Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Israel A liberal Israeli paper unlike any Western liberal one

Fiat workers to strike over Ronaldo signing Good, but not enough.

Free ebook “Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right, not something that can be restricted by a racist or nationalist government. Borders are not natural divisions between people or benign lines on a map. They are mechanisms for some groups of people to claim land, resources, and people, while fundamentally excluding other people from access to those places. They create and exacerbate inequalities and they protect the economic, political, and cultural privileges that have accrued over the past few hundred years through the spoils of colonialism, capitalism, and most recently economic globalization.” Excerpt From: Jones, Reece, “ Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move .” Verso. 2016 Capital, "a thing", is free to move anywhere. A human is not. This is one of the ironies of social progress after hundereds of thousands of years of human evolution.

Germany "Neo-Nazi terror was overlooked, or perhaps deliberately ignored," says the BBC. " Suddenly, it was revealed that a neo-Nazi cell of just three people had operated with impunity for 11 years, murdering 10 people - and had remained unknown to police." See also this long read Related stories German soldiers performing Nazi salutes Goebbels' secretary who "knew nothing about the murder of 6 million Jews"

The mass submission to football (Originally published on the right-wing French paper Le Figaro)

Social justice "The top 12 earners on the BBC's latest list of star salaries are all men."  It would have made a difference if half of them were women! "Match of the Day host Gary Lineker has overtaken Chris Evans as the best-paid person on the list, earning between £1.75m-£1.76m in 2017-18." What the fuck does Lineker produce for society? Do the British people question this? We have seen already that they don't give a shit.

American culture and the liberalization of hijab (You need free registration to read the piece)

In a country that wants to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to others

Britain has gone to huge trouble to humiliate itself

Migration "The metaphor of Fortress Europe thus represents a highly sophisticated construction—far more so than the fortified continent of World War Two. Its lines of fortification are mobile and teem with electronic surveillance devices, reinforcing an arsenal of repression centred round the weapons of bureaucracy and fear. Its walls are semi-permeable, designed not simply to exclude but to filter entrance in a highly restrictive way, constantly fabricating and modifying systems of hierarchical categorization, of which the distinction between ‘refugees’—acceptable, but only in limited numbers—and ‘economic migrants’, illegitimate and thus illegalized, is only one example. It operates by establishing compacts with other states or agencies, outsourcing functions of coercion, detention, surveillance and control." — Stathis Kouvelakis

Union-busting at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

" There is a striking discrepancy between the lack of feeling aroused by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty." — Stathis Kouvelakis Europe's Iron Curtain

From the archive Dedicated democracy

Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor Excerpts - Part 1

Trade war and depresssion

"Cant displays of piety and dogmatism remained anathema to him." The centenary of the birth of Egypt's musical rebel

Lebanon Good news for feminism! Lebanon is on the right track in "emancipating" women, following the "Western values" of "liberated women" and " our way of life"

Behind Trump's trade war The AI arms race Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read this FT article.

Along with two criminals,  Aung San Suu Kyi, Barack Obama and others, Mother Theresa was also a nobel prize winner. The BBC has just revealed that Mother Theresa charity in India has been selling babies . But after all these years, the Corporation has still not questioned the mission of the woman/the saint. After all, it is about showing that someone, somewhere in the "Third World" is doing something for the poor. That makes the "West" feel good about itself.

Free ebook Violent Borders - Refugees and the Right to Move