Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

مقتطف من رواية ”وليمة لأعشاب البحر“ لحيدر حيدر أحدهما كان يحدق عبر السهب وانعكاسات أصيل الشمس على أثباج الماء، وهذا الغروب المتكرر الذي يليه شروق، وفي مواجهة هذه القامات المحنية، قامات البشر المجوَّفة من الداخل والمكسورة بتعاقب الزمن الذي لا يحمل غير الفقدان وانتصار الأعداء وجراثيم الخيانة والمذابح الأهلية الفاشلة والبكاء على الضحايا والمفقودين والذين رحلوا بلا عودة. بينما يواصل الآخر رسم جبال وأشجار ومياه دفاقة، صائغا من صلصال خياله وموج رغباته بشرا آخرين. بشر صلاب، يتحركون بخطوات واثقة بين الجبال والكهوف ومجاري الأنهار وأنفاق المدن. بشر أينما هبطوا يوقدون النار ليردوا دوائر الظلمة الهابطة من حنايا الزمن، الزمن الذي لا بد من تحويل مجراه كي لا يُستعاد كما كان، وكما صُنع من خمائر الوحل والرماد والدماء المخثرة والحيض والبخور والصلوات وأصوات الندب والتخاذل والخيانات والتصدعات. ص ١٤٦ أمس نزلت إلى السوق وشفت الناس. رأيت الحوانيت الممتدة في شرايين المدينة ورأيت السلع المعروضة من آخر مبتكرات الموضة إلى السيارات الأمريكية والفرنسية وأجهزة التلفزيون إلى حوانيت الذهب والماس. لم أسم...

Hipster Colonialism and the 'ruin' of Cuba

Note : Jeremey Corbyn is not a radical leftist or from the hard left. He is advocating a social democratic programme, a programme of a project which social democrats have dismantled or in the process in dismantling (the latter process is happening even in countries like Sweden and Denmark). Anatomy of a Failed Coup in UK Labour Party

"The Threat Now Lies Among Muslim Immigrants"

... of the absurdities in history, of the contradictions in humans ... Jerusalem 2016

"The signifier ‘immigration’ has come to stand for all the powerlessness and immiseration experienced by a large segment of the British population, but rather than embodying the totality of oppression, all this does is ensure that all the anger and fury of a wounded impotence is sent screaming at the migrants themselves." "Defend, free movement, without illusions"

Interesting stuff " There’s a basic article of faith in leftist thought, held especially dearly by most among the U.S. left. It is so entrenched and so seldom challenged that it has attained the status of myth, an unquestioned origin story on par with the Book of Genesis, as the latter must have been regarded within Christendom during the Middle Ages." Brexit, Trumpism, Sanders, and the Decrepit State of Capitalism: Against Political Determinism

Soviet Lithuania in Pictures (1970s - 1990s)

"Astonishingly, the US mainstream media have barely covered what everyone here calls “the massacre.” Make no mistake: If police in Venezuela had shot down 11 unarmed demonstrators, a pack of American reporters would have raced there." Rebellion spreads in Mexico after police massacre

Working Class Militancy in the Global South

" I asked Kadhim what he would do if he could meet Tony Blair.   "I would say to him you are a criminal, and I'd spit in his face." And what would he say to George Bush? "I'd say you're criminal too. You killed the children of Iraq. You killed the women and you killed the innocent. I would say the same to Blair. And to the coalition that invaded Iraq. I will say to them you are criminals and you should be brought to justice." ( Bitterness in Baghdad ) Yes, Khadim. And people in Britain and the US not only don't really care, they even vote the criminals back in office! They call it democracy, something you and your people cannot understand or have.

The Lobster: Debt, Referenda, and False Choices I recommend you watch the film before you read this analysis

From the archive The Truth about the Criminal Bladbath in Iraq  

"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond.  Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package.  It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

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

[Upon] closer scrutiny, the operation of retrieving, commemorating and mourning proves to be deeply problematic and hypocritical. For this tragic loss of life was not an unfortunate “accident” but the result of political decisions taken, amongst others, by the very state actors who are now claiming a high moral ground by recovering and mourning the dead. The forgotten 22,000 First of all, the 18th of April shipwreck is only one among many more incidents that have led to more than 22,000 documented deaths at sea over the last 25 years. These have been the structural product of EU migration policies that have denied legal access to EU territory to the impoverished citizens of the global South since the end of the 1980s. The militarization of border controls and their externalization to North African states has forced migrants wishing to reach EU territory to resort to smugglers and to take longer and ever more dangerous routes. Italy, as a “frontline” state of the EU...

From my flickr collections   (a 2010-photo)

“Every industrial and commercial centre in England possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life … This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes.” " If remain had won, we would already have returned to pretending that everything was carrying on just fine. Those people who have been forgotten would have stayed forgotten; those communities that have been abandoned would have stayed invisible to all but those who live in them. To insist that they will now suffer most ignores the fact that unless something had changed, they were going to suffer anyway. Those on the remain side who felt they didn’t recognise their own country when they woke up on Friday morning must spare a thought for the pensioner in Redcar o...

Modern imperialism and the working class

Poll: UK Class Divide is 'Alive and Well'