Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The five most important charts from the   Panama Papers leaks:   Britain operates as the world's biggest  launderer of hidden incomes.

"Panama Papers" are the tip of the ice-berg. One can just imagine the whole size of the ice-berg itself.  However, let's not be distracted. Let's be tolerant. This is part of our way of life that many oppose. Our immedite enemy is that immigrant next door, that Muslim refugee at the gate, that unemployed on benefits, that greedy British teacher or junior doctor on strike, that French worker on the street. We have tolerated the banks plunder, the wars and occupations, the actions of our allies. Let's focus on Putin, but tolerate the Russian oligarchs in our midst. Let's comdemn the Turkish authoritarian measures or the Chinese dictatoship for the public consumption or the Saudi theocracy, but do business with all of them. It is the best of all possible worlds. We are still a "democracy" and we are "civilised". After all, look at how others are killing each other or treating women. Their conditions are certainly unrelated to how the ci

" Islamic fundamentalism is a temporary, transitory movement, but it can last another 30 or 50 years -- I don’t know how long. Where fundamentalism isn’t in power it will continue to be an ideal, as long as the basic frustration and discontent persist that lead people to take extreme positions. You need long experience with clericalism to finally get fed up with it -- look how much time it took in Europe! Islamic fundamentalists will continue to dominate the period for a long time to come." – Maxime Rodinson on Islamic "Fundamentalism"  (in an interview in 1986)

The culturalization of social antagonisms Anti-Muslim Racism from Above and From Below The 'Taharrush' Connection: Xenophobia, Islamophobia,  and Sexual Violence in Germany and Beyond

Charlie Hebdo criticised for calling Brussels attacks tip of Islam 'iceberg' “Such categorization of an entire community as an insidious poison is a move we have seen before.” See also Charlie Hebdo is Sadism, not Satire Shlomo Sand: 'I am not Charlie' The Red Flag and the Tricolore Le Rouge et le Tricolore

Canada-Saudi Arabia: Once again, we see the triumph of profit

Trumpism without Trump I think Stratfor here underestimates "the syndrom". The cyclical crises of capitalism spawn or strenthen reactionary forces and afftecs social classes and strata in different ways. "The syndrom", history tells us, can be temporary, but it can also be a persistent mass movement.

A Photographic Journey Through One of India’s Largest Coal Mines

Bulgaria's vigilante migrant 'hunter' "Fear of migrants has become a powerful focal point for popular discontent about many unrelated problems, according to Haralan Alexandrov a social anthropologist at the New Bulgarian University, who says Bulgarians are no more or less xenophobic than any other Europeans. Corruption, poverty, disappointment with EU membership, Bulgaria's dysfunctional judicial system and the failure to reform it - all these make Bulgarians angry, he says. 'Instead of focusing your anger against the powerful judiciary, it's easier to attack the terrified refugees hiding in the weeds. You sense that something is wrong with the world and somebody must be blamed, so you choose the weaker target,' he explains. There is also historical trauma. Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire for some 500 years until 1878, and nationalist propaganda has programmed Bulgarians to view every representative of the Islamic world as a potentia

The Nazi Who Became a Mossad Hitman