Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The data on the impact of the decades-long embargo ranges from a ‘negligible’ effect to ‘an extreme’ one. “Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has passed a non-binding resolution every year, except for 2020, condemning the ongoing impact of the embargo and declaring it in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law. There was no voting on this issue in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Israel [surprise! surprise!] is the only country that routinely joins the U.S. in voting against the resolution…187 countries voted in favor of the resolution in 2023, with only the United States and Israel voting against it and Ukraine abstaining.”  ( Wikipedia )

“The [London] Metropolitan Police declined to comment.” “The cyber spying firm [NSO Group] has never been sanctioned in the U.K.” “[S]o far there have been no formal charges.” “In 2023, the management of five NSO-linked companies was moved to London and two U.K.-based officers were appointed.” “ [S]o far we have seen an absolute non-reaction”  [from the UK Government].

“Western powers usually legitimize military interventions in terms of a proclaimed commitment to some universalist norm or to some goal embodying such a norm. These declared goals can oscillate, but they  are important because a central element of their foreign policy, particularly when it involves starting a war, is maintaining the support of their domestic population. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, people like to think of themselves as the guardians and promoters, through their states, of the most civilized, humane, liberal and democratic values in the world. It is true that they have short attention spans and are generally far more ignorant of the world outside their borders than the populations of many other countries,  but at least the elected leaders of their states can run into domestic trouble if the declared norms and goals are not implemented or if implementation is carried through with such barbarity that they contradict other, more basic, norms and goals .”  —P...

Prophetic and timely Alain Badiou, June 1982 I don't much like to speak about the jewish question', as did Marx and Sartre, because the absolute atrocities the Nazis committed in the name of the 'final solution' have adversely rebounded on the very notion that there is a 'question' to which it would be appropriate to give a response. I might add that, on this issue, one ought to speak, absolutely, in one's own name, with one's own voice. As regards questions, I start from this: there are Jews. I do not ask why there are, nor where they come from, because such stories of origin and provenance are in themselves dubious. ‘Jews' is the name of our real, a glorious name of our history – especially of our philosophical, scientific, artistic and our revolutionary history. And I say this: Hitler proposed to eliminate Jews in their physicality. His will was completely criminal, including what of such a crime must remain hidden, clandestine. The Nazi administr...

“In 1986 the Economist reported that recent scandals had “raised doubts abroad that the City of London is the most honest place to do business”. Lord Roskill, the senior judge Margaret Thatcher’s government appointed to examine the state of fraud in the UK, agreed. ‘While petty frauds, clumsily committed, are likely to be detected and punished, it is all too likely that the largest and most cleverly executed crimes escape unpunished’, his commission reported.” That is in line with a Czech proverb: the big thieves hang the small ones. “The harder and more complex the investigations it [the Serious Fraud Office] takes on, the more it is fulfilling its mission – and the likelier it is to fail.” “Having ruled that the agency mistreated the Trio’s corporate empire [ENRC/Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation], a judge will now decide how much UK taxpayers’ money should be paid to the oligarchs’ company in damages. The SFO has set aside a quarter of a billion pounds.” “On 24 August 2023, 10 ...

It is a long article. “These students were not necessarily representative of the student body in Israel as a whole. They were activists in extreme rightwing organisations. But in many ways, what they were saying reflected a much more widespread sentiment in the country.” “Unlike the majority of Israelis, these young people had seen the destruction of Gaza with their own eyes. It seemed to me that they had not only internalised a particular view that has become commonplace in Israel – namely, that the destruction of Gaza as such was a legitimate response to 7 October – but had also developed a way of thinking that I had observed many years ago when studying the conduct, worldview and self-perception of German army soldiers in the second world war. Having internalised certain views of the enemy – the Bolsheviks as Untermenschen; Hamas as human animals – and of the wider population as less than human and undeserving of rights, soldiers observing or perpetrating atrocities tend to ascribe ...

An interview with Vanessa Wills, author of Marx’s Ethical Vision

 حوار مع فانيسا ويلز

Where can Palestinian visual and performing art go from here?   

  We declare  our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.          —Malcolm X said in a   rousing speech in 1964

“The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right.” “We are witnessing the transition from a government with authoritarian tendencies to a dictatorial regime.” “This is not a government ‘backed’ by the military, but, as Maduro himself has said, the government is led by a ‘civilian-military-police alliance’. “Those who continue to support Maduro, including parties and movements of the Sao Paulo Forum or the spokespersons of Podemos in Spain, are causing severe damage to the left in the region and the world. They are damaging anti-capitalist struggles in the broadest sense.” The US embargo is ‘in violation of international law’. This is a useless statement repeated a million times, and it has come back again during the ongoing Israel’s genocidal war. “[A]fter the failure of the current, self-defined “socialist” governments, Venezuelan society tends to associate any reference to socialism or the left with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Maduro governme...

Mark Curtis pays tribute to John Pilger Related   The War on Democracy documentary

It is “paramount to follow the energy supply chains from the point of extraction to their point of use in Israeli military vehicles.” “BP is responsible; BP is guilty. BP must be forced to stop supplying fuel to the genocidal Zionist entity. And while the supply chain for the BTC pipeline begins in Azerbaijan, all of BP’s business is supposedly carried out with the consent and support of the British public.” How an Israeli genocidal war is enabled  Related Anglo Arabia  by David Wearing, Polity 2018

Today’s Imperialist Clashes ‘Are Driven by Economic Rivalry’ A must read Unlike classical imperialism, write Costas Lapavitsas  the driving force of contemporary imperialism  “springs from this pairing of internationalized industrial with internationalized financial capital. Neither dominates the other and there is no fundamental clash between them. Jointly they comprise the most aggressive form of capital known to history.” And  this pairing of capitals  “thrives on unfettered access to global natural resources, cheap labor power, low taxation, loose environmental standards, and markets for its industrial, commercial, and financial components. The United States will obviously not submit to the challenge and draws on its vast military, political, and monetary power to protect its hegemony. That makes it the main threat to world peace.”  It implies there is now a world peace that is under threat. I don’t think there is world peace. “The socialist left must oppose...

“The Sahel – like the Horn, where the Gulf-led proxy war in Yemen is spilling over – is  at the centre of what some are calling the ‘new scramble for Africa ’.”  However, the recent events in Tinzaouaten suggest “that private military companies and militias are no panacea, and that after the failures of French stabilisation missions, they too will likely struggle to realise their interests in the region.”

 One among the rare ones

“[T]he vilification of migrants and Muslims forms part of a primitive persecutory phantasy, shaped by the UK’s colonial history and by its entrenched material disparities.” “[I]t would be more accurate to view contemporary British bordering as a continuation of colonial violence: an attempt to police the nation’s last frontier, so that the wealth and status gained from imperial conquest is preserved, materially and symbolically – and withheld from former colonial subjects.” This goes with the rhetoric of politicians who stress that UK needs migrants, but they have to be skilled ones and the country ‘legally’. They did not mind before – in fact encouraged – the hundreds of thousands of Polish and others, many of whom were unskilled, when British capital needed cheap labour. During the ‘great boom’ of capitalism in the 1959s and 1960s liberal democracy could thrive at home without the need to scapegoat the Other. On the contrary, many workers from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean were e...