Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

After reading Serfati’s analysis, I would consider his essay as an introduction to why the French state and its ruling class act the way they do at home and abroad . France has maintained a major role on the international scene, especially militarily, despite experiencing a relative decline in world economic power since the 1990s. In 2011, it ranked fifth in terms of military spending and sixth in terms of arms exports. It is a major zone of capital accumulation in the world economy and is centrally integrated into the global dynamics of economic, political, and military power. The overall closeness of elites in state institutions and large transnational corporations. French TNCs are increasingly dependent on profits earned in emerging or peripheral economies. when analysing the role of France in Africa, one must consider an interrelated set of economic, geopolitical, and domestic socio-political drivers. In 2009, France ranked third as a trading partner with Africa as a continent, beh...

“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

A poor conclusion and no alternative, but to implicitly expect the liberal parties to change track. How Europe works to keep Africans in Africa

Iraq 2003-2019

A liberal view on migration, i.e. one that avoids to deal with the structure of global capitalism, the nation state, power relations between states, and capitalism under/uneven development. And at the present situation a major factor is the low growth of the economies of the advanced capitalist countries and its impact on the power relations at home, including the rise of the far-right. Thus the usefulness of an external enemy: the monstrous alien. How the West is withdrawing into a bunker of its making

The contours of the geography of the crisis I am proposing here are written down  by names and places: Lesvos, Calais, Ventimiglia, Lampedusa, Paris, Molenbeek ( Belgium), Nice, but also Brexit, Syria, Turkey and Libya. I believe there is an important  historical matter at work beneath this “imaginary geography”. This geography  interpellates us a “geography of war”: war against migrants and asylum seekers and to  their desire of mobility and welfare; but also, and usually forgotten, war against “post- migrants” or postcolonial Europeans, that is against European sons of decades of a  racist state management of European territories and populations. This specific geography is showing a Europe gripped into what can be called a “manichean securitarian delirium." Policing the Refugee Crisis: Neoliberalism between Biopolitics and Necropolitics (You might need only a free account to access this analysis)

Algeria The political economy of regime survival

This is a good analysis

Iraq We have been here before: the destruction of the Ba'th's regime state by imperialism had led to similar consequences: neglect, fuelling sectarianism, geopolitics...  Actually, those consequences have significantly determined the present situation in Iraq. "Nascent territorialism in Mosul threatens long-term reconstruction efforts by institutionalising division between traumatised populations and security actors, as well as by breeding local resentment at perceived government neglect. With insufficient military and economic resources to commit to liberated areas, the Iraqi government may struggle to reverse trends toward factionalism without sustained international assistance. Yet today, long-term international aid seems unlikely, as Baghdad’s critical foreign partners scale back post-ISIS cooperation." Rivalries threaten post-ISIS Mosul

A reminder from the aftermath of the Paris attack This article, which I had reposted before, mentions state terrorism in passing without making it a fundamental point besides/part of/a determinant "in the nine truths". Instead, it calls state terrorism "counter-terrorism".  That is aside,  the arguments ("the truth") are quite valid and accurate, I think.  The threat is already inside

Jeff Halper "lays out the case for Israel’s centrality to the system of transnational economic hegemony by following up his initial question with a section entitled, “The Global Pacification Industry,” which explores capitalism’s accumulative process, alongside the changing nature of global conflict. As state to state engagement involving tanks and conventional armed forces has receded, Halper argues it has been replaced by the increasingly important role of what he terms “securocratic wars,” located in the “global battlespace,” which aim at nothing less than the pacification of the world-wide population to which his title refers." War Against the People See also My interview with Jeff Halper (2008)

'Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper

Algeria:  The political economy of regime survival

Why does France keep being attacked? The Rotten Heart of Europe And a forecast by Stratfor (October 2015) In Europe, the process of integrating foreigners will remain problematic, especially because migrant workers tend to have fewer job opportunities than their native peers. Right-wing parties and groups will continue to resist arriving foreigners, attack migrant shelters and protest immigration policies. Although immigration can somewhat mitigate the effects of a  shrinking and aging  population, it cannot reverse it, nor will all EU members attract foreigners to join their workforces .

The biggest terrorist state on earth is failing to fight individual terrorism What a surprise!

The Securitisation of Political Rule