Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Return of the king

A lot of propaganda have been pouring, hailing women in high position from Christine Lagarde of the IMF to Angela Merkel of Germany. All in the belief that capitalist power relations, inequality, exploitation, the profit motive, imperialism, etc. can be done away with if more women led governments and other positions of power.  Leaving her support of  Israel and the suppression of BDS aside, as a woman who headed a rich capitalist country for 16 years she  has done almost nothing to address the gender pay gap, one of the worst in Europe.  Women made between 19% less in wages than men in 2019, compared to 20% in 2018. It was 21% in 2020 according to this website .  It was still higher than the European Union average. Or has she ever questioned, for example, the pay gap between a nurse and a footballer?

"There is a striking discrepancy between the lack of feeling aroused by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty." — Stathis Kouvelakis Endemic racism One photo shows a volunteer with the Spanish Red Cross comforting a migrant (above) on a beach in Ceuta. The young woman, identified as Luna, told Spanish TV she did not know the man's name, only that he had come from Senegal. "He was crying, I held out my hand and he hugged me," she told RTVE. After the image of th

On the silencing of Trump by tech giants. “Ms Merkel said through her spokesman that the US government should follow Germany’s lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.” FT It is also the same German government that attacks those who criticise Israel. Example: the BDS movement in Germany. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire told France Inter on Monday that he was “shocked” by Twitter’s move. He added: “Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary.” FT France and free speech? No comment. One has only to look at the recent events in the country. John Naughton in Opinion section on the Guardian opined that the silencing of Trump highlights “the authoritarian power of tech giants.” Yes, Mr, Naughton, but you cannot control what you don’t own.  He t

 Financial crimes spread to politics

Protecting Saudi Arabia is part of protecting geo-political allies, which is part of ensuring hegemony of some over others, which is part of enuring the survival of a regime, which is part of ensuring the outflow of capital, which is also part of fueling wars, which is part of "our European way of life", which is part of a long-term hypocrisy and trail of crimes and complicity in crimes.   "President Macron  and Angela Merkel  have signed a secret deal in an attempt to ease Franco-German friction over arms exports, notably to Saudi Arabia. The agreement is designed to stop Berlin from blocking the sale of French weapons that contain German parts to countries with questionable human rights records. There is anger in Paris over Germany’s human rights policy, which the French say is undermining attempts to move towards a common European defence. The row has cast a shadow over efforts by the two countries to relaunch their alliance." The Times online, 16 Septem

Femmes en lutte

Germany "Perhaps due to the academic, middle-class milieu from which many Die Linke radicals emerge, its younger activists in particular tend to accept a false dichotomy of either ignoring people’s concerns or engaging with them at the price of adopting a “right-wing” language and accept an inherently racist framework. That they are immediately repulsed by the slightest sentiments perceived as racist reflects their commitment to a better world, of course. But that commitment has no practical value if it means shutting themselves off from those who do not distinguish antiracism from “political correctness,” or internationalist solidarity from the undemocratic regime of an increasingly cohesive global ruling class." The Wagenknecht Question