Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

  Hoopoe selections

 What if liberal anti-racists aren’t advancing the cause of equality?

  How Western Australia’s ‘unofficial’ use of neck chains on indigenous people lasted 80 years 

£1 million a day is OK since he gives a lot of it away. His salary is 11000 times the median UK full-time salary. The liberal Guardian is happy not to include a single criticism. After all, it is a paper sponsored by the like of Bill Gates, another philanthropist whose salary is $100 million a day. A hedge fund manager is obviously, and by the divine design of the ‘free market’, is more important than necessary for society than a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a train driver, a road digger, or a cleaner. Without a hedge fund manger society would be thrown back into the stone age.  Tomorrow, when the next tube strike, for instance, is announced in defence of better working conditions and better salaries, the media and most of the public will denounce it as a work of the lunatic leftist trade union leaders. Sir Chris Hohn

A very interesting paper. Unfortunately, the author has done a disservice to socialism by calling China socialist. The Structural Roots of China’s Effectiveness Against Coronavirus Pandemic

  An Exploitative Care Model is Being Challenged

  How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror

Written 6 years ago. Some of the things U.S. and its allies did or threatened to do to Iran

“Murder turned into an act of self-defense, in which the regime and international community embarked on a selfish battle of describing the crime using terms such as  civil war , the two-party war and the conflict. Consequently, the main crime was cleared, not by prescription, but because of its description.” Murder, and the burden of proof

“ A new Oxfam report finds that the richest 1 percent of people alone are responsible for  double the emissions  of the poorest 50 percent of the global population. That means that even if the working class of the Global North took all the individual actions that are recommended or we forced poor people in the Global South to stop having kids, that still wouldn’t solve the problem.” The class aspect

Keep clapping. A corrupt incompetent regime insults health workers with a 1% pay rise Related A nurse fined £10,000 for protesting

  Gaddafi’s Libya Has Never Existed

  Some of the ‘disappeared’ women in Syria

From a magazine that supported the invasion of Iraq, supported Israel —and probably still does—and it is now ‘baptised’ as ‘progressive’. The question remains: it is not about individuals—individualising regimes is a prevalent narrative—but about an imperialist state that strives to maintain its hegemony through violence—among other means— in a changing world. In this particular case, I can do it and get away with it. An ally of mine, Israel, can do it and get away with it. New President, Same Old Forever War

  200 academics back lecturer under attack from ‘proud Zionists’

As the Swiss vote in a referendum on the niqab today, here is an insight from the UK. What is British Culture, Anyway?

  On Uprisings, Popular Protests, and Resistance

"The 923 million tonnes of food being wasted each year would fill 23 million 40-tonne trucks. Bumper-to-bumper, enough to circle the Earth seven times."  "Wasted food is responsible for 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions, so if food waste was a country, it would be the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet." “While millions of tonnes of food was thrown away, an estimated 690 million people were affected by hunger in 2019. That number is expected to rise sharply in the wake of the pandemic.” Source: the bbc

A good production. “The English have treated this country shamefully. And the rich—my father included have treated the poor worse. The worst slums in Europe, they say.” —Frances O’Flaherty - Frances: “My father says that socialism is the work of the devil.” - Elisabeth: “Sounds like mine. But if poverty is the work of God, I’m with the devil.” Rebellion  

A defeat of an imperialist state is always a good news. Macron’s signals military pullback from Sahel Related: “When they attack us in France, we say it’s Islam.” The arrogance of French imperialism vs. the pragmatism of the local regimes