Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Photography Unlearning imperial sovereignty

Above all, Guler's photos of Istanbul show us how ordinary people lived: the fisherman, the worker, the day labourer, the travelling salesman and the migrant from the village who moved to the shores of the Bosphorus in the hope of a better life. Obituary: Turkish photographer Ara Guler

Ukraine The Oligarchs

"Notably, the international community and particularly western powers, which were originally sympathetic to Syria's  Arab Spring , accepted the Syrian regime as the lesser evil and gradually abandoned the opposition." Assad's strategic use of ISIL  

China's "1984" What was this large complex with its 16 watchtowers that the authorities were so desperate to stop us filming?  “It's a re-education school,” one hotelier told us.  “Yes, that's a re-education school,” another shopkeeper agreed.  “There are tens of thousands of people there now. They have some problems with their thoughts.” China's hidden camps

Syria From the archive:  Top Goon (13 episodes)

لما بدى يتثنى

An interesting admission: we don't live in a progressive world heading towards a progressive future. On the contrary, we are living in a more and more commodified, Orwellian society. 'Surveillance capitalism'

The liberal BBC wants to normalise a neofascist

Ineffective "Mass marches in the UK"

An Interview with Gilbert Achcar

From the first half of the 20th century in Egypt Collecting Cairo's Discarded Images

Like in most analyses, missing is the historical fact of an overlap of sect and class in some Arab countries. Example: one has to look at the position of the majority of the Syrian bourgeoisie towards the uprising and the regime since the outbreak of the uprising and then the war. Postel:  In recent years, a narrative has taken hold in Western policy and media circles that attributes the turmoil and violence engulfing the Middle East to supposedly ancient sectarian hatreds. "Sectarianism" has become a catch-all explanation for virtually all of the regionʹs problems. This narrative can be found across the political spectrum – from right-wing voices with openly anti-Muslim agendas, to softer liberal-centrist articulations and even certain commentators on the left. In its various forms, this sectarian essentialism has become a new conventional wisdom in the West. It is an intellectually lazy, ideologically convenient and deeply Orientalist narrative. The West's ...

Many of those condemning the regime today include a cross-section of US government, think tank, and media personalities that are themselves guilty at best of ignoring, and at worse covering up, the authoritarian nature of the Saudi regime and the various forms of systematic violence it deploys (let alone the US role in propping up the regime, providing the means of that violence, and many times participating in the actual acts of violence).  Kashoggi himself was for a long time part of the Saudi regime of power, and only recently fell out with its current top echelons (i.e., Mohammed bin Salman) and thus defected. Saudi Arabia's Long History of Dictatorship and Opposition

Turkey Release jailed construction workers

The outcome of regional strategic calculus and "lesser evil" mentality, especially when "the lesser evil" is "secular". Sections of the left are still in denial. How chemical weapons helped bring Assad close to victory

Tolerance! Hate crimes in England and Wales

Lucky him! He could afford it. "I'm leaving the UK because of the disaster of Brexit"

London   Today on a famous high street in London, another racist attack on me. A young man in his early twenties, bumped into me deliberately and hurled a racist slur at me.

Class and race The Blindspot Revisited