Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

U.S. Sold $40 Billion in Weapons

your “mind” isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body

Syria Demonstrations on Friday 30 December 2016

إنها ليست حربا أهلية

The "leftists" admirers of Assad's Syria

Jeff Halper "lays out the case for Israel’s centrality to the system of transnational economic hegemony by following up his initial question with a section entitled, “The Global Pacification Industry,” which explores capitalism’s accumulative process, alongside the changing nature of global conflict. As state to state engagement involving tanks and conventional armed forces has receded, Halper argues it has been replaced by the increasingly important role of what he terms “securocratic wars,” located in the “global battlespace,” which aim at nothing less than the pacification of the world-wide population to which his title refers." War Against the People See also My interview with Jeff Halper (2008)

American, Canadian, and European arms sales to the Middle East 2011-2014

Imaginary friends An underground amusement park in Syria

Dicing Syria into spheres of influence

A Palestinian student has almost destroyed the Israeli state

The system is broken

The US and Israel's settlements A settler-colonial state is advising another settler-colonial state: It is not about what you are doing; it is about how you are doing it.

Pope Francis on capialism

Did we ever really do God in Christmas ?

أصنامنا التي قتلت الثورات

A project "to eliminate" trade unionism at the University of São Paulo

Nos destins sont liés

" In the land of Law and Justice [political party], anti-intellectualism is king. Polish scientists are aghast at proposed curriculum changes in a new education bill that would downplay evolution theory and climate change and add hours for “patriotic” history lessons. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rej ected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles. ... "Yet nothing has shocked liberals more than this: After a year in power, Law and Justice is still by far the most popular political party in Poland. It rides atop opinion polls at roughly 36 percent — more than double the popularity of the ousted Civic Platform party."

Bare life in Aleppo and in the Mediterranean and "Demystifying the Syrian Conflict" At the time Erdogan receives a Syrian child who got out of Aleppo ...

Syria Massacring the arguments of those who have been supporting the Assad regime and Russia's intervention, orgasmically celebrating "the liberation of Aleppo". Justifying the unjustifiable Also,  Stop the War Coalition's failure to actively campaign against the wars crimes of Syrian and the Russian regimes " My friends in Aleppo would rather die than captured by Assad's militias." — Zeina Erhaim, a Syrian journalist Here are some of the arguments put by those who defend the Syrian regime: Apart from "the terrorists" of the armed rebel forces, "The Assad family belongs to the tolerant Islam of Alawid orientation. • Syrian women have the same rights as men to study, health and education. • Syria women are not forced to wear the burqa. The Sharia (Islamic law) is unconstitutional. • Syria is the only Arab country with a secular constitution and does not tolerate Islamic extremist movements. • Roughly 10% of the Syrian populat

Still relevant "The uses of Al-Qaeda"

Sowing the seeds of dissent "The economic roots of the Syrian revolution"

"In the same way that Robinson [Crusoe] was able to ob­tain a sword, we can just as well suppose that [Man] Friday might appear one fine morning with a loaded revolver in his hand, and from then on the whole relationship of violence is reversed: Man Friday gives the orders and Crusoe is obliged  to work. . . . Thus, the revolver triumphs over the sword, and even the most childish believer in axioms will doubtless form the conclusion that violence is not a simple act of will, but needs for its realization certain very concrete preliminary con­ditions, and in particular the implements of violence; and the more highly developed of these implements will carry the day against primitive ones. Moreover, the very fact of the ability to produce such weapons signifies that the producer of highly developed weapons, in everyday speech the arms  manufac­turer, triumphs over the producer of primitive weapons. To put it briefly, the triumph of violence depends upon the pro­duction of armam

The neo-Nazi murder trial revealing Germany's darkest secret

"Chesnais finishes his book with two themes. One is a lament on the lack of Marxist study in universities and the lack of journals in which Marxist studies of capitalism can be published. This is true enough, and I am glad not to have been an undergraduate university student in the past few decades! Even apparently radical journals such as the UK’s  Cambridge Journal of Economics  are basically rather conservative in outlook, and are dominated by a facile Keynesian approach that dismisses a Marxist perspective out of hand if it upsets their advocacy of ‘progressive’ policies for the capitalist state to consider. Repeating radical consensus nonsense will get a pass; revealing the imperial mechanism of power has to jump a hundred hurdles to be an acceptable journal article. Such is the almost universal climate in academia today, despite the evidently destructive outcomes from the system they claim to be analysing. [6]  Ironically, this is why the most trenchant and incisive critiqu

Students movements on Lebanese campuses

العلوية السياسية

Stalin, Castro, Barbie

Two young English men in their early twenties in a conversation - I have been drinking every night since Thursday. - Really, - yes. -... Arsenal [the football club] was shit... Me: I consider that part of "our British values"

" What a miserably grey one-dimensional place it would be if the dominant model of middle-of-the-road liberal secular capitalism became the only acceptable way of living." Assimilate now. Or else. See also "don't get too comfortable. Your existence here is conditional"

Pessimism and confusion of a social-democrat

"When Theresa May sets off to embrace the autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the other Gulf countries, the democratic opposition in these countries will be even less heard." — Anna Lehman, the Guardian, 18 December 2016 Ah, because this embrace is a new thing! Previous governments were champions of "human rights", trying to overthrow those autocratic families and were always supporting progressive oppositions until Brexit and Theresa came.

"As Hitchens said, those who secretly cheer Assad’s takeover of Aleppo don’t know what they are talking about. Or they forgot what it is like to live under a regime that kills and tortures in times of peace as it does when it is embattled. People in Syria rose up because they wanted their country to be free. What happened later, including the rise of extremism and lawlessness, was a product of the way the regime responded to the demands of young men and women." Note : Christopher Hitchens supported the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq thus he was the camp of "the liberal defence of murder".  Using Hitchens' argument for the Syrian situation excludes the fact that an uprising/a revolution aimed at overthrowing the regime. It also implies that there is no way for the Syrians, or any other people who rise up against dictatorship, to achieve anything without the help of the Western imperialism. The "Western states" should always do something. No t

Against liberal nostalgia "[T]he neoliberal variant of capitalism was not the result of a a “corporate coup.” It is the result of the familiar, systematic workings of a capitalist state seeking to resolve a crisis and restore the system to 'health'... ... to say that the last thirty years of neoliberal policy were not simply the result of a “corporate coup” does not mean that Donald Trump is simply a “boilerplate” Republican. If he were, how could we explain the tremendous fight the GOP establishment waged against him? Trump did   not receive a single donation   from a Fortune 100 CEO, while a broad range of top military brass and   establishment Republicans  — including George Bush, Mitt Romney, Colin Powell, Paul Ryan, Hank Paulson, Bill Kristol, and others — either endorsed Clinton or suggested they couldn’t support Trump. All this indicated a wide-ranging consensus among the capitalist class behind Clinton, founded upon maintaining the status quo abroad (“free trad

An interview with Leila al-Shami

The sixth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings

Sara Ginaite Lithuanian Jewish Partisan

Sisi's Egypt

“We would see the defenders of the homeland sooner or later become its enemies, constantly holding a dagger over their fellow citizens, and there would come a time when we would hear them say to the oppressor of their country: “If you order me to plunge my sword into my brother’s breast or my father’s throat, and into my pregnant wife’s entrails, I will do so, even though my right hand is unwilling.” — Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755

"The People Who Shaped the Islamic Civilisation"

Alep: les pro-Poutine en france

Bernard: But sometmes, Willy, it's better for a man just to walk away. Willy:     Walk away? Bernard:  That's right. Willy:      But if you can't walk away? Bernard:  I guess that's when it's tough. — Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

"This sad story of betrayal and opportunism by Arab and international Marxists has made Sadiq al-Azm an isolated voice among Marxists who initially were confused about how to respond to the Arab uprising after peaceful protests against Bashar al-Assad started all over Syria and gradually found themselves supporting the brutal regime directly or indirectly." Good-bye Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

"Can one speak meaning- fully of “Islamic violence”? As long as the Muslim actor is making his act of violence meaningful to himself in terms of Islam—in terms of Pre-Text, Text, or Con-Text of Revelation—then it is appropriate and meaningful to speak of that act of violence as Islamic violence. The point of the designation is not that Islam causes this violence; rather it is that the violence is made meaningful by the actor in terms of Islam—just as the prodigious violence undertaken by soldiers of democratic nation-states is made meaningful for them and by them in terms of the nation-state, and may, therefore, meaningfully be called “democratic violence” or “national violence” (or may meaningfully be designated in terms of the particular nation-state as “American violence” or “Israeli violence”). In the case of violence, as with everything else, one Muslim may disagree with another Muslim over whether his mode of meaning-making is legitimate—th

Qui sont les rebelles syriens?

Bahrain and the International Institute of Strategical Studies

Freedom and democracy British Airways cabin crew to go on strike:  Earnings were advertised between £21,000 and £25,000 but, in reality, start at just over £12,000 plus £3 an hour flying pay, Unite said.  "Not surprisingly, the crew have rejected a 2% pay offer and on-board customer service managers are furious," the union said.  "They do not have collective bargaining rights. The managers have also endured a six-year pay freeze.  Meanwhile, Willie Walsh pocketed £8.8m. British Airways and the parent company IAG reported profits of £1.4bn, up 64% on last year. — the bbc online

Aleppo by Alaa as-Sayyed

"Please help the people of Aleppo, just like we helped the people of Kobani. Oh, hang on, Aleppo? Kobani? Oh, that’s right. In Kobani they were Kurds. Civilised, secular, “progressive”, feminists, even green warriors apparently. They were like “us.” “We” (western imperialists and western … “anti-imperialists”) understand them. Therefore, they deserved to be saved from ISIS beasts, said the imperialist leaders, and their “anti-imperialist” echo in unison. Aleppo? Facing a fasc istic enemy that has massacred twenty times as many people as ISIS fascists could ever manage, is not full of Good Kurds. It is full of Arabs. And we all know what western imperialist leaders, the far-right, neo-Nazis, Trumpists, racists, and “left-wing anti-imperialists” think of Arabs, especially when they live in Syria. They are all backward, blood-thirsty, barbaric, “jihadis” and “head-choppers,” *all* of the above categories tell us, yes, the left-fascists just as emphatically as any of the others. So t

The spectacle: Children in Aleppo do not get a million like because they don't hold teddy bears... In Spain, however, animal rights activists do Or ...