Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From Leonardo Padura's The Man Who Loved Dogs , pp. 220-21

Tunisians to the Saudi Crown Prince: "Tunisia is not for sale", "No to the murderer", and "Our land is not a destination for you to wash off your sins." A charge has been filed to a high Tunisian court against Bin Salman and the Saudi crimes, including the ones committed in Yemen. US, UK and other "democracies": hand-shaking and hugs, arms deals, hundreds of billions of dollars,  and decades of support of the Saudi autocracy.

"All colonial wars for the last twenty-five years have been fought in the interest of capital; fought to ensure markets that would guarantee more profits for European capital. Capital has become very powerful, all-powerful. Capital decides the fate of humanity." — Jean Marais in This Earth of Mankind , a novel by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Bernardo Bertolucci (1941-2018) Bertolucci's epic Novecento

Baptism Could an eccentric group, born out as a reaction to state violence, now ineffective, be  "our" new born-again "freedom fighters"? At the annual “Free Iran” conference that the group stages in Paris each summer, dozens of elected US and UK representatives – along with retired politicians and military officials – openly call for the overthrow of the Islamic republic and the installation of Maryam Rajavi as the leader of Iran. At last year’s Paris rally, the Conservative MP David Amess announced that “regime change … is at long last within our grasp”. At the same event, Bolton – who championed war with Iran long before he joined the Trump administration – announced that he expected the MEK to be in power in Tehran before 2019. “The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself,” he declared. The main attraction at this year’s Paris conference was another longtime MEK

Amazon, Google & Big-Techs Productivity Paradox

"There is no state in Lebanon" There is a state in Lebanon. It is present in other spheres, but obviously it is not there when it comes to social inequality. In fact it perpetrates social inequality like in many other countries, including rich ones (look at poverty in Britain or France, for example). Labaki, the director, does not criticise the state. A critique of the state in the review is Ms Naggar's addition. Also, there is a lot of "emotional extortion" instead of including a bigger picture of the state structure and social relations which spawn such social diseases. I have found this review (in Arabic) much better.