Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A very good approach. Semitism and Islamophobia as parallel manifestations of contemporary racism

Teetering on the brink of economic collapse

Strikes, civil disobedience and blockades

A déjà-vu? Many Afghans, and some foreign analysts, believe Isis-K is being supported by foreign forces, such as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI wants leverage to persuade the Taliban to co-operate in suppressing Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a jihadist insurgency that has targeted the Pakistan government. Others suspect US intelligence agencies, anti-Taliban warlords and even former members of the Afghan army of collaborating with Isis-K. “We know there are intelligence agencies and networks supporting Isis-K to challenge and create problems for the Taliban government,” Haqpal said. In India, government and intelligence officials have suggested that inter-Taliban rivalry — between the Haqqani network and a powerful Kandahar faction led by Mullah Baradar, the deputy prime minister — is stoking the violence. “There is clear factionalism in the Taliban,” an Indian intelligence source said. “It is possible that one faction is supporting the Isis-K to wipe out the dominance o...

This  article requires individual or institutional subscription. Here is an excerpt: “ The West’s focus on armed violence gets in the way of understanding the phenomena of radicalisation and the commission of acts in its name. It presupposes a continuum between religious radicalisation, proclamation of jihad and international terrorism, as though going from the first to the third stage were inevitable, and conversely, as though international terrorism   created   local jihadism. Such reasoning leads to any reference to sharia law and any call for holy war being read as a precursor to global attacks. In this view, Islamist movements’ supposed proximity to terrorism is the sole criterion for determining western policy towards them. This proximity is defined on a scale of intensity that measures references to religion as much as — if not more than — actual acts of violence: the more Islamist groups mention sharia and the more they challenge the policies of the great powers,...

“The Tunisian media regulator has shut down Nesma TV and religious station Quran radio for failing to provide a full broadcasting licence.   The two stations are known to be critical of President Kais Saied after his decision to suspend parliament in July.  Nesma TV is owned by former presidential candidate and media mogul Nabil Karoui who has been jailed in Algeria after fleeing Tunisia.  Meanwhile Quran radio is owned by opposition MP Said Jaziri. Earlier this month the authorities shut down Zitouna TV which is known to be close to Enahdha - an influential political party which is openly critical of Mr Saied. Zitouna’s TV host, Amer Ayad, had also been arrested and jailed for reading a poem about dictators on air.” Source: the BBC

A visual history

1. A saying attributed to Saint-Juste:  “ Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs.“ What applies to Egypt and Syrian, applies to Sudan.  2. The call by two Sudanese trade unions for a general strike must be supported. 3. The general strike must go beyond stopping the economic machine and challenging the military; it must create organs of power. A crucial revolutionary action the revolting Sudanese did not create two years ago. 4. The compromise with the military was a plunder. 5. No trust in the foreign powers that call for the release of “the civilian leaders.” They are for a compromise and ‘peaceful’ arrangement. They are the same powers supporting the Egyptian dictatorship and supported the recent coup in Bolivia. The same powers that talk about ‘civilian rule”, send the IMF and the World Bank to prolong the life of the current regimes and perpetuate the conditions that breed social conflicts, uprisings, migration, etc. My comment from July 2...

Imagine for a second the reverse: the troops are chasing animals on the beach. What would the reaction of the ‘civilised’ world be?

Reactionary intellectual class

Trenchant! The book’s  most passionate following in the metropolitan countries is within those sectors of the university intelligentsia which either originate in the ethnic minorities or affiliate themselves ideologically with the academic sections of those minorities. . . . These [immigrants] who came as graduate students and then joined the faculties, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, tended to come from upper classes in their home countries. In the process of relocating themselves in the metropolitan countries they needed documents of their assertion, proof that they had always been oppressed.... What the upwardly mobile professionals in this new immigration needed were narratives of oppression that would get them preferential treatment, reserved jobs, higher salaries in the social position they already occupied: namely, as middle-class professionals, mostly male. For such purposes,  Orientalism  was the perfect narrative. Aijaz Ahmad, Orientalism and A...

Degrowth economics

Every Thai foreign worker has been sexually abused

Is the world poor, or unjust?

A lot has been written about the film The Battle of Algiers. This article not only does not answer its own question, but it erases the struggle of the Algerians and the Arabs in general since 2010-11.  “What relevance does The Battle of Algiers hold today, 55 years after it was first released?” When we speak about the film’s relevance today, we speak about Black Lives Matter and Occupy? How appalling! Naomi Joseph has ignored the Arab uprisings of 2010/11 and 2019. The latter year is of the Algerian uprising. How does the movie relate to neo-colonialism as contrasted to colonialism?  Is France today a neo-colonial power in Algeria, in the Sahel, and other places?  Is there anything uttered by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, relevant and echos what is in the film? Do the reactions of the French ruling class, the media, the intelligentsia, and a large section of the population in the aftermath of the violent attacks in France in 2015 and afterwards reveal a continui...

"واقفون في أحذيتنا" كأننا أشباح ـ 1 ـ  مازال اللصوص  هنا بيننا "ينظمون عملية موتنا بالمجان" ـ 2 ـ  كل الأحداث أصبحت بصورة ما عابرة ومؤقتة ولا قيمة لها في وعيينا ولا ينتظرها منا غير النسيان  كل شيء أصبح  قابلا للنسيان  لقد تعودنا على النسيان أقوالنا مواقفنا مبادئنا أحلامنا  لقد صرنا نَمُرُّ على كل شيء مرور الكرام وكأننا لسنا هنا وكأن الأمور كلها لا تعنينا  لقد صرنا نمر على مآسينا كما أنها لم تقع ... نمر على مشاكلنا كأنها لم تعد ترافقنا أينما توجهنا نمر على الحاضر وكأنه ليس حاضرنا  نمر على جراحنا ونشيح النظر عنها ونسد أنوفنا عن عفونتها التي ترافقنا وتنتشر أينما حللنا نمر حتى على موتنا ونتناسى  لقد صرنا ننسى ولا نبالي  لقد صرنا نتوهم أننا هنا والآن ونحيا  كم صرنا نَدَعُ الأمور للمجهول  كم صرنا نستوطن المجهول والعجز واللامبالاة فينا لقد صار كل شيء فينا لا يشبه سوى الموت والعدم  كل شيء من حولنا يتحرك يتململ يكسر القشرة  الطبيعة تتغير فصولُها السماء تُمْطِرُ الأرض تُغَيِّرُ  قِشْرَتَها الأشجارُ تُثْمِرُ الطيور تُه...

I like this movie albeit not all of is based on real events. A VPN is recommended before accessing the site.

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries— the realists of a larger reality . Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art.  We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.  … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. ...  The name of our beautiful reward is ...

The problem goes back to before the pandemic. 80 million household struggle to stay warm

Welcome to Britain!