Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Appearances can be deceiving Related “In the long term, the most debilitating state response to the movement may be neither the imprisonment of leadership or propaganda, but the state’s diversion of attention from social justice to development, that is, from the profound violence of the security state to the easily discussable and putatively separable matter of economic investment.” —Emilio Spadola Justice and/or development

Although there is some hint to a historical background , role of the structure of the authoritarian regimes and women employment – the latter being probably the lowest in the world in the MENA region – and how they reinforce violence are excluded from the equation.

The Tunisian-British partnership TuNur hopes to build one of the world’s largest thermodynamic solar plants here, on collective lands once home to nomadic groups. TuNur plans to fulfil this ambition by building the world’s largest solar plant. Behind the name are a handful of well-known investors from the City of London who have taken a lively interest in the promise of green finance With persistently high oil prices and mounting supply challenges, Europe has pragmatically tried to speed its transition to lower-cost renewables ‒ by outsourcing. It covets the bountiful sunlight of its southernmost Mediterranean neighbours whose solar potential is among the highest in the world. The country, ensnared in a financial crisis, is struggling to achieve its climate objectives. Many foreign investors are hungry for its solar supply – mostly for export to the North. The electricity-generating mirrors may look green, but they reek of an extractivist Europe greedy for its neighbours’ resources – a...

In Salamanca, a woman named Concha met Nasar, a Moroccan soldier stationed nearby.   Madly in love, she wrote to his superiors for permission to marry him in 1938. But for Spanish colonial authorities, such contact absolutely had to be banned .  They expressed disgust at Concha, who they disparaged as old, "ugly, fat like a hippo and with a slight limp".  They suspected that Nasar had only shown interest because Concha happened to own a house, which is what awakened his "volcanic love". **** Continuity Not very different from what I read and heard from many Brits about refugees when I arrived in London: “they come here for the benefits.” The tabloid papers popularised the idea of the refugee and asylum seeker ‘invading our country’ and ‘living on the benefit system ’, etc. The language continues today and even intensified: leaders in the EU such as Suella Braverman, Giorgia Meloni and François Borel talk about ‘invasion’ of Europe by ’swarms’ of immigrants/refugees,...

“My examination of the limitations of the racial binary of black vs. white as an analytical category to address the racialization of migrants in the North African context allows for a more nuanced approach to racial categorizations—one that challenges these simplified binaries without erasing the psychic violence of racial labeling or the historical stigmatization of blackness produced by the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and the project of nation-building. This approach is necessary to challenge the construction of migrants as the ‘racial other’ and to support their human right to mobility and belonging.” Contemporary notions of race in Morocco A photo by Chermiti Mohamed

Official figures from that day indicate that of the roughly 1,700 migrants who attempted to cross the border, 133 were able to claim asylum; 470 individuals, like Basir, entered Spanish territory, but were forcibly returned to Morocco. At least 37 people died, and 77 people remain unaccounted for. The event quickly came to be known as “ the Melilla massacre ”. “I suppose we weren’t human any more, we were just like animals.” —Basir, a 24-year-old Sudanese man

Algeria: Primary schools to teach English in 'overdue' move away from 'colonial' French French is on the verge of disappearing in Morocco “Algerian children will be left unable to academically master a single language due to the lack of provisions for this transition into English in schools.”  Moving from French to English won't resolve the country's problems

The energy transition in North Africa: neocolonialism again! التصدي للاستعمار الجديد في الانتقال الطاقي بشمال أفريقيا

Systematic delays, economic opportunities and the risk of green colonialism

 

Yes, it is an important ruling. However, let’s not forget that Israel occupies territories and finds ways to sell products from what the ‘international law’ calls illegal settlements to the world. Court annuls EU deals with Morocco

A collection of articles

Morocco and the EU will benefit more after ‘Normalisation’ with Israel. Fish, phosphates and tomatoes

“The Arab regimes have used every opportunity to sell out Palestinian rights to advance their own interests”

Note that Morocco and Tunisia are not in the “Middle East.” How are Middle Eastern countries coping with climate change?

The Ministry of Health: your son died of coronavirus. The family of the deceased: no, he died of a heart attack. The Ministry: And what was the cause of the heart attack? The family: he accumulated too much debt. The Ministry: Why did he get so much in debt? The family: Because he was made unemployed. The Ministry: Why was he made unemployed? The family: Because of coronavirus. The Ministry: That’s what we’ve said! Translated from Moroccan Arabic. Source: Tarik Benziade on Facebook

Extractivism and resistance in North Africa A paper available in Arabic, French and English

"The key to understanding contemporary authoritarianism in Morocco lies thus not only in the monarchy as a core institution, in its religious authority or its neopatrimonial power and its clientilistic networks, but also in the class projects of urban renewal, slum upgrading, poverty alleviation, gentrification, structural adjustment, market liberalization, foreign capital investment, and the creation of a good business climate. Instead of focusing on how much power the monarchy possesses, the book tries to capture how methods and techniques of government and rule have changed within the context of our contemporary global situation. The creation of a "good business climate" became key for the ways in which authoritarianism transformed and the ways in which the interests of ruling domestic elites and global economic elites increasingly intertwined. The central arguments of this book contradict this popular mythification of the Moroccan exception. I argue that the ref...

Essential Readings on Morocco