Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

   عربي استعادته قبيلته مقابل تيس وآخر أبطل بالضحك صلاة هارون الرشيد

Killed only 25. What a mediocrity! A medieval prince would have killed a much higher number of ‘baddies’. Wasted tax payers money by the MoD. The British Army had “trained me to ‘other’ them, and they had trained me well” "We'd been given a meta-narrative, which we now recalled: We were a Christian army, fighting a militia sympathetic to Muslims ," he writes. With his tour in Iraq prematurely over, Harry turned to the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol, particularly Southern Comfort and sambuca, to deal "with unsorted anger, and guilt about not being at war - not leading my lads". Harry recalls telling his commander that unless he was sent back to a conflict area, he would "have to quit the army". Harry recalls wanting to use an almost one-tonne bomb on his first attempted air strike on a suspected Taliban position, which even his American counterparts saw as too much, something he jokingly thought as "very un-American".

 

To put it bluntly, I don’t think hope is a scientific category. And I don’t think that people fight or stay the course because of hope, I think people do it out of love and anger. Everybody always wants to know: Aren’t you hopeful? Don’t you believe in hope? To me, this is not a rational conversation. I try and write as honestly and realistically as I can. And you know, I see bad stuff. I see a city decaying from the bottom up. I see the landscapes that are so important to me as a Californian dying, irrevocably changed. I see fascism. I’m writing because I’m hoping the people who read it don’t need dollops of hope or good endings but are reading so that they’ll know what to fight, and fight even when the fight seems hopeless. — Mike Davis, Los Angeles Times, 2022

I would use the word "Russian imperialism" cautiously, though. The rest stands accurate in my view. Richard Seymour in 2015: An unabashed mobilisation of ancient colonial binaries, with Russian imperialism cast as the guardian of secular, modern, liberal civilization against a barbarian ISIS. Its author has stated the upshot of this perspective quite explicitly : "kill them all". Or, to put it another way, exterminate the brutes. One is reminded of peak Hitchens, and of the traditions of imperialist apologia that he more or less deliberately evoked. And one is impressed by how deep this goes in parts of the left. Of course, Russian imperialism is not defending secular liberalism; that's not how imperialism works. And its targets are demonstrably much broader than ISIS. Of course, the Assad dictatorship is much more steeped in blood than ISIS at this point. The colonial unconscious, even if it has no history, should be placed in historical context. In the afterma...

“The  most right-wing, religious fundamentalist government in Israel’s history”

Also available en Français The French obsession with the veil Related The Imaginary Separatism of Salafist Women

As they say in Iran, in order for the system to change, it would have to cut off the tree branch on which it has been sitting for more than 40 years. At the moment, it doesn’t seem possible .

Hacked phones, undercover cops, and conspiracy theory

En français, فارسي, italiano Related Pasolini and Israele – paradoxical modernities

To my belated discovery 

I wonder how I missed this excellent article on ‘sectarianism’ in the Middle East when it was published in 2017. It reminds me of at least a statement and a question by two English who did History at the London School of Economics. One said: “Now I understand why there are many conflicts in the Arab world. It is because there are many dialects.” The other asked me when the split between the Sunnis and Shi’a took place, implying that it is ‘a millennium-long conflict’.  Related Coexistence, sectarianism and racism – an interview with Ussama Makdisi Boundary making and sectarianisation in Syria 2011-2013 Making and unmaking of the greater Middle East

A crucial part of Europe’s history

Proceeds from this brutal labour enriched the Kingdom of the Netherlands and contributed to the "Golden Age", a period of economic prosperity in the 17th Century that saw the Netherlands witness huge advancements in science and culture.  In the western province of Holland alone, a Dutch Research Council study found 40% of economic growth between 1738 and 1780 could be attributed to slavery. The Netherlands has been accused of perpetuating and institutionalising racism. Approximately 70% of the African-Caribbean community in the Netherlands, which mostly consists of descendants of slaves, believe an apology is important. And yet in the broader population, almost half of the Dutch do not support an apology, while 38% do, according to an I&O Research poll. What built modern Holland

Source: The New Statesman  

Deception, disinformation and social media

Against amnesia While many cheer and clap in and for the World Cup and while some were outraged by the ‘banning’ of alcoholic in stadiums, let’s not forget the criminal role of Qatar and Qatar-based media and business entrepreneurs in the destruction of Syria.  “Rather than using ‘static categories’ (Fujii, 2009, p. 8), such as ‘sectarianism’ and ‘militarism’, I examined processes of ‘sectarianisation’ and ‘militarisation’ to adequately analyse dynamic socio-political phenomena. In dynamic settings (such as genocide, social movement, revolution, and civil war), static categories cannot fully capture actors' shifting relations, behaviours, discourses, perspectives, motives and identifications, nor can they capture the endogenous sources of changes.” Boundary making and sectarianisation in Syria 2011-2013

and a young family paid the price “ Unknown to the British public at that time, SAS operatives were already suspected at the highest levels of UK Special Forces of illegally killing Afghan men who had surrendered and been detained, and later covering up the killings with fabricated reports.” " Instead of getting to the bottom of what happened and correcting any criminal behaviour, SIRs [Serious Incident Reviews] became a way of cleansing an incident of any wrongdoing," a former senior Royal Military Police officer said. "Some senior officers were using SIRs as a tool to prevent scrutiny. It seemed they were deciding on non-referral and then writing the SIR to justify the decision." Related Australian elite troops killed Afghan civilians [for practice] Hunting Russians, Giving Pass to Americans The bombing killed more than 160 civilians

According to  the World Economic Fortum’s  Global Gender Gap Report 2020

Excerpts Political parties’ coercive activities make their support essential to doing business as their members maintain discipline in the factories. Pakistan’s textile industry, which employs 15 million people and contributes 8.5% of its GDP, has emerged stronger from the [pandemic] crisis; foreign sales, which represent more than 60% of Pakistan’s total exports, broke all records in 2021-22 ($19bn). Pakistan’s brand of industrial capitalism is likely to mount a strong immune response to any trouble ahead. Its ability to overcome crises throughout its history is not just down to its adaptability or even state subsidies. It’s mainly due to an extensive repressive apparatus, and civil and military authorities’ tolerance of employers’ illegal practices. [In the textile sector] ‘modernisation’ includes the feminisation of the workforce, which for cultural reasons is less advanced than in other Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.  Pakistani women, supposedly ‘more c...