Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"The coming together of Qatar, Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and its allies, showed that coalitions now forming to compete with each other are not strictly based on the Shi’a-Sunni divide.  The alliances currently confronting each other are fighting over the control of the region, its capital,  and aim  to repress any movements for social justice." The threat of wider wars in the Middle East

"Take a step or two further back in the production process, and the picture gets bleaker still. To function at all, the smartphone—like all electronic devices—requires raw materials that have been wrested from the Earth by ruthlessly extractive industries. The cobalt in its lithium-ion batteries was mined by hand in the Congo, often by children; the tin in the soldered seams that bind it together most likely comes from the Indonesian island of Bangka, where the water table is irreparably fouled, 70 percent of the coral reefs have been destroyed by mine runoff, and on average one miner a week is killed on the job. The damage caused by the processes of extraction fans out across most of a hemisphere, mutilating lives, human communities and natural ecosystems beyond ready numbering. And so the polluted streams, stillborn children and diagnoses of cancer, too, become part of the way in which the smartphone has transformed everyday life, at least for some of us. Though these facts

"As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time." The British ruling class is in full panic mode

"The promise of Brexit was steeped in ideology from the very beginning, a fairy tale based on dark chauvinism. The Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Hitler and now the Polish plumbers who allegedly push down wages..." "A wave of anger crashes over Britain"

Hobsbawm's long century

A very political tragedy

McJihad: Empire and Islam between the US and Saudi Arabia The full chapter could be read here: McJihad