Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We must never forget. We must never forgive. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”  —American historian Howard Zinn Ethnic Cleansing , Settler Colonialism and Apartheid My interview with Ilan Pappe  (audio) The book is available in English    and in   Arabic 

We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful body; they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends.—attributed to Albert Einstein It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. — attributed to Voltaire   

Dogs life is long. —a Tunisian proverb “If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, then Henry Kissinger is the ghoul haunting its hallways. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. And breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs. This newly-released book , published in partnership with  Jacobin , follows Kissinger’s fiery trajectory around the world—not because he was evil incarnate, but because he, more than any other public figure, illustrates the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless war-making that still plagues us today.”

Fall in line, be ‘a liberal free-marketeer’ and open your country to our capital. If we don’t invade you, we make sure we kill you slowly. “Cubans have lived under a US economic embargo since 1962. Now, following a disastrous currency reform, inflation is spiralling, food and medicines are in short supply, and the black market is rampant. Food scarcity drives prices up: queueing for vegetables, Havana, 31 March 2023.  Adalberto Roque · AFP · Getty After a period of relaxation during Barack Obama’s second term (2013-17), Donald Trump brought in 243 new sanctions. In 2019 alone, 54 ship owners and 27 companies were fined for carrying fuel to Cuba.  That same year, the US Treasury Department sanctioned 34 vessels operated by the companies Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Ballito Bay Shipping (headquartered in Liberia) and Proper In Management (registered in Greece). Trump expanded the embargo, enabling individuals and companies to be prosecuted for investing in former American com...

Ronaldo earns $136 million a year / about 11 million a month. 5,500 years ago: (3600 to 3500 BC): Uruk period in Sumer. First evidence of mummification in Egypt . If the first Mummy had been earning $32,000/month since his/her mummification – without spending a penny – he/she would have to live 4250 years to earn Ronaldo’s annual income. “There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” —Walter Benjamin

One of the men who has made America great. One of the architects of American imperialist adventures.  A diplomat responsible for millions of deaths Related Does Kissinger require rehabilitation? Henry Kissinger in the Middle East How One Man Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Crisis in the Middle East

My highlights – and my emphasis – from the article : “Hamas’s operation Al-Aqsa Flood of 7 October has given Israel’s far right, which dominates the government Binyamin Netanyahu formed in late 2022, the ideal opportunity to implement their plan for a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank and Gaza, in other words, the whole of British Mandate Palestine .” “ The political-ideological lineage of the Likud party … can be traced back to a fascist-inspired strain of ‘revisionist Zionism’ which emerged in the interwar period.” Annexing the occupied territories after 1967 and granting their inhabitants Israeli citizenship would have endangered Israel’s Jewishness; annexing them  without  granting such a right would have undermined its democracy (an ‘ethnic democracy’, according to Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha) by formalising apartheid. Likud opposed this plan and kept pushing for the annexation of the two newly occupied territories and their complete colonisation, not limit...

Listening to Losurdo speaking about Saint Domingue, Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, I can see how what he says applies to the Palestinian struggle today against colonial rule.  

“Liberalism’s  dogged insistence on nonviolence  and other manifestations of bourgeois respectability further falsely render antifascist self-defense and anti-colonial rebellion indistinguishable from fascist and imperialist belligerence, implicitly (or explicitly) condoning the state and para-state violence that typifies the latter.”

“What Foucault and many intellectuals  at the time  were struggling against  was not only socialism abroad, but also a certain kind of socialism and its legacy in France. More fundamentally,  after 1968, it is the very notion and entire conceptual structure of revolution  that Foucault would reject.” “In May 1975, Michel Foucault took LSD in the desert in southern California. He described it as the most important event of his life, one which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. His focus now would not be on power relations but on the experiments of subjectivity and the care of the self” The Last Man Takes LSD Michel Foucault Related Foucault and neoliberalism:  “Do Not Ask me Who I am”

A wide-raging conversation with an esteemed historian Photo illustration: Elise Swain/The Intercept

«Il suffit de décréter qu’un terme employé par celui qu’on a condamné d’avance renvoie à une association d’idée antisémite .»

“It is fair to assume that the different fractions of the ruling class in a country sometimes have diverging, even opposing interests. But if the country is the empire that dominates the world, on one point at least the ruling classes will agree: they do not want to see the basis of their power (i.e., the nation-empire) weakened. Those who have power intend, at a minimum, to maintain it, if not consolidate or expand it. So it is reasonable to infer that the conflicting interests between the various fractions manifest themselves in different strategies for ruling the world, in different conceptions of empire. “ Despite all his bombastic proclamations, Trump has not started any wars. Under Biden we are already on the second.” Elective affinities

“My examination of the limitations of the racial binary of black vs. white as an analytical category to address the racialization of migrants in the North African context allows for a more nuanced approach to racial categorizations—one that challenges these simplified binaries without erasing the psychic violence of racial labeling or the historical stigmatization of blackness produced by the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and the project of nation-building. This approach is necessary to challenge the construction of migrants as the ‘racial other’ and to support their human right to mobility and belonging.” Contemporary notions of race in Morocco A photo by Chermiti Mohamed

SAS soldiers claimed to have executed handcuffed detainees in Afghanistan Related Australian elite troops killed Afghan civilians [for practice] How a British raid went wrong Source: thetimes.co.uk

Indiscriminate airstrikes have been a U.S. hallmark from the “banana wars” to the forever wars. Related Legacy of Violence My Lai 1968 Source: britannica.com

Really existing capitalism “The ultimate objective is not only to demolish Hamas and/or exclude Palestinians from their homeland, but to confiscate Gaza's multi-billion-dollar gas resources .” Source: MEE

Similar to the previous propaganda and disinformation by Western propagandists such the one about ‘Islam’, ‘reforming Islam’, etc., Western propagandists have continued to wage another battle of disinformation – the one against the Palestinian resistance. “ Here are the top 10 propaganda points western media were pushing on behalf of their favourite settler-colony”

Massacres in Ardamata From MEE: Fighters from a Rapid Support Forces unit stand on their vehicles during a rally, in Mayo district, south of Khartoum, on 29 June (AP)