Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

While Kurds are talking about "betrayal" and "stab in the back", "Within the first two weeks, most of Iraq's cities and provinces  fell to rebel forces. Participants of the uprising were a diverse mix of ethnic, religious and political affiliations, including military mutineers, Shia Arab  Islamists, Kurdish nationalists , and far-left groups." [sectarianism has been going on since the 7th century?] Read here what the American regime's position was  1991 uprisings in Iraq

According to Climate Accountability Institute between 1965 and 2017, "twenty largest investor-owned and state-owned fossil fuel companies produced carbon fuels that emitted 35% of the global total (480 GtCO2e)."  Carbon Majors

It's a good article. Brexit is a necessary crisis

"If you take away freedom, all four seasons and I will die"

More propaganda against "our way of life" and "free market values" 1. How are we in the UK, for example, supposed to afford putting food on the table? 2. Aren't our aid organisations, philanthropists and celebrities helping poor people and our students learning how to empower them? 3. Hasn't this been going on for decades (centuries if we include the colonial era)? Why should we care now? Why should we question  capitalist relations nationally and worlwide? Maybe it is just some comapnies that are not "ethical"?   Exploitation and abuse in UK supermarket supply chains, says Oxfam

Knowledge Commodities

“In the fields of technology or medicine, backwardness, dilettantism and obscurantism meet with the contempt they deserve; in the field of sociology, they invariably claim to embody freedom of scientific inquiry. Those for whom theory is merely an intellectual pastime easily move from one revelation to another or, what is more common, content themselves with a hash made of bits and pieces of all revelations. Immeasurably more exa cting, disciplined, and stable is he for whom theory is a guide of action. The drawing-room skeptic may with impunity make fun of medicine. The surgeon, however, cannot function in an atmosphere of scientific hesitation." —L.T. Mentioning the person behind the quote above might provoke prejudice more than thinking.

An Arab Woman Speaks (1972)

"The global press have been equally delighted, but with some of the warmest praise gushing from those bastions of “enlightened capitalism”  The Economist  and  The Financial Times , radical progressives may wish to zoom in yet closer on what has been happening on the ground in Portugal." Not different from other European "socialist" parties. When the bastions of "enlightened capitalism" praise such parties, it doesn't mean they are wrong; it means there is something really wrong with those parties which are trying to satisfy both the EU capital and their rank and file whereas in fact neglecting the latter. Europe's magician of the left?

"European organizations working on arms control—such as Amnesty International; Action, Sécurité, Ethique Républicaines (ASER); Action des Chrétiens pour l’Abolition de la Torture (ACAT); Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT); and Human Rights Watch—have highlighted that the United States and Europe are supplying arms. Saudi Arabia and the UAE regularly top the table of arms purchases from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, and Sweden. Several NGOs have unilaterally initiated legal proceedings in national courts and the International Criminal Court, hoping to demonstrate the exporting country’s criminal responsibility, but the law remains hard to interpret." The arms industry is not only part of a maximising profit system, but it is also an arm to protect partners and allies. In his 9th proposition of criticisms of capitalism in Envisioning Real Utopias , Erik Olin Wright states that capitalism "in a world of nationa states, fuels militarism an...

"In China today, what is now referred to as 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' looks a lot like plain old capitalism, in which the vast majority of people in the society work, and their labor is exploited by a tiny minority who own. Xi Jinping earned a PhD in Marxist ideology, and can therefore  speak loquaciously  commemorating Marx’s two hundredth birthday, but still say nothing of substance in regards to how China is actually run. The Western media still treats the country like the old bogeyman of Communist dictatorships, but the opposite is true: the country is a capitalist dictatorship. China reports lifting 750 million people out of poverty, and there is no denying that living standards have increased significantly since 1949. Despite this, inequality is massive..." Indeed. How odd the word socialism is in "socialism with Chinese characteristics"! The Chinese Revolution at Seventy

"The challenge these mega-infrastructure projects present is that they are often pursued in lieu of projects that would bring tangible economic improvements and raise the standard of living of the average Egyptian." Al-Sisi's vanity projects

The Plight of Syrian Refugees in Turkey

"It marks a betrayal of Washington's Kurdish allies, a betrayal that many other countries in the region will note with alarm," and " a stab in the back ." No, it is neither a betrayal nor a stab in the back. It has been a consistent U.S. geo-strategic policy for decades. The Kurds were used before and they are used now. It is not about Trump; despite differences, Turkey is a NATO ally.

"When pollsters asked the British public what share of Labour members faced complaints of antisemitism, the average guess was 34 percent — over three hundred times the real total. With media insistent that Labour is “riddled with antisemitism,” Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to fight it have done nothing to placate his critics." The corporate media is one of the pillars of the capitalist state apparatus. How Labour Became "Antisemitic"

Know your history The question is: why is not that history taught at school in a country that calls itself "free" and "democratic"? That applies to other countries, too, whether French, British, Belgian ... colonial history, Islamic slave trade history, or Japanese and Chinese history, and modern American imperialist history. "It's no surprise that it's still possible to avoid a complete history in favour of a prettier picture of the antebellum South throughout Charleston.

A fascinating story that could make a plot of a novel British soldiers, fresh from fighting Argentina’s fascist junta in the Falklands, were now being asked to help another Latin American military dictatorship eliminate its own opposition activists, by cutting off their arms supply. And incredibly, at some point on the afternoon of Monday 11 April 1983, the British and Belizean authorities agreed to do it. Death of a double agent: British torture and betrayal in 1980s Belize

" The new wave of protests that erupted early this week in Baghdad, in which protesters are demanding dignity, jobs and services, has spread to other southern cities including Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah. It has escalated quickly and now includes calls for the 'fall of the regime'." It is interesting to notice another counter-sectarianism evidence. The majority of Iraq's population is Shi'a and the protests are taking place in Shi'a-dominated cities, with anti-Iranian slogans raised and the Iranian flag burnt. When the first Arab uprising erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, one the dominant slogans was: "Jobs are a right you band of thieves." Then came "the people want the overthrow of the regime." The socio-economic revolution in the MENA region is yet to come. And in the absence of radicalism, leadership and strategy, it is going to a be a long and protracted process that the counter-revolutionary forces, i...

Fake tolerance, repression of individual freedoms in the name of a new definition of secularism What makes someone –a white person– in a country originally founded as a settler colonial state identify themselves as "Canadian" and regards a Sikh or a Muslim citizen not "Canadian" ? Canada became a sovereign state less than 100 years ago. Its name is indigenous to some of the people who had inhabited the land.

iPhone workers today are 25 times more exploited than textile workers of 19th century England I do not agree with the authors, who are using a Marxist analysis, on calling Eeastern European countries before 1990 'socialist'. Their labbelling throws dust in readers' eyes.  If those countries were socialist, what do today's socialists are fighting for then? And if those countries were socialist, it is more of an argument for the defenders of capitalism: "if that was socialism, we don't want it." The Rate of Exploitation (The Case of the iPhone) Related: "Sucking up"  (Apple's app and Hong Kong protests)