Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From identity politics to academic masturbation

Turkey Inside the Islamic Cult Whose Leader is Embraced by Israeli Figures

From the Financial Times Brexit reinforces Britain's imperial amnesia

The Peculiar Modalities of Capitalism in the Arab Region

One of the tools of the oppressor, the terrorist state, is to portray itself as a victim.  And the rest of humanity enjoys the spectacle, as usual. Muslims and non-Muslims have watched the Syrians massacred, the Yemenis slaughtered, refugees drowning, Rohingyas "genocided" ...  The more I hear and read about this, the more I feel ashamed of myself and my position in this world. I had years of struggles and protests against both: first against a police state and then against imperialist one. I came to realise the futility of such struggle. I despaired. The more I read about the last two centuries, the more I know about the huge scientific progress as well as about barbarism and our collective complicity in it. And, sadly, our complacency and complicity will continue in the coming atrocities. My only solace is to continue reading in order to keep a sharp mind; to survive in a swamp. "Area of terror"

Where are those £10 billion deals with our Saudi Friends? Will there be any trickle down? Child poverty in England

The Israeli "Left" "The Zionist left has an almost genetic structural problem — the awful contradiction between the left and Zionism, certainly in the reality of the Zionist apartheid of 2018 and the deliberate blurring of the term Zionism. The Zionist left is trying as hard as it can to hide the contradiction, cover it up, blur it, repress and deny it – but it doesn’t have a chance. As long as it sticks to its Zionism and as long as that Zionism is by definition a non-egalitarian ideology, which deprives, dispossesses, evicts and occupies, grants privileges to only one part of the country’s residents and not the other – that left cannot be a left. It’s merely a softer, more moderate right, a more restrained and liberally-styled version of the nationalist right." — Gideon Levy on Haaretz

It is mot about stating the obvious; it is about how you state it beautifully and succinctly. Do we get paid what we "deserve"?

The killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes. There’s nothing cheaper in Israel than Palestinian blood. If there were a hundred or even a thousand deaths Israel would still “salute” the IDF. The Israel Massacre Forces. Again.

Immanuel Wallerstein , currently a senior research scholar at Yale University, is among the greatest living sociologists and one of the most appropriate scholars to discuss the current relevance of Marx. He has been a reader of Marx for a long time, and his work has been influenced by the theories of the revolutionary born in Trier on May 5, 1818. Wallerstein has authored more than 30 books, which have been translated into several languages, including his very well known  The Modern World-System , published in four volumes between 1974 and 2011 Read Marx, says Wallerstein An interview

Britain Alan Sugar is a representation of what is low, crass, agressive, and disgusting in doing business. He is the opposite of what human ingenuity, innovative skills, and energy is and what should be invested in. He has been promoted as an example to emulate, someone who embodies the spirit of self-made man and entrepreneur. Many British and non-British love him though. But that says a lot about the type of the economy and 'ideology' of the last 40 years and the power relations fostered and perpetuated to obfuscate reality. It is not a surprise then that he considers this a joke . He is in fact an embodiment of those capitalists who would fight against the existing order tooth and nail, and fight against any small progressive change.

The Italian malaise

Erotica Nowadays credited to a fifteenth-century Egyptian polymath called Jalal adʹDin al-Suyuti, "The Book of Exposition" is an exploration of promiscuity under the societal constraints of the Arab-Islamic world, using bawdy and salacious scenarios to stimulate and evoke fantasies in the readerʹs mind.  The Book of Exposition by al-Suyūti

English schools: on the footsteps of the French ones? Mr Courtney was referring to a speech in February in which Ms Spielman said: "School leaders must have the right to set school uniform policies in a way that they see fit, in order to promote cohesion." By "cohesion" Ms Spielman means conformity . What we are speaking about hear is the headscarf not the veil. The latter covers the whole face not the first. Banning the headscarf at school is considered

"The global community has done little to intervene in the  ongoing genocide ."  Is there such a thing as a "global community" or "international community"? What we have, in fact, is big powers and regional ones decide who is worth "saving" and who is a collateral in geopolitics. Think, for example, of Bosnia vs. Rwanda and Syria. "For the most part, there has been confusion about who the Rohingya are and why they are being targeted by the Myanmar regime. Azeem Ibrahim, an international research fellow affiliated with Harvard, Yale, and the U.S. Army War College, argues that the persecution of the Rohingya is historically rooted in the situation of postcolonial Myanmar and the normalized “otherness” of the Rohingya people within the country’s culture. Ibrahim’s new book  The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide  t races this troubling history of persecution and explains its origins." Book review The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar

Feminism is about injustice. It’s about tackling injustice whenever you see it. Pop art and patriarchy or خرابيش نسوية

المثلية الجنسية في نصوص شعرية

Anti-semitism This is probably the first time I remove a post from the blog. Enough is enough and The Labour Party, Israel, and anti-semitism So not to confuse a crude depiction with serious opposition to the crimes of the Israeli state as a settler, colonial, apartheid and imperialist state. And not to use the anti-semitism exploited by the Western imperialist state to silence any oppsition to the Israeli state or deflect attention from an alternative,  small as it is, to the status quo, exploitation, austerity, plunder, wars, oligarchy, corruption, stduents debt, neoliberalism, obscene inequality, cuts in social services, xenophobia, hypocrisy, double standard, attacks on pensions, teaming with autocrats for financial and geopolitical interests, etc.

Hungary Centrists/liberals, who like wars, austerity and status quo, and who presided over obscene inequality, and exploitation at hime and abroad, want to save "liberal democracy" even if that meant advocating an alliance with the neo-Nazis . Is this new?

"Just 3% of Americans own half of the guns in America. And that 3% isn’t just anyone. According to a Harvard study flagged by Scientific American this month, the person most likely to stockpile guns in this country is an older, white man from a rural conservative area. And an alarming body of research shows that they’re motivated by racial anxiety and a fear of emasculation." No comment.