Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

I am reading Debt, the IMF and the World Bank by Éric Toussaint and Damien Millet. It is an indictment of the IMF as an international criminal organisation of enslavement. "Following the exigencies of the governments of the richest companies, the IMF, permitted countries in crisis to borrow in order to avoid default on their repayments. Caught in the debt's downward spiral, developing countries soon had no other recourse than to take on new debt in order to repay the old debt. Before providing them with new loans, at higher interest rates, future leaders asked the IMF, to intervene with the guarantee of ulterior reimbursement, asking for a signed agreement with the said countries. The IMF  thus agreed to restart the flow of the 'finance pump' on condition that the concerned countries first use this money to reimburse banks and other private lenders, while restructuring their economy at the IMF's discretion: these were the famous conditionalities, detailed in th

Malala: The West's Unsaved Others and Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

In Iraq, as in the Philippines, as in U.S. occupied Haiti in 1914, we hear echoes of the words of Massachusetts Bay colony founder John Winthrop. The English had come to expropriate native land and resources, but somehow convinced themselves that their presence was benign. “So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts…have put themselves under our protection," said the Pilgrim-in-Chief. Throughout the Middle East and in spreading regions of the globe, the U.S. invites the natives to a “feast” of “democracy” – at the point of a gun. Frustrated at native unwillingness to dine on the corpses of their own national sovereignty, the Americans threaten to punish those who demonstrate such “unthankfulness.” In these times, we should remember the unthankful Pequot women and children roasting in the flames of their village, and the Wampanoag man, murdered by the Pilgrim saint Miles Standish, whose spiked head was displayed for years in Pl

I have just discovered some powerful and intriguing ideas by Andrea Micocci. Micocci has  just passed away, unfortunately.

Against the Grain and The beginning of elites, tax, and slavery

Two of yesterday's bbc headlines: Black Friday bonanza and a shooting in Oxford Circus, London (Britain) 230 people shot dead in a mosque (in Sinai, Egypt) The one on the shooting in Oxford Circus is the main headline with a large photo. Next to it a small phone of the shooting in Sinai.  The BBC after all is a national corporation of a nation state. Local news, however minor they are, are more important. What happens in other countries, especially in places where the victims are not Westerners is of a less importance. Another legacy of what the nation state has made of us. The same conclusion persists: Some lives are more precious than others. Black Friday bonanza is also significantly important because it reflects "our way of  life".

Part 3 follows an international solidarity caravan to the third stop of the trip:  Oum Laarayes,  another   polluted and marginalised town  in Tunisia's phosphate mining basin.  Several issues were discussed in this episode – from the neocolonial nature of mining to the urgency of the requests sought by social movements including jobs, better infrastructure and access to water:  Paradises of the Earth - Part 3

Trump and Boko Haram

Security for Whom? Unpacking the Gendered Impact of EU Securitized Migration