Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A very good approach. Semitism and Islamophobia as parallel manifestations of contemporary racism

“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 Telegraph calls it an invasion , the BBC calls it a coup . A 20-years war, an election organised under occupation and during bloodshed, with a president elected by 923,000 votes out of 9.7 million registered votes out of a population of 30 million. No, it is not a coup. The Taliban were overthrown by a US-led invasion and then Taliban won that war. There was no government or Afghan army to speak of. It was a regime kept alive by the American forces ruling over about 30% of the population. But those who always scream about fair and democratic elections, do not care about facts. Ironically, the BBC is one of the proponents of ‘Fact-check’. 

The nation state is anti-human.

On the Island’s diverse present and future

Published in June 2018. It is against amnesia and absolving this or that government. How we all colluded in Fortress Europe Related In reality, “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. In that sense, the border regime is an extension of the history of colonialism and domination that Europe and the West have exercised over the rest of the world, and to which ‘the construction  of Europe’ now adds a further chapter i

"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.

Some good news at last! More than a thousand protestors forced the Home Office to release two men they had detained in a dawn raid

How a state that was established as a settler-colony treats children seeking refuge  Related War crimes by Australian elite troops

 Thank you, Edward! And rest in peace.

 

 Jeremy Corbyn: Seize the time! John Molyneux, 29 October 2020 Today’s suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by Keir Starmer  is outrageous but it is also the culmination of a long process that began the moment Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party. From the very first day the British political establishment, led by David Cameron and supported by most of the mainstream media and a considerable section of the Parliamentary Labour Party, set out to discredit and destroy him.  This project had nothing to do with Corbyn’s personal strengths or weaknesses and absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism,  real or alleged.  The motive was simple and obvious: from the outset they perceived Corbyn and especially those who supported him and were mobilized by him as a threat to their interests, precisely because he had a long record as a socialist, as an anti-racist campaigner, as a defender of workers’ rights and, particularly, as an opponent of war and British imperialism. The last they found

no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled me

This country sees itself as overcrowded and overgenerous – it is neither of those things

Without a global orientation, we risk reinforcing the ways that the virus has seamlessly fed into the discursive  political rhetoric  of nativist and xenophobic movements – a politics deeply seeped in authoritarianism, an obsession with border controls, and a ‘my-country first’ national patriotism. This a global pandemic—let's treat it as such

The arguments make sense, but I think it is a silly headline Syria's revenge? What is Syria since 2011, the regimes, the warring factions, the internally displaced, the millions of refugees, the a hundred thousand plus in jails ...? "   In a normal world, great powers would marshal the resources necessary to meet the challenge, leading a global effort of expertise, technology, money, and materiel to save lives everywhere, including in Syria."  When was that "normal time"? Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, Ruwanda...? It's some people, some NGOS, local organisations mobilising their resources to help and save lives. Local and global powers have been waging proxy-wars and fuelling conflicts directly and indirectly, with geopolitical calculations of who is an ally and who is not, who serves their interests and who might jeopardise them. "Syria's revenge on the world" will be a second wave of coronavirus

The governor who is fighting a bigger, more lethal "virus" called refugees

The 2010s: the refugee 'crisis' showed Europe's worst side of the world