Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

No surprise here. The same UK regime that is complicit in mass crime knights an Egyptian capitalist. The latest example of the intimate relations between the metropole bourgeoisie and the ‘comprador’ one . Colour, religion and nationality are irrelevant. Being part of a dictatorship, repression and oppression is also irrelevant.

The Intercept:  The Defense Department blew the deadline for a mandatory briefing to Congress on coups by U.S.-trained African military officers . Related The school of Latin America’s dictators The War on Democracy documentary

In the sixth economy in the world On minimum wage Neglected and exploited Foreign nurses

The treatment of Palestinian women, in particular the rapes and sexual aggression which they have endured since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

The BBC has began to filter less because the corporation cannot ignore what international organisation report. Albanese had been accused of ‘antisemitism’ in 2014. “Ms Albanese's choice of a title for it: 'Anatomy of a Genocide' was not exactly diplomatic. Many member states, especially those traditionally supportive of Israel, will be uncomfortable.  But UN special rapporteurs, while tasked by the UN to examine and advise on specific situations, are independent of it.  Genocide is a specific legal term, and Ms Albanese's report suggests some of the legal criteria have been fulfilled.  She cites what she says appears to be Israel's intention to destroy Palestinians as a group ‘in whole or in part’, a key clause in the Convention against Genocide. She mentions in particular three elements which point to possible genocide:  Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of lif...

“Bonapartism has reemerged stronger than before. In Macron it assumes a classic form. The right of the Rassemblement National and the left of La France insoumise (the ‘extremes’, in the parlance of the quality press) balance one another, while the radical centre – the  bourgeois bloc  anatomized by Serge Halimi – is free to pursue its own interests, while also claiming to protect the dignity of the nation, wider humanity and now the ecosphere itself. A remarkable political formula, as [Gaetano] Mosca would have put it.” A bonapartist solution

It is not Europe but some of Europe. “In essence, the EU and major member states have thrown their lot in with one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the Middle East, standing firmly against the democratic aspirations of Egyptians. This policy has garnered mass profits for European corporations and states , at the expense of the Egyptian poor and middle classes.” Related A window into Egyptian general’s past

"Beyond the grandiose tirades and pontificating final statements, each ‘urgent’ meeting ratifies only the league’s inaction. It is too tempting to picture this assembly (excellencies, corpulencies, marshal-presidents, rebels-turned-honourables, men elected in dubious landslides or by the slimmest of margins) at its large round table, conversing with furrowed brows before condemning Israel’s depiction of the war as ‘self-defence’ and demanding, of course, that the country ‘immediately abolish these brutal and inhumane measures’ (11 November 2023). And what else? Threats of a military response? Calls for international sanctions on Israel like those Russia faced after invading Ukraine? A motion supporting South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop Israel’s ethnic cleansing or even genocide in Gaza? A radical re-examination of the normalisation process and – why not? – severing of diplomatic ties? Cutting Gulf sovereign wealth fund investment in the US...

“Hungary is the only EU member state that  hasn’t  called on Israel to halt its planned ground offensive in Rafah. Orbán is one of the only leaders in the EU who has banned all Palestine-related demonstrations in his country since the Hamas attacks. In Hungarian liberal media, censorship regarding any criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people is akin to the  silencing of debate in Germany . Orbán’s foreign policy is shaped by his openness to the East — driven not by ideological affinities, or still less human rights issues, but by simple power politics. He is trying to balance positive diplomatic ties with such varied states as Azerbaijan, China, Qatar, Russia, and Turkey. The Hamas attack on October 7 put Orbán in a delicate situation in this sense. Naturally, he expressed his solidarity with the Israeli people and support for Netanyahu, but he has been rather silent ever since.” The “liberal opposition had a historic opportunity to confront the pri...

"You can call it ethnic cleansing . I repeat again, the Arabs do not want, normal Arabs do not want to live in Gaza. If you want to call it cleansing, if you want to call it apartheid, you choose your definition. I choose the way to protect the state of Israel." "We must do it. It's part of Israel area," he says. "This is the land that God gave us, and you couldn't go to God and tell him, 'OK you gave me, and I gave to other people.' No. I believe in the end we will go back to Gaza." When God was an estate agent!

Waiting for a good piece on the concert attack in Russia. A quick thought: If IS did carry out the attack, was it because it hated the ‘Russian way of life’ and ‘Russian values’? Russia is not run by a ‘Shi’a’ regime and ISIS-K has been killing ‘Sunnis’ in Afghanistan – bombing even mosques. Some liberal sometime provide clues : “ Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based Wilson Center said ISIS-K ‘sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims’. He added that the group also counts as members a number of Central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow.” Think Afghanistan. Think Chechnya. Think Syria …and Russian involvement in other countries. Think Wagner.

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. The partisans of reform and betterment will always be fooled by the defenders of the old régime, until they understand that every old institution, no matter how savage and rotten it may seem, is sustained by the forces of this or that dominant class or classes. And there is only one way to break the resistance of these classes, namely, to find in the very society surrounding us, to find and educate and organize for the struggle, those forces which can – and owing to their social situation must – form a power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new.   — V. L Lenin, March 1913

“Two researchers from Stanford University, Vasiliki Fouka and Aala Abdelgadir, documented and analysed the ban's consequences in 2019. They found that the ban hurt Muslim girls' ability to complete their education and obstructed their access to the labour market. It doubled the gap between the percentage of non-Muslim and Muslim girls completing their secondary education in favour of the former.” Like hypocrisy, double-standard, complicity, racism, commodification, etc, the ban on the headscarf has been normalised . Related The law on theheadscarf The imaginary separatism of salafist women

Jews and the Western elites

Vital services or financial ruin?

Speaking over the radio from Cairo, Ben Barka issued a rousing declaration, denouncing the Moroccan government’s ‘grave treason, not only to the dynamic Algerian Revolution, but, in general, to all Arab revolutions in favor of liberty, socialism, and unity, and to the world national liberation movement in its entirety.’ He  called instead  for Moroccans to paralyze ‘the criminal hands that have appropriated power and that are armed, financed, and led by the imperialists.’ His murder by agents of the Moroccan king with help from France and Israel was a major blow to socialist forces throughout the Arab world . Successive French presidents from De Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron have persistently obstructed justice in the name of  secret défense , a perfectly legal and very effective means of covering up state crimes. By the end of the following decade [1970s], Che Guevara, Henri Curiel, and Amílcar Cabral, key figures in the development of the tricontinental movement, had all be...

“Chomsky and his coauthors argue that machine learning  — the discipline behind generative AI and other powerful algorithms — will ‘degrade our science and debase our ethics by incorporating into our technology a fundamentally flawed conception of language and knowledge.’ Chomsky has been fighting against this particular conception since the 1950s, so it’s not a surprise that he thinks it’s problematic for it to be released commercially. It’s less clear that his particular blend of cognitive science and politics can truly account for what ChatGPT and similar systems are up to . A competing  op-ed  from the  Wall Street Journal  penned by now deceased Henry Kissinger — a generational Chomsky nemesis — and coauthors argued that ChatGPT was as important a step as the printing press, with similarly wide-ranging implications for policy, foreign and domestic, and the status of knowledge. In a weird way, Chomsky actually agrees with t...

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the 20th century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for [Arab, Indian and African peoples]. — Aimé Césaire  The bourgeoisie as a class and as an organized social force — one is not necessarily talking here about individuals — will always take the side of reaction against radical change under capitalism and will always stab the working class in th...

“Welcome to the wackier side of geoengineering - deliberately intervening in the Earth's climate system to try to counteract the damage we have done to it .” We? Historical responsibility for climate change is at the heart of debates over climate justice The fault of humanity? The 1% emit more than double of the poorest half of humanity Climate breakdown responsibility