Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

France There are plenty of colourful characters in the Macron camp, ranging from a retired bullfighter in Arles, Marie Sara, to Rwandan refugee Hervé Berville, éclair entrepreneur Brigitte Liso and horror film producer Laurent Zameczkowski. One of the better known figures is mathematician Cédric Villani, known for his unique dress sense including large spider brooches. Having won over 47% of the vote in the first round, he looks unbeatable. "They tend to be very middle-class, very white on the whole, and half are absolute newcomers to politics," says Prof Marlière. (The BBC online) The politice of celebrities, of media image-making. " A physician, in order to be admitted to practice, must demonstrate his theoretical and practical knowledge of medicine. A politician, on the other hand, who, unlike the physician, purposes to decide the fate not of hundreds of people, but of millions, does not have to show such proof of knowledge. This fact seems to be one of t

17 June 1953

The destruction of the Yezidis

Kurds seeks to expand reach in northern Syria

"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