Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The figure of the half a million Iraqi children killed by the sanctions, and which goes back to a 1995 study carried out under Saddam Hussein regime, is an arguable figure. Massad and a few others still repeat it without backing it with recent studies and sources.  A game of capitalist greed

The bigger picture in this article is not big enough. While nurses and other workers go on strike in Britain, for example, one has to compare the social value of a professional football player to a nurse and their incomes, and how such obscene injustice has become acceptable and normal. The world Cup and the champion leagues are a capitalist industry run on the 5 basis of competition and profit. The question of class, exploitation and ideology are also at play. Money’s chokehold on modern football Related “We are all complicit in the system” in one way or another. We clap and cheer. We succumb to amnesia. We fill in our day with hypocrisy.

Ottoman revival?

"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

The different ways that workers fight for their rights

How food is used as a weapon

“The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values. The PRC employs a broad range of political, economic and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power, while remaining opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up. The PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target Allies and harm Alliance security. The PRC seeks to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains. It uses its economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence. It strives to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains. The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run co

 

Russian oligarchs, banks and businesses could have sanctions against them lifted if Russia's President Vladimir Putin ends his invasion of Ukraine and commits to "no further aggression", UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said. You see in principle ‘we’ don’t really have a problem with the oligarchs. 

A good summary. “There is no contradiction between standing with the people of Ukraine and against Russia’s heinous invasion and being honest about the hypocrisy, war crimes, and militarism of the U.S. and NATO. We have an undeniable moral responsibility to prioritize holding our own government accountable for its crimes because they are being done in our names and with our tax dollars. That does not mean we should be silent in the face of the crimes of Russia or other nations, but we do bear a specific responsibility for the acts of war committed by our own nations.” On hypocrisy: “ How many of the people with Ukrainian flag avatars on their Twitter profiles have spent days or weeks pleading for the world to stand up for ordinary Yemenis living under the hell of American bombs and Saudi warplanes? The same question applies in the case of the Palestinians who live under an  apartheid state  imposed by Israel and backed up by a sustained campaign of annihilation  supported  and  encoura

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

It is not exhaustive, but a good piece nevertheless. Cold peace

Published in 2019 Ukraine’s uneven incorporation into the global capitalist system after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Ukrainian capitalism’s internal contradictions and shifts of power between oligarchic blocs and their  unfolding in the context of neo-imperialist rivalry between the USA, the EU, and Russia.  Some of the major outcomes of that dialectic that facilitated a major multilevel crisis of 2013–2014 and led to the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s annexation of the southern peninsula Crimea, and the war in eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.  A critical review of the major narratives on the nature and role of Western and Russian imperialisms in Ukraine’s crisis.

Early Islamic description of Russia and Ukraine

On the brink

The Russian regime refuses to call the invasion of Ukraine a war. It was not until 1999 that the French Assembly designated the Algerian War (1954-62) as a war . The American Congress never designated the war on Vietnam as a war . In October 2002 the American Congress adopted ‘Iraq Resolution’ that would be known as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, and was not designated as a war. ….. 

To the Russian anti-war movement

Some of the misleading videos and photos Related Further false images

“Here’s an irony of history: at the 1945 Yalta Conference (in Crimea, of all places) Russia argued that Ukraine was an independent country and worthy of its own vote at the United Nations, while the United States and Britain argued that it was a region within Russia. I guess history isn’t what it used it be.” –Matthew Stevenson, Counterpunch.org, 23 February 2022 After 40 years of allowing Russian oligarchs to hide their money and and wealth in Western banks and assets, granting them citizenship status and letting them finance political parties in the West, the EU leader Von der Leyen announced after the beginning of the Russian invasion that “ we will work to prohibit Russian oligarchs from using their financial assets on our markets.”