Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Algeria between hope of change and a desire to leave

“The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right.” “We are witnessing the transition from a government with authoritarian tendencies to a dictatorial regime.” “This is not a government ‘backed’ by the military, but, as Maduro himself has said, the government is led by a ‘civilian-military-police alliance’. “Those who continue to support Maduro, including parties and movements of the Sao Paulo Forum or the spokespersons of Podemos in Spain, are causing severe damage to the left in the region and the world. They are damaging anti-capitalist struggles in the broadest sense.” The US embargo is ‘in violation of international law’. This is a useless statement repeated a million times, and it has come back again during the ongoing Israel’s genocidal war. “[A]fter the failure of the current, self-defined “socialist” governments, Venezuelan society tends to associate any reference to socialism or the left with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Maduro governme...

Vulnerable to implosion

Note the distortion by the BBC: “Admirers see her as a leading voice for liberal values and a champion of the marginalised.” Roy is liberal? Celebrated writer faces prosecution

En Français , Arabe and English Good news for many: ‘there is no hope for Arab countries; it is in their culture.’ Full Speed Ahead … to Nowhere

Amit Dave/Reuters via merip.org “ Karim’s experience is the product of an evolving strategic partnership between India and Israel , where an increasingly overt convergence of interests and ideology has led to both states tangibly supporting one another in working towards their respective political and economic ambitions. Through this partnership, state repression in Indian-occupied territories is not an exclusively Indian project. It has become part of a broader network, linking India to the Israeli state and its own colonial project.”

  “…the numbers typically attributed to the Tiananmen massacre or the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan were, say, 400 to 800. Here, Human Rights Watch has the names of 817 victims in Rabaa Square, and we say that the likely total count number is above a thousand.” — Kenneth Roth ,  executive director of Human Rights Watch. Documentary on Egypt’s Ra’baa crackdown premiers at Bafta

“For all its rhetoric around ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights,’there is an inexcusable free pass given to Modi’s violence by the Biden administration and American liberals. This selective attention is inextricable from a robust  defense relationship : over $4 billion in arms sales to India in the past decade, along with FBI-run trainings for police in Indian-occupied Kashmir, the world’s most  militarized  region… Liberals and conservatives alike will glorify the unity between the “world’s largest” and the “world’s oldest” democracies. Violence, repression, and authoritarianism will be ignored in the name of friendship, progress, and security.” Biden’s tacit endorsement of repression, authoritarianism, and religious intolerance

“ Smile, General  has done the unthinkable: shattering the sanctity of an incumbent ruling family for the first time in Arab film and TV history. A grand revolution in Arab TV is not expected anytime soon, but the show has certainly succeeded in stirring the politically still water of the region’s TV industry.”

A must read. The debt of Tunisia and Egypt in the 19th century and the colonisation of the two countries by France and Britain The analysis includes a critique of  Ali Coşkun Tunçer‘s chapter  in  Sovereign Debt Diplomacies: Rethinking Sovereign Debt from Colonial Empires to Hegemony.

Full access to the article requires subscription. Apart from what is already available , here are some more excerpts: “ The surveillance goes beyond keeping tabs on Islamist preachers and foreign workers. Because the government has majority holdings in telecoms operators Etisalat and Du (formerly the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company), the security services are able to monitor all communications on their networks. The UAE buys the technology to do this from Western companies such as McAfee. Shires says it’s likely that ‘Abu Dhabi has passively collected the data and provided it to Washington’ as part of the ‘war on terror’. After 9/11, it was the Arab Spring that contributed the most to the government’s determination to monitor and repress those it considered ‘internal enemies’. ‘2011 was a turning point in security terms — a brutal one,’ one of the academics who had asked for anonymity recalled. Former US National Security Agency (NSA) officer Lori Stroud told Reuters tha...

Deception, disinformation and social media

Sayeh incarnait une génération d’intellectuels aux voix libres et populaires A big hit with an iconic song

TB outbreak in Bahraini prison Background "The Americans told me honestly: 'we can't affect change in Bahrain unless the British agree. And the British won't agree unless the Saudis agree'," he said. "It is clear that since 2011 our political decisions have been transfered to Saudi Arabia and it will continue there."

“The PA found itself naked after losing the internal sources of legitimacy - revolutionary legitimacy, the legitimacy of resistance and national consensus, the legitimacy of ballot boxes and the legitimacy of achievement,” he said. “It only had external sources of legitimacy - the legitimacy of power and security - after its political project failed and it did not adopt a new project.” Watch what the corporate Western media would say if Palestinians started a mini civil war. Palestinian Authority loosing control of West Bank

Along with many other Muslim women, I wonder about the feelings of  Muslim women athletes , who have been kicked out of sporting events for body-covering clothing or head coverings. Tell these Muslim athletes that the German gymnasts are being celebrated, and they may ask: Is “girl power” a function of who these women are, white and European?  Are Muslim women also celebrated for their choices when they resist sexist rules and demand control over their apparel and bodies? Quite the opposite.  Muslim women are scorned for modest dress

The 1936 revolt Related A radical analysis by Ghassan Kanafani

The best article I have read so far  about the current situation in Cuba. “When the Cuban government responded with violence to the claims of the people whose interests they are supposed to defend, it acted like any other government anywhere in the world, rather than following the socialist character that once defined the revolution. For some, this is a difficult truth to accept.” “I year for more solidarity from the global left” Related My diary of a visit to Cuba

The BBC , unsurprisingly, ignored that El-Saadawi was anti-capitalist and belonged to  the “historical socialist-feminists,” (her own words). Wikipedia admin deleted my edit when I added with a source that El-Saadawi was anti-capitalist and  socialist. I guess they want her to fit in the neoliberal feminism. But, “ after the military take-over, El Saadawi began to defend the regime of the former military chief and current president Abdul Fatah al-Sisi and his human rights violations, many of her former comrades-in-arms felt compelled to break with her. El Saadawi accused the Western media of running a smear campaign against Sisi.” Women, Egypt and Religion Life and times via her writings Meet Egypt’s most radical woman The many lives of Nawaal El-Saadaawi

  The Colonial Contradictions of Albert Camus