Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Also goes by the name "the international mother fucker" It is more beautiful when it is headed by a feminist/a feminist mother.  There is no shortage of people who want to lead a criminal institution with a global reach and they are proud of it. I recommend Eric Toussaint's writings

Retrospective of Egyptian film maker Atteyat al-Abnoudy

Just compare how the media has been reporting about suicide bombings in Tunisia where one person was killed and  the 80 migrants killed "by the evil Mediterranean sea"

Britain "After urging land reform I now know the power of the billionaire press"

"The gang treated their fellow countrymen as commodities" Polish against Polish as if what happened took place in Poland. Not a word by the liberal BBC about the kind of economy that allowed such a gang to operate in the UK since the Poles started coming into the country, and how the UK was allowed to opt out of EU labour laws in a bargain with Germany. A UK [modern] slavery network

"From the Nazis and the Taliban to Isis’s more recent destruction of Palmyra , there is plenty on the bad guys, but not much space devoted to the more nuanced topic of the damage wrought by the supposed good guys, like the trail of vandalism left by coalition forces in Iraq." The Imperial War Museum [in London] charts a history of destruction

"Who else would agree to give up a minimum of two hours a week, not counting commuting time, to sit through blood extraction and reinfusion twice, all for a grand total of 50 bucks? The plasma industry that year (2009) made around $10 billion; the same liter of blood I produced for $20 or $30 was worth up to $200, even before it was treated to make medicine.  My first graduate summer was thus the first time I understood the machinations of a capitalist economy, not because I read Marx, but because I experienced its exploitation of my own body, literally." On the Absurdity of Ethical Capitalism

"The border in this sense is a very recent, twentieth century form of racial sovereignty. It is no more inevitable or natural than the existence of concentration camps. The fact, however, that it feels natural, that it has achieved the appearance of 'the way things are', that it seems inevitable, is an indication of how powerful the ideology is." The border as political fantasy

State violence Crammed into cells and forced to drink from the toilet in Syrian prisons? No, in American detention centres. "callous indifference to human life that is normalised among agents", [and among those who knew about and those who pretended that did not know about it.] Note: here too the dentention centres are called 'concentration camps'. I disagree with that. I think one should read about the British concentraion camps and the Nazi ones, for example, before using such an inaccurate comparison.  However, given that we are not in Syria or Libya, but in the richest country on earth [though not per capita] and, as the report states, it is not a problem of resources, and with all her bragging of "freedoms", "helping to liberate" Iraqis and Venezuelans, among others, it is an act of barbarism to treat vulnerable people in such a way. But should we wonder? Just look at the American prisons, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib ... Crammed into c...

"Jinn  is a lazy, by-the-numbers drama with no real insight into Jordanian teenage lives, no position on modern Jordanian society and no redeeming artistic vision.  Bou Chaaya and Matalqa show no knack for directing actors and fail to convey their characters’ existential ennui in a country grappling with a sense of identity. They briefly touch upon class, but never fully explore the subject. Everything in  Jinn  feels like a carbon copy of tired American formulas, including the basic arcs of the characters and their inner conflicts, their relationship with one another; and even the brand of horror that blends the grisly with the supernatural. Nothing feels authentic, emotionally real or believable." Note: kissing in Egyptian movies was not uncommon. One can see that in the 1970s-1980 movies, for example . Netflix in the Middle East: how Jinn became a nightmare

If you have a kindle, here is a free e-book that looks interesting: The Strangers Among Us: Tales from a Global Migrant Worker Movement

The Return of the 'C' Word: SASE Conference 2019

Britain Wealth creators, life savers and science developers at the BBC Their salaries are justified. And as long as consent (or the "ideology of consent") is still there, the majority accepts it. and 40% of adults have less than £51,200 in wealth each   Wealth includes property, savings and pension. 30% of adults have less than 13,700 in wealth each. That is about the annual salary of a bus driver (after tax).

"The hidden story of Arab mental health"

A very engaging review The students were  furious . For the first week of class, they read the polemical first chapter, which argues that human rights are not eternal universal truths, but rather a set of political claims that emerged in the 1970s amid a crisis of the moral authority of communism. They simply would not believe that their own highest ideals dated not to the Bible or “the golden rule” but to the age of disco. As it turned out, the students had a preconceived notion of what it meant to have their preconceived notions challenged, and it did not include historicizing their own moral commitments. This provoked reflection about what historicizing something means and how legitimacy for moral claims is constructed. The Inequality of "Human Rights"

Helping people get freedom June 1954: Guatamalan Leader Overthrown in CIA-Backed Coup

This is a long radio interview, but it is worth listening to. (You should slide forward to minute 4:00) There is a good argument about why most Russians have been generally passive since the 1991 despite the disaster of the 1990s, and how consent has been gained.  However, it is not clear/elaborated why Russian capitalism remained weak and could not develop a strong competitive capitalist economy or why the Russian capitalist class did not embank on such a project.  Russia Beyond Putin by Tony Wood

Extremism Three men own more wealth than half of the poorest Americans

It doesn't make a difference, but it is at least a symbolic action. We Won't Load Your Ships of Deaths

Should we call dentention centres concentration camps? No. But differences and similarities with internment camps of Vichy France, for example, could be drawn.