Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We are all in it together: one people, one nation with great values. The Price of Austerity in England See also Robin Hood in Time of Austerity

Two extremist, radicalised, Algerian women from the Revolutionary Spartacist League of World Revolution, Genuine Democracy and Global Justice are conspiring on how to overthrow the regime! Source: Journal el Bilad, 15 March 2019

Algeria The political economy of regime survival

Violence in New Zeland Some extremists (Clinton, May, Modi, Erdogan, el Sisi ...) are condemning other extremists.

"Hobbes once remarked that if you are forced at gunpoint to go through a door, you are still free to go through it: you can be forced and be free. For most of us today this is a perversity that smacks of Stalinism. But what if someone throws walls around you on three sides and then leaves you to decide for yourself what to do? Are you still free to determine your future, assuming that the wall builder has at least as much right to build the walls as you do? ... [U]unfortunately most conventional discussion ... either fails to spot the walls or assumes that they are natural structures deriving from the very substance of market economics, rather than the work of political hands. As a result, conventional wisdom does not for a moment doubt that ... peoples ... have at last entered the realm of freedom and self-determination... [W]hat right do a handful of capitalist states assert their political power over the world economy? It is in this field of what conventional liberal thought...

Algeria Many Algerians taking part in the on-going social-political movement are crazy and uneducated. They speak about "a colonialism that has been oppressing them for decades." They don't know that in prestigious universities in the West students are taught about "Post-colonialism" and "Development". Algerians should learn from "the highly educated" Westerners and stop blaming the Other for their ills. The Other has been trying to help them in all sorts of manners: "aid, loans, NGOs, weapons, support of regime to guarantee stability, bying their resources at fair price, spreading liberal values," etc. Algerians should learn from the "experts" and listen to the heads of international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. الدول العربية  بحاجة الى ثورات حقيقية لا لتغيير ما يسمى رئيس الدولة، بل لاجتثاث الدولة العميقة  واستخبارات وعسكر وحيتان المال والنفوذ الخارجي، بحاجة إلى ثورات  لإنجاز الاستقلال الحقيقي عن ا...

The New Yorker has just discovered this: The Middle East's Great Divide is not Sectarianism Too late though. 

'Neoliberalism': not so bad? See also Bill Gates poverty is decreasing How poor countries develop rich countries

How poverty in modern Britain echoes the past

Algeria 09 March 2019 All signs indicate so far that another social movement will be co-opted (by the regime and the imperial powers), diverted (through a manoeuvre by the military) and if not, crushed. "The people want the overthrow of the gangster regime" "Leave" (one of the slogans that had been raised in the Tunisian uprising) Algeria's angry youth (the Guardian) and a view of an Algerian activist: "A few thoughts on developments in Algeria as well as the way they are being represented in both Algerian and international (social) media.  First, it goes without saying that we are living through incredibly exciting times. Just yesterday, 15 MILLION Algerians took to the country's streets and even more if we take into consideration protests taking place in solidarity elsewhere across the world. Second, it also goes without saying that for those of us who have been involved  in social movements over the past several yea...

From the archive A reply to the liberal logic of Fred Halliday Still useful for today's geo-economic politics whether for the recent American categorazation of Hizbollah as "a terrorist" organisation or the one-sided view on the Bolivarian revolution.

Macron and co. " If any anti-Jewish expression in the world always worries me, I feel a certain disgust at the flood of hypocrisy and manipulation orchestrated by those who now want to criminalize anyone who criticizes Zionism." —Shlomo Sand Semites, Anti-Semites, Zionists, Anti-Zionists

Demographic demise

"Strategical partners" German arms feeding the Yemen conflict

"All citizens are supposed to be equal but citizens from minority ethnic communities are, in fact, less equal than others." When do you become "British enough"?

An alternative to Emmeline Pankhurst , a defender of the British Empire, celebrated by the London School of Economics and Manchester City Council. Freda Bedi

"Human Rights" in Tunisia Context: it was during an era the Tunisian regime was hailed as "the best student" by the IMF and a "liberal secular" regime under Bourgiba (1956-1987), and was in good relations with the US, France, Britain, Italy and others while torture, repression and plunder went on. Now any complicity is forgotten. From the liberal   Guardian to the Financial Times and the Economist , the talk now is about a "nascent though weak democracy" and "transitional justice". Meanwhile, the international financial institutions carry on with their debt enslavement programme and "restructuring". 

From the archive We tried to help the "Libyans" get rid of a mad man and organise  the first 'free' elections. But, they didn't understand what 'democracy' mean. So, they started killing each other in a civil war. The disaster in Libya and Who said Gaddafi had to go? Book Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya

"There is a powerful impulse within the electorates of the NATO states for their governments to give a lead to the world and really help the less fortunate overwhelming majority of humanity to improve their lives and strengthen their security and welfare. But we must bear in mind two unfortunate facts: first, that the NATO states have been and are hell-bent on exacerbating the inequalities of power and wealth in the world, on destroying all challenges to their overwhelming military and economic power and on subordinating almost all other considerations to these goals; and second, the NATO states are finding it extraordinarily easy to manipulate their domestic electorates into believing that these states are indeed leading the world’s population towards a more just and humane future when, in reality, they are doing no such thing."  —Peter Gowan, NLR, March-April 1999

British researcher Alex de Waal has written the following about the famine in Yemen: 
"Yemen, however, stands out. A UN report published last month estimated that 80 per cent of the population – 24 million people – required some sort of humanitarian assistance. The number in ‘acute’ need is now estimated at 14.3 million, 27 per cent higher than in 2018. The famine is the world’s worst since North Korea in the 1990s and the one in which Western responsibility is clearest. Even before the war, Yemen was poor, dependent on food imports and suffering from water scarcity. Coalition aircraft now strike military and civilian targets, including agricultural project offices, irrigated farms and terraces, fishing ports and fishing boats, clinics and hospitals, busy markets teeming with vendors and shoppers. Fishing on the Red Sea coast, formerly a major livelihood – fish exports were Yemen’s second biggest earner after oil – is almost at a standstill. The coalition blockade extends to th...