Bangladesh sold its future to the Gulf states

Cruise liners turned into jails for migrants

 How rescuing drowning migrants became a crime

When [sociologist] Zygmunt Bauman turned his attention to camps in the 90s, he argued that what characterises violence in our age is distance – not just the physical or geographical distance that technology allows, but the social and psychological distance produced by complex systems in which it seems everybody and nobody is complicit. This, for Bauman, works on three levels. First, actions are carried out by “a long chain of performers”, in which people are both givers and takers of orders. Second, everybody involved has a specific, focused job to perform. And third, the people affected hardly ever appear fully human to those within the system. “Modernity did not make people more cruel,” Bauman wrote, “it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people.” Why are they still with us? Related In America: crammed into cells and forced to drink from the toilet

Gaddafi’s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya’s oil

Prisons in the Aegean

"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

"Since the late 1980s, US migration controls have worked to discipline low-wage migrant labor, ensuring the availability of a population of vulnerable, deportable workers for exploitation by US capital. After the 2008 financial crisis, however, the deportation machine kicked into high gear, earning Obama the title of 'Deporter in Chief.' Under Trump, the expansion of the war on migrants has reached dystopic dimensions." Migrants on the Front Lines of Global Class War But if you are "an Iraqi who helped the US military" or from persecuted religious minorities [Rohignyan? I doubt it], you are in .

"More migrants are threatening to jump overboard" This should be considered use of violence by migrants who are terrorising the emotions of Europeans in order to force the latter to take them in. This use of blackmailing and arm twisting is not the method of a civilised people but a stronger race invading our shores.

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

State violence and migration Many think that with the coming of Trump things have got bad. Before that there is a rose picture of the U.S. as a good force in the world. Digging into history, not the one of the school curriculum, might be a start for questioning. The article does not tell the whole story, but it provides an idea or two. Also, I would qualify the role of the US regime depending on the country: sometimes the violence was/is significantly stoked by the US, other times it was/is partly caused by American intervenrion and backing of allies. The violence Central American Migrants Are Fleeing Was Stoked by the US

Stop war, not people /Let's dismantle borders (A photo I took in Genoa, Italy)                 Genoa, Italy 05 September 2018