Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

1. This is a 7-year war with half of the population either displaced or made refugees, and with about 400,000 killed (93% of them killed by the regime). 2. This is a brutal regime which crushed an uprising and a revolutionary prospect, supported by one regional power, which was the main winner from the destruction of Iraq, a furure winner in Syria and "a threat" to Israel, and an authoritarian state, which is a  big global power, but not a super-power, and it is in a geopolitical power struggle with the big imperialist states for spheres of influence. It used to be a friend of the main imperialist powers when a drunkard man opened the gates to "free market" and sold half of the country to foreign capitalists and newly-born local  ones, some of them now live in London. It is a regime that waged a  brutal war on the Chetchens and his "democratic" friends of the time looked the other way. 3. On the other side, known imperialist states, agents of glob

“Idiot is a word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs ("a private citizen", "individual"), from ἴδιος, idios ("private", "one's own"). In ancient Greece, people who were not capable of engaging in the public sphere were considered "idiotes", in contrast to the public citizen, or "polites". An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs."

The conflict in Yemen is not really about Iranian influence, as is often claimed to and in Western capitals. It’s certainly not about legitimacy or democracy, nor yet about sect, creed or colour. It’s about filthy lucre, and the corrupt access to it via state-capture. The Arab Spring—a rising up of the “street” against the  kleptocracy —was co-opted and corrupted in Yemen by  political factions  (and their foreign sponsors.) The UN-sponsored  National Dialogue Conference  supposed to be a national fresh start after decades of corruption, nepotism and misrule, was itself corrupted by those very factions it sought to replace: many of the ancien regime were able to retain and leverage ill-gotten political and financial resources, despite those being the major cause of the 2011 uprising. And the West stood idly by. Radix Malorum est Cupiditas "Greed is the root of evil"

What kind of a war is the Yemen war?

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said in the aftermath of the 'Western' attack on Syria that "The US president, UK prime minister and the president of France are criminals." So are him, Bashar al-Assad and Putin. 

Lessons from the History of America's Defeats

The number of homeless people dying on the streets or in temporary accommodation in the UK has more than doubled over the past five years to more than one per week. The average age of a rough sleeper when they die is 43, about half the UK life expectancy. Homelessness in Britain