Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

On the silencing of Trump by tech giants. “Ms Merkel said through her spokesman that the US government should follow Germany’s lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.” FT It is also the same German government that attacks those who criticise Israel. Example: the BDS movement in Germany. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire told France Inter on Monday that he was “shocked” by Twitter’s move. He added: “Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary.” FT France and free speech? No comment. One has only to look at the recent events in the country. John Naughton in Opinion section on the Guardian opined that the silencing of Trump highlights “the authoritarian power of tech giants.” Yes, Mr, Naughton, but you cannot control what you don’t own.  ...

The rise and fall of a sex cult leader

“Since nearly all independent Arab films rely on European capital for finance, productions are usually shaped by what the west expects the Arab world to be, and are ultimately evaluated by western critics with little to no knowledge of the region.” How the ‘Arab Spring’ changed cinema

 Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity

He was 98 percent right in what he said 10 months ago.

“Good to see chickens return to the roost. For a decade or more the US has made a practice of claiming that any election where an anti-US president wins the election was fraudulent. The colour revolution scenario is then supposed to go from demonstrations to storming the assembly. We saw this in Ukraine, Bolivia, Venezuela. Biden and the US establishment had no compunction at cheering on those who invaded the Assembly in Ukraine, had no compunction in hailing losers as winners in Venezuela and Bolivia. But if you practice that abroad, do not be surprised if it comes home.” —Paul Cockshott “ Given the United States’ long heritage of imperial control of much of the planet’s wealth, ecological destruction and political decisions, Wednesday’s mobs at the Capitol building should hardly come as a surprise to Americans on the left or the right. In recent history, Americans have shown little resistance to the imperial efforts of the US abroad—from the wars in Korea to Vietnam to Iraq and Afgha...

  “ Syria has tended to be analysed through the prism of Western security studies, with its emphasis on Middle Eastern terrorism, or the geopolitics of imperialism. This article, however, looks at events from a grassroots social movements perspective, homing in on revolutionary self-organisation and the impact of Western aid on it. Asad’s counter-revolution has resulted in the largest ever United Nations aid operation, estimated at $30 billion, alongside aid provided bilaterally by the United States, the UK, France and others. Since the 1980s, aid has been channelled increasingly through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) rather than ­transferred directly to states. Academics use the term “NGOisation” to understand the consequences of this “aid chain” of states, international NGOs (INGOs), diaspora NGOs and local NGOs, in particular the incorporation of autonomous grassroots organisations into the official aid system.  We recognise that humanitarian assistance from the Gulf...

 خمس سنوات بعد إطاحة طاغية تونس الحركات الاجتماعية تمهد لثورة جديدة

 The Persistence of Orientalism: Anglo-American Historians and Modern Egypt

From an old article I have selected some points that are still relevant today after 10 years of the beginning of the Tunisian ‘revolution’. In fact, the situation today is worse than in 2014. None of the social aspirations that sparked its December 2010 uprising have been fulfilled. Was bringing the Islamists into the political fold a gamble that paid off? Yes for those who maintained that their coming to power would not be irreversible. Yes also for their enemies, who predicted that once they were in power, they would reveal their obsession with identity and religion, and the limitations of their economic and social policy. “With [the Islamists] we are pre-Adam Smith and David Ricardo,” Hamma Hammami, spokesman for the leftwing Popular Front, told me. ‘The Muslim Brothers’ political economy is a rent-based economy; it’s about parallel trade. It isn’t about production, or wealth creation; it isn’t about agriculture, industry or infrastructure; and it isn’t about reorganising educat...

In one of the richest cities on earth. This was already going on a few years before the pandemic. “In recent years, food bank usage in the UK has risen sharply following 10 years of government austerity measures, welfare reforms and a widening gulf between earnings and living costs. With the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, which has further exacerbated existing inequalities, food banks across the UK are struggling to meet demand.” A day in the life of a London food bank

The brothers who terrorised a Libyan town Related The Western powers that helped destroy Libya A 2013 paper by Alan Kuperman argued that NATO went beyond its remit of providing protection for civilians and instead supported the rebels by engaging in regime change. It argued that NATO's intervention likely extended the length (and thus damage) of the civil war, which Kuperman argued could have ended in less than two months without NATO intervention. The paper argued that the intervention was based on a misperception of the danger Gadaffi's forces posed to the civilian population, which Kuperman suggests was caused by existing bias against Gadaffi due to his past actions (such as support for terrorism), sloppy and sensationalistic journalism during the early stages of the war and propaganda from anti-government forces. Kuperman suggests that this demonization of Gadaffi, which was used to justify the intervention, ended up discouraging efforts to accept a ceasefire and negotiated...

  How to defeat Trumpism Related A far-right movement that outlasts Trump

 The joy for being an absolute beginner—for life

I think the part about ‘scarcity of water’ is misleading. How our precarious climate shaped the Arab spring Related Water in the Middle East

 How a tale of murderous class warfare parallels US politics

  University College London apologises for role in promoting eugenics

“ The American media have largely echoed this language. The storming of the Capitol, we were told, was something that happened in a ‘banana republic’, not in America. (No mention of the fact that the ‘banana republics’ of Latin America were corrupt and authoritarian in part thanks to American meddling.) The presence of raucous, overwhelmingly white militants armed with guns stirred comparisons with Nazi Germany, Afghanistan and Syria, as if the many available and suitable comparisons from American history had been declared off-limits, threats to our amour propre. What to call the mob provoked a great discussion – ‘protesters’? ‘dissidents’? ‘insurrectionists’? – until, finally, much of the liberal press settled on describing them as ‘terrorists’, the word we reserve for all that is evil and un-American, and usually Middle Eastern. The use of the T-word represented a belated recognition of how dangerous a threat the far right has become. But it was also a consoling flight from realities...

 It gives feminism a bad name

‘Due to travel restrictions the United States is forced to organise a coup at home this year.’ —Andrew Burgin In 2000 they were telling us how by 2020 globalisation would deliver new types of cars, planes, etc and prosperity for all. We ended up learning how to wash our hands. —N. M.