Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Thank you Hatem Bazian for that article

A valuable insight on Cuba since the early 1990s. I find it strange though that someone trained in ‘Marxist historiography’ calls the pre-1989 eastern European countries / the USSR ‘socialist countries’ and defends the ‘Western’ sanctions on Russia.

A very concise and pertinent summary:  The Palestinians are seen as ‘anachronistic problem that affects regional stability and hampers economic prosperity’. I wish there was more elaboration on that. Maqdisi – a historian – here empties history of political economy and regional sociology . Middle East Eye like most outlets generally encourages the fragmentation of social thought. Yet I recommend Maqdisi’s article The Mythology of the Sectarian Middle East (2017). Related The Oslo illusion A powerful group of Palestinian capitalists are profiting off occupation

“Far from being caused by personal rivalry, this conflict is rooted in the long history of the region and Sudan’s never-ending economic and social crisis. The conflict between the North and the South claimed between half a million and a million lives from 1955 to 2002. And herein lies the cause of the fighting tearing Sudan apart. To understand it requires going back to 2011. The secession of South Sudan and the rise of guerrilla movements within the North’s Muslim populations had weakened President Omar al-Bashir’s authority. His increasingly unpopular Islamist regime had been in power since the coup of June 1989 and was rotten with corruption. The regime sent the Janjaweed to fight in Yemen on behalf of the Saudis – who paid handsomely – and then tasked them with repressing the northern guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), first in Darfur and then throughout the country. From the day after the coup, there were obvious tensions between the two forces, e...

A new centre of attraction for the Middle East? Related World Oil:  Contemporary transformations in ownership and control

Shalash the Iraqi

The best approach I have seen so far to what is happening in Sudan. Gunshots in Khartoum

A protracted conflict between the SAF and RSF is a possibility Related الذهب وإسرائيل وفاغنر أم الديمقراطية والإسلاميون؟

A review of Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century

He is now the state

A very short introduction Related British atrocities in Kenya

“ The oil world I inhabited brought together geopolitics and the everyday. It was material and dirty, and bloody and wracked by wars, coups d’état and revolutions. It was a world wrought by political struggle on the streets and at the diplomatic table. Corporations, universities and security apparatuses all had a finger in the pie. And along with the people who worked the oilfields and filled the streets during demonstrations they changed the world in perceptible ways, sometimes suddenly and monumentally, as when Middle East and Latin American leaders negotiated better oil deals for their countries; sometimes gradually, through a series of unintended consequences.” A review of Disorder : Hard Times in the 21st Century by Helen Thompson Laleh Khalili’s critique highlights good missing points in Thompsons’ book. However, Khalili never mentions capital and profit and their role in shaping geopolitics. We blitzed it Related Carbon Democracy

Between 1918 and 1998, US administrations restricted trade with sanctioned nations 115 times; 64 of these occasions were during the 1990s, and most of them were unilateral. By 1997, the equivalent of half the world’s population was living under some form of US sanction. Current debates within the EU over what to do about Russia have led to some rhetorical contortions. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen appeared to support the US position that ‘Nord Stream 2 could not be excluded a priori from the list of [preventive] sanctions’, adding, ‘We want to build the world of tomorrow as democracies with like-minded partners.’ But among the energy partners that might replace Russia, Von der Leyen cited an oil monarchy (Qatar), a dictatorship allied with authoritarian Turkey (Azerbaijan) and a country under military rule (Egypt)... Playing the white knight calls for spotlessly clean hands. You might think whistleblower Julian Assange, sought by the US and locked up in London, was a dream ...

Only 11 UK Members of Parliament signed the motion

Not for the those who were born in the right place, for example. Boom time in Norway Related Turkey’s defence exports to Kyiv

Introduction by Joel Beinin Political economy addresses the mutual and historical constitution of states, markets, and classes… In this perspective, causes are simultaneously effects; all events are situated in a relational matrix; all social hierarchies are subject to contestation. The historical development of social formations dominated by capital is inextricably intertwined with genocides, slavery and other forms of unfree labor, racialization, patriarchy, national oppression, and empire. Capital accumulation by individuals, partnerships, and even contemporary corporations can occur through exploiting many different forms of labor as well as cheap nature. The ambit of political economy also includes the legal, political, and cul- tural forms of the regulation of regimes of capital accumulation; relations among local, national, and global forms of capital, class, and culture; the so- cial structure of reproduction; the construction of forms of knowledge and hegemony; technopolitics;...

A region warming twice as much as the rest of the world

  The World for Sale

I have just finished reading Global Middle East Into The Twenty-First Century . Apart from a couple of essays which I have found dry, the collection of 24 short essays is really worth reading.   It is accessible to both students and those who are eager to read about different topics related to the region in its global context, from music, food and Levantines in Latin America to oil, Egyptian cotton, Mo Salah and ports of the Persian Gulf...