Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From an article available to subscribers “In  May 1945, soon after Germany surrendered, the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked people which country they felt had contributed the most to its defeat. At the time, respondents were highly conscious of the millions of Soviet troops who had died on the eastern front and their decisive role in weakening the Nazi forces, as well as the United States’ late entry into the war: 57% chose the Soviet Union and only 20% the US. When IFOP asked the same question this year, the ratio was inverted: the US scored 60% against 25% for the Soviet Union. “For many years, D-Day was seen as a relatively minor event…  In 1964 De Gaulle himself refused to attend: ‘Why should I go and commemorate their landings when they were a prelude to a second occupation of France? I won’t do it!’ “That all changed in 1984 amid growing US-Soviet tension…  The countries of the ‘free world’ made a show of unity, presenting themselves as defenders of ...

An excellent article ‘Even when things were at their worst, the majority of Americans were free to say what they thought for the simple reason that they never thought what they were not free to say’. — the atomic physicist Leo Szilard The new orthodoxy

John Gray is considered an English philosopher.  According to the British journalist Francis Wheen, Gray “has published dozens of increasingly apocalyptic books and articles on the need to end the Enlightenment project forthwith.” Excerpts from ‘ The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses?’ The New Statesman, July 28-August 17, 2023 “The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses? If Ukrainian forces nonetheless fail to break through Russian positions, a frozen conflict becomes a realistic outcome. Western support is nearing exhaustion. Deindustrialised societies cannot sustain a protracted conflict when Russia is operating as a fully fledged war economy. The West is staking its endgame on regime change. What if that has the same result as it did in Iraq and Libya?” In the Russian Civil War of 1917-1921 “ Western military intervention involving British and other foreign troops exacerbated the bloodshed. As...

The main points in this long but very good article Gautam  Adani “was not only a beneficiary of the new political and economic order devised by Modi to consolidate Hindu supremacism in India. The neglected details of his frictionless rise show that after their calamitous romance with Russia’s oligarchy, Western politicians, journalists and bankers facilitated the ascent of another hyper-nationalist elite with dubiously sourced wealth and an extreme aversion to the rule of law and civil liberties.” “When Modi was barred from travelling to the United States and the European Union because of his suspected complicity in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, and many Indian businessmen recoiled from him, Adani worked hard to rehabilitate his associate. Since becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi has repaid the favour: he turned Adani into India’s biggest operator of private airports and ports, as well as its leading producer of power from coal-fired plants. McKinsey’s global managi...

“In the mainstream media Russia is a blank screen on which the West gazes transfixed at its own visions.” How the country ended up with Vladimir  Putin

"Russia's problem is our system. A system was created here that created such a person [as Putin]. The question of the West's role in creating this system is a very serious one.” — Grigory Yavlinsky

“Neither the respectable left nor the hardline liberals can explain how spiralling ‘punishments’ are meant to bring a quick end to the war, still less a lasting peace.”  Invasion of Ukraine: more on hypocrisy, warmongering and the innocent abroad

  When people ranging from seasoned American idiot Thomas Friedman to Israeli best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari come together to argue Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine is unlike anything we have seen before and is a turning point in human history, it is hard not to bury your head in your pillow and wonder where have these people been over the last two decades of US military thuggery around the globe. Ceasing to follow the propaganda machinery of Russia and the US, the world would be much better off turning to Gogol, a Ukrainian master of Russian literature, and in the liminal space he crafts in his superior literary heritage, thinking where the real borders lie between civilisation and barbarities. Biden Putin or Gogol

Irish law maker speaks out

Macron says Putin wants to 'take us back to the age of empires'. The logic behind French military interventions in Africa France and its former colonies A neo-colonialist French foreign policy in Africa The French Military in Africa: Past and Present Mapping the Sahel

Has the fear of a wider war made the BBC acknowledge the Western imperialism’s role?  “But the dark energy that drives Vladimir Putin is the other side of that coin. He saw Russia diminished, humiliated and stripped of what he saw as its right to a buffer zone of subordinate states.

We are now seeing major protests in Russia, with many being arrested. What is your sense of the sentiment of the Russian people to the invasion?  Ilya Budraitskis : “ Unlike in 2014, there is no patriotic enthusiasm in Russia today. Part of society is obviously outright opposed to the war with Ukraine, while the majority simply believes that it will soon be over and Russia will restore peace. There are very few actual revanchists who welcome the war and are prepared to make any sacrifice for the sake of Russia's geopolitical triumph. On the other hand, during the long years of Putin's rule, the vast majority of Russians have adopted the attitude that they have no ability to influence anything, and that everything will be decided without their participation anyway. This background of depoliticization and demoralization may provide passive support for the war for some period of time. However, if the war drags on and its economic and social consequences are felt by the majority of...

An invasion that has little to offer to Ukrainians, Russians and the world

The US Never Interferes in Other Countries’ Elections? Related Joe, here is a book on the CIA website Killing Hope - US Military & CIA Interventions Since WWII

  Good points here. However, I don’t agree with this: Those who share love and admiration for a pluralizing world must unite across differences of race, class, gender and theology in their efforts to restore our democracy. The author believes in class collaboration. Class is central in the same system of imperialism he is condemning yet he advocate a unity across differences regardless of class. What sort of democracy is a one that maintains class opression? Biden’s characterisation of Putin applies to ‘Neoliberal Ideologies’, too.

 The crushing of Chechnya’s aspirations for independence

“Putin Hacked Our Coronavirus Vaccine” is the Dumbest Story Yet

The making of Putin's Russia

This cannot be accurate, for these kind of surveys do not show the wide difference between classes in major issues.  Such a survey is merely a snapshot that refletcs the blockage towards full capitalist  "development" and therefore the dominance of bourgeois norms (e.g. sexual and gender norms), the failure of modernisation of the 1950 and 1960s, the development of rentier economies, especially in the Gulf, instead of industrialisation  on the one hand and the defeat of the 2011 revolution on the other. As for the threat of the US and Israel, the Arab world is still a very strategic battleground where local ruling classes and international ones have major and common interests in restructuring or preserving the existing order. Major questions that could be included in the survey, and that could   provide a picture beyond the symptoms, are the type of politcal regime and economic system the Arab countries need, and how should the wealth be exploited and distrib...

Kremlin doubts figures showing Russians too poor to buy shoes