Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

'International law' and 'democractic order' ?  A contnious and deliberate denial of history by journalists.

One name, many lives

There have been a few praises and critiques of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I have recently got across an. interesting one. Piketty, write Gareth Jones, “says relatively little about where capital is located, how capital accumulation in one place relies on activities elsewhere, how capital is urbanized with advanced capitalism and what life is like in spaces without capital.” In reading Capital “ I was struck by the attention to the rich, to those with wealth and their distance from the mean of incomes and wealth/capital, and how little analysis is given to the poor.” A geographical essay   (or through a gmail account ) Related I prefer Lordon’s dissection though. “Thomas Piketty’s thousand-page economics bestseller reduces capital to mere wealth — leaving out its  political impact on social and economic relationships throughout history .”

 ساحة حرب خفية واغتيالات تطال كافة الجهات المنخرطة في الصراع

In Gallup’s latest surveys of Ukraine , conducted in August and October 2024, an average of 52% of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible.

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please. —Hannah Arendt, an interview with Roger Errera, 1974

Insufficient housing, an eroded social sector and diminished state support made tens of thousands destitute .

I do not find the article helpful , especially that it is by a self-proclaimed revolution leftist magazine. On one hand it spreads illusion, for we all know that Netanyahu can easily stay in Israel with US protection or seek refuge in the US in the worst case scenario. He is not Milosevic.  That it is not even mentioned in the article. On the other hand, appealing to the British ‘government’ is a passive call. It reinforces the idea that we should have faith in the very same British regime that has helped create the state of Israel, supported it for decades and complicit in wars and invasions, regardless whether Labour or Conservative are in government.

How much of the war in Ukraine or the one on Gaza will be known in the future? Looking at the example of ‘ Algeria in the Archives ’ or the British empire, can inform us that information and records could be buried for decades. What we know now is just some of what is happening. The article is behind a paywall unless one has an institution subscription, for example, with NLR.

No news here, but a norm France’s double standard

 “The western world, structured by centuries of colonisation and the notion of ‘inferior races’, including Arabs and Muslims, was always favourable towards … falsehoods.  “Israel has always been the West’s main proxy to weaken and bully Arab states and populations. It is the West’s primary attack dog in the Middle East.  “Indeed, this horrible massacre of Palestinians is not being accomplished by Israel alone, but by an axis of genocide . Western media have done a good job of concealing the responsibility of western countries in what will probably be the first true enterprise of mass extermination of a people in the 21st century.” Yet Gabon implicitly appeals to the West to use an embargo and other tools to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians instead of appealing to the Arabs who rose up in 2011 and 2019 to topple the rotten regimes that enable Israel and the West to carry on with their crimes.  According to this argument, when states commit mass violence...

A good piece. “Trumpism, despite what its hyperbolic opponents say, is not a subversion of the constitutional order. Like Japanism, it is a continuation of liberalism that uses forms of restorationism to redefine the country’s mission, promising to rebuild collective bonds by reinstating traditional social hierarchies. Unlike Japanism, though, it will struggle to reshape the state in its image or create anything resembling a new national order. Its ideological appeal does not necessarily translate to institutional power.”  Related Tosaka Jun’s book

Just another news item A survey says over 61,000 people are estimated to have died in  Khartoum  state during the first 14 months of  Sudan's war.

The main task of imperialism in our time is to prevent, or, if that is impossible, to slow down and control the economic development of underdeveloped countries.  While there have been vast differences among underdeveloped countries. The underdeveloped world as a whole has continually shipped a large part of its economic surplus to more advanced countries on account of interest and dividends. The worst of it is, however, that it is very difficult to say what has been the greater evil as far as the economic development of underdeveloped countries is concerned: the removal of their economic surplus by foreign capital or its reinvestment by foreign enterprise. — Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 1957

 A Short Guide to Marx’s Capital   in 150 pages A book by Colin Chalmers

David Lay Williams’s contribution “inverts the common conservative argument that arguing against economic inequality is somehow contrary to the thrust of classical Western thought. If anything, it’s the casual and lazy dismissal of concerns with economic inequality that constitute an intellectual deviation and decline from the norm.” Note how a universal topic like economic inequality does not include non-Western thinkers from China to India, from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa. Williams just restricted his research to Western European thinkers. The reviewer himself mentioned a couple of non-white intellectuals and activists, but not a single non-Westerner came to his mind.

‘ Houthi Hunting Club. Red Sea 2023-2024’

“The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing .”

A retired NHS surgeon returns from Gaza with a testimony

Dr Dayah’s fatwa, which was published in a detailed six-page document, criticises Hamas for what he calls “violating Islamic principles governing jihad”. There are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it  [sic].           —Aziz Al-Azmeh,  Islams and Modernities