Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

‘ The decaying American empire ’ argument is disputable. The comparison with the collapse of the Soviet Union misses the different economic structures of the two countries. The US economic power has not been experiencing a long term stagnation, for example.  Actually, the argument should be the way around: in 1980s there was no ‘whip of external necessity’ compelling the US to outcompete the Soviet Union. The latter was not an economic threat to the US. Today China is the ‘external whip’ but to an already more powerful American economy – a dynamic one in terms of capital-intensive industries, productivity and an array of industrially-advanced allies and subordinates.

From The Intercept mailing list of 07 July 2024: “Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since  October 7 , a figure that is likely a stark undercount of the true devastation.  In addition, a recent report from the aid organization Save the Children estimates that more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing. And with famine breaking out across Gaza, international aid organizations warn that half a million people or more are at risk of starvation. But seven months into Israel’s war on Gaza, major news outlets in the West have begun prioritizing coverage of other issues, including the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, Israel continues to ban foreign journalists from entering Gaza – and 1 in 10 Palestinian reporters on the ground have been killed since the war started. In this moment of catastrophic loss of life and media censorship, The Intercept is doubling down, partnering with courageous reporters on the ground to expose the grisly truth about Israel’s...

“ Western governments don’t have to do much to make the world a better place — in fact, all they have to do is stop what they’re doing.” I wonder why though one has to conclude an article with an indirect appeal to those very same regimes they condemn. US sanctions killing Afghans

Civilisation Looking around her, Dr. Mahdi could not fathom the Western obsession with the Saudi killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. “We’re surprised the Khashoggi case is getting so much attention while millions of Yemeni children are suffering,” she said. “Nobody gives a damn about them.” No one gives a damn about them

"We formed an alliance with Stalin right at the end of the most murderous years of Stalinism, and then allied with a West German state a few years after the Holocaust. It was perhaps not surprising that in this intellectual environment a certain compromise position about the evils of Hitler and Stalin—that both, in effect, were worse—emerged and became the conventional wisdom." — Thimothy Snyder, a Professor of History at Yale, US. An interesting perspective. Stalin vs. Hitler: who was worse? Who killed more: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?

What's Happening in Raqqa, Idlib and Syria?

"In school, boys who play war games with model soldiers aren’t viewed with suspicion by their teachers, whereas boys who carry knives into the playground are likely to be reported to the police. This may be wise, but the boys with knives understand something about war that the boys with model soldiers don’t: war is an intimate business. Some of the nastiest things happen close up, between individuals. Sometimes they don’t involve weapons. At dinner parties, journalists back from war zones are occasionally asked what it was really like. Perhaps the most accurate answer would be to rape the hostess, murder the host, cut the children’s throats and set fire to the house, without any explanation. There is much talk of war crimes, as if all war was not a crime." Nuremburg rally, invasion of Poland, Dunkirk

"The Nazis used it, we use it"

The world hasn't had this many people dying of famine and diseases since WWII "The international response? Essentially, a giant shrug of indifference." and Invasion of fall armyworms ravages crops in 20 African countries