Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ Europe’s military arsenal is not well prepared for war  … because for the last thirty years we thought that war was not coming back to Europe.”  But has war ever left Europe?

Very, very insightful.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

“I used to want peace. I don’t want peace anymore

Although many countries rushed to offer co-operation and aid to Turkey and Syria in the immediate aftermath of the quakes, Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health at University College London was not optimistic. His research on “disaster diplomacy” suggested that natural disasters did not create peace. “Aside from the logistical challenges of humanitarian aid amid places of violence, experience demonstrates that, sadly, previous enmity tends to supersede saving lives and stopping war over the long term,” Kelman said . ‘Natural’ disasters are not wholly natural and the word natural should be in inverted commas. Disaster-related activities do and do not influence conflict and cooperation

What we can do is raise the demand for peace and for the British government to get off its bellicose high horse. Tory machismo at the expense of other people’s lives needs to be replaced by serious support for a diplomatic end to the war. Even President Zelensky knows the danger. There is a Nato camp, he said last week, which doesn’t “mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”

 

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

  Two Decades after the Second Intifada Related Palestine’s Capitalists

UAE-Israel deal: The new hegemons of the Middle East

Which tactics are appropriate for today’s rebellions can only be determined by a strategic and organizational analysis along the lines [Marin Luther] King proposed, and not according to the moral judgment which he subordinated to that analysis. In fact, with news that Los Angeles is considering cuts in police department funding, Minneapolis city council members openly considering disbanding the police force, and curfews being lifted in several cities, there are good reasons to believe that the current riots are strategically effective. “No justice, no peace,” from King’s vantage point, means that there is no positive peace without justice. Therefore in the context of injustice, there can be no negative peace, in the sense that there must be tension, there must be a “disturbance of the peace” in order to have the presence of justice. Today, when protestors shout “no justice, no peace,” we should understand this as a political principle which takes primacy over the abstract conceptio...

"The horror of the twentieth century was not something that burst into a world of peaceful coexistence suddenly and from without. At the same time, being dissatisfied with the edifying picture of the habitual hagiography and situating oneself on the firm ground of reality, with its condtradictions and conflicts, does not in any way mean denying the merits and strong points of the intellectual tradition [of liberalism] under examination. But we certainly must bid farewell once and for all to the myth of the gradual, peaceful transition, on the basis of purely internal motivations and impulses, from liberalism to democracy, or from general enjoyment of negative liberty to an ever wider recognition of political rights. Moreover, has liberalism definitely left behind it the dialectic of emancipation and dis-emancipation, with the dangers of regression and restoration implicit in it? Or is this dialectic still alive and well, thanks to the malleability peculiar to this current of tho...

This is a nice piece. The philosophical roots of rights-based liberal individualism lie in efforts to legitimate imperial expansion

"Like anyone who has lived through war, I dream that future generations will one day be at peace, will abandon the weapons of war. But I know my dream is impossible. As a writer and especially as a veteran, I know that underneath the beautiful green meadows of peace are mountains of bones and ashes from previous wars and, most awful to contemplate, the seeds of future wars." The First Time I met Americans

On deploying British troops , Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, said he would tell them: "Under my leadership, you will only be deployed abroad when there is a clear need and only when there is a plan that you have the resources to do your job and secure an outcome that delivers lasting peace". So, in principle, and fundamentally, he would not break with the imperialist interventions of the British regime. He would deploy troops in a better and organised way, probably with popular support. Although Corbyn opposed the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, he sees that Britain has a mission to deploy troops and intervene to "secure peace". Since when an imperialist power intervenes and wages wars for peace? How ironic from a socialist? A socialist who would use the state apparatus of an imperialist state. 

Afghanistan When ones mentions Taliban, it seems that almost everybody has heard of them, but very few people would know how many times Western imperialist armies, and other armies, have interefed in Afghanistan, and the scale of destruction and instability those powers have left in the process. The British now have been defeated for the fourth time (incompetence of the "civilized to civilize" the recalcitrant? The Russians were also defeated, very badly. A defeat, let's not forget, that was helped by the Americans. The Americans and their allies have been defeated after the longest oocupation by the US imperialism, without establishing "peace", "democracy", or "liberating women", dogs, and the unfit in general. "For many decades during its recent past, when it was left alone, Afghanistan was one of the most peaceful and stable countries. History shows that what Afghanistan needs is less foreign interference, not more of it....

"Do not believe these croakers but give the lie to their dismal croaking by showing by our actions that the vigour and vitality of our race is unimpaired and that our determination is to uphold the Empire that we have inherited from our fathers as Englishment". In his view, the British would "continue to pursue that course marked out for us by an all-wise hand and carry out mission of bearing peace, civilisation and good government to the uttermost ends of the earth".  That man on the five-pounds note. Bath, England,  Speech of 26 July 1897

In this times of barbarism, absurdity and mediocrity, I wish Dario Fo, who has just left us forver today, could give me some of his wit. Angelina Jolie and William Hague are now visiting professors at the London School of Economics, London. They have joined the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security. William Hague and peace! Remember that scene in Life of Brian? Peace? The man who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and thus was complicit in the destruction and the consequences of that war ) and who came out recently to reitrate that support by standing with Blair. Blair himself became a peace envoy to the Middle East, didn't he?  Regarding Angelina, here is a good dissection of the "ideology" of charity and the hypocrisy of it. Against Charity

Did Human Rights Watch Sabotage Colombia’s Peace Agreement?

"War is the continuation of business by other means." — Bertolt Brecht  "War is business and business is good for America," [ Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Canada, Israel, and others] "The latest Global Peace Index report finds that the economic impact of violence to the global economy was $13.6 trillion in 2015 in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). This is equivalent to $5 per day for every person on the planet, or 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment (FDI). The toll of violence is typically counted in terms of its human and emotional cost, but the financial damage to the economy is yet another additional factor to consider. When counting the economic impact one must look at the costs of preventing and containing violence, as well as measuring its consequences. This is important because spending on containing violence, while perhaps necessary, is fundamentally economically unproductive. How do you "add up" the cos...