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Showing posts from May, 2017
" We may not be able to live a wrong life rightly, but we can stop living wrongly altogether. To do that requires a depth of social imagination, the courage of collective struggle and a wellspring of political desire that seems all but evaporated in the present moment." The spurious scandal of "Communism for Kids" (NYT)
"The Lebanese institutions, its infrastructure, airport, power stations, traffic junctions, Lebanese army bases – they should all be legitimate targets if a war breaks out, "That's what we should already be saying to them and the world now. If Hezbollah fires missiles at the Israeli home front, this will mean  sending Lebanon back to the Middle Ages ." Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah: a potential for another war

Britain Continues to Support General Haftar

" British interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were disastrous and created resentment among many Arabs and Muslims - as does leaving Bashar al-Assad to drop barrel bombs and use chemical weapons against innocent civilians.   But Libya was different. It was a popular uprising. It was a civilian revolution and not a religious one. Britain was willing to support us because it was in line with their ‘foreign policy’ at the time. We also weren't linked to groups like al-Qaeda.  I say "at the time" because many of us who fought are upset that Britain continues to support General Haftar, who has been condemned by leading rights group, including Amnesty International, for committing a series of war crimes." And here is what the Telegraph reported in February :  " Gen Haftar, who  enjoys strong backing from Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's government in Egypt, is seen by some as a potential secular “strong man” ruler who could re-establish some degree of securit
Whether it is Thatcher or Reagan, Blair or Holland, Trump or Macron, Temer or May .. . "[I]n the name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it [neoliberallism] brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application ." The essence of neoliberalism  (Pierre Bourdieu, 1998)

Regime Change?

"It's a weird time. This week I'm noticing two rather disturbing bandwagons rolling, both arising from Manchester. One is about UK domestic politics and the other international politics but they are linked by an understandable desire not to see the attack as being used to advance the agenda of the Tories and specifically, to help their election campaign. Both though are ultimately very unhelpful. One is about the need for soldiers on the streets because Theresa May  cut police budgets as Home Secretary. I've seen unlikely people sharing tweets from redundant cops. Tempting to undercut May this way, but wrong - more armed cops do not equal fewer attacks like Manchester. The other is pinning the blame for Manchester on the UK intervention in Libya.  Again, understandable.  But it's important to see that the problem in Libya was not the attempted regime change as such but the regime that people tried to change i.e. Gaddafi's tyranny. It was a regime that - like
On deploying British troops , Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, said he would tell them: "Under my leadership, you will only be deployed abroad when there is a clear need and only when there is a plan that you have the resources to do your job and secure an outcome that delivers lasting peace". So, in principle, and fundamentally, he would not break with the imperialist interventions of the British regime. He would deploy troops in a better and organised way, probably with popular support. Although Corbyn opposed the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, he sees that Britain has a mission to deploy troops and intervene to "secure peace". Since when an imperialist power intervenes and wages wars for peace? How ironic from a socialist? A socialist who would use the state apparatus of an imperialist state. 
A great scientist. I recommend The Richness of Life . When I started reading it I couldn't put it down. " Homo sapiens, I fear, is a “thing so small” in a vast universe, a wildly improbable evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Make of such a conclusion what you will. Some find it depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, and a source of both freedom and consequent moral responsibility." Remeasuring Stephen Jay Gould
A couple of days ago someone asked me a mainstream question: "when will the war between Sunnis and Shiite end?" Briefly, — Some Alawite (Shi'a) generals and officers defected from the Syrian army at the beggining of the uprising and joined the Free Syrian Army. — The Sunni bourgeoisie in Damascus is not fightng Assad. — The main force which has been fighting ISIS on the ground is a Kurdish one. The Kurds are Sunnis and ISIS fighters are Sunnis, too. — Many Syrian Sunnis who have been displaced because of the war have fled to "Shiite" areas. They haven't been killing each other. — The rest is geopolitics. Example: The Northern Alliance in Afghanista,  although it included some Shiites, was mainly led by a Sunni-Tajik, Ahmed Shah Masoud. The Aliance was supported by Iran, among others such as Pakistan and the US. Masoud was assassinated by Taliban, a Sunni organisation.
The liberals of the Guardian are in arms defending "democracy" and "liberties" against the state reaction. Simon Jenkins, for example, is right that deployment of tanks and soldiers will not prevent "terrorism", but he is, like most of the liberals, not to speak of the right-wing media in general, fails, intentionally or unintentionally, to tackle the real sources of acts of violence like the one which took place in Manchester a couple of days ago. Jenkins : " Terror bombing is the one foolproof weapon of the weak against the strong. We cannot screen every public space or search every pedestrian. There is nothing new to this. The car bomb and the terror grenade are as old as  Conrad’s secret agent , and his “pestilence” which stalks the street with death in its pocket." Agreed. Jenkins: "All we can hope to do is enter into the minds of the bombers and their associates to prevent them at source. That is essentially a covert activity, an
"Farsad leaves us with only one conclusion: that Muslims who are fully assimilated into the habits and customs of mainstream liberal culture are the “normal” ones." The liberal fascination with "Islam-lite" and the humanizing Muslim industry
Although I don't like Owen Jones, the plight of the cleaners at one of the most prestigious university in the world is a disgrace. LSE cleaners
China Miéville's book October "is  very deliberate in what it covers and, more importantly, doesn’t cover." John Medherst: " As someone with a book on the Russian Revolution out later this year (August 17th) with a different and more critical take on Lenin and the Bolsheviks, I had to buy and read China Mieville’s October. It is, as you would expect, a great read. Vivid and immersive, it skilfully recreates how kinetic, stressful, confusing and exciting February-October 1917 in Russia must have been. But it is very deliberate in what it covers and, more importantly, doesn’t cover. Although it has a brief prologue and epilogue, 95% of the book sticks tightly to the nine months of February-October. As such it is, surprisingly for a Marxist writer, a rather old-fashioned narrative history. Considering that nearly all the main issues and controversies of the Bolshevik revolution arise from events post-October, the decision to barely address that period prevents wide

Islamic Enlightenment?

— " I think [Olivier] Roy underplays the historical context within which forms of modern jihadism find expression. Not all jihadis have the same background, but I’ve found — certainly in France — a fertile ground to radicalisation is produced when you have a disaffected immigrant population whose ideas and concerns are not taken seriously, who do not enjoy access to the power and wealth they see around them, and who remember a background of colonisation in Algeria or elsewhere in north Africa that fuels a historical sense of grievance. I think it’s a mistake to downplay that context."  — " Liberalism was associated with the western powers. Within the west there was a contest between liberalism and other forms of political thought. But in the Middle East liberal thought — ideas about democracy, empowerment, emancipation, the privileging of the individual over the collective — was linked to the European powers that carved up the Ottoman Empire and subjugated the Middle

Jihadism

Olivier Roy's "Jihad and Death" " I think Roy underplays the historical context within which forms of modern jihadism find expression. Not all jihadis have the same background, but I’ve found — certainly in France — a fertile ground to radicalisation is produced when you have a disaffected immigrant population whose ideas and concerns are not taken seriously, who do not enjoy access to the power and wealth they see around them, and who remember a background of colonisation in Algeria or elsewhere in north Africa that fuels a historical sense of grievance. I think it’s a mistake to downplay that context." — Christopher de Bellaigue Was/is there an Islamic enlightenment?
The Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked in a recent interview by a Sky News jiurnalist to condemn the IRA bombing. Jeremy Corbyn: "There were Loyalist bombs as well. I condemn all the bombing by both the Loyalists and the IRA ." Mr Corbyn, but do you condemn the IRA? Mr Corbyn, but do you condemn the IRA? Mr Corbyn, but do you condemn the IRA? Mr Corbyn, but do you condemn the IRA? "Mr Corbyn also attempts to contextualise bombings." Well, yes. Whether it is a bombing in Iraq, London, Paris, Bali, Belfast, Istanbul, Madrid... or a homocide, a divorce, a bankruptcy, a car accident, a nervous breakdown, a failure in delivering a successful lesson ... an invasion of a country, the birth of ISIS, waterboarding, an IMF loan, austerity, arms sale ... it has to be contextualised. 
A BBC headline: " Who is to blame for violenec in the name of Islam?" (Episode 1: The Battle for Al-Azhar) Who is to blame for violence in the name of "democracy" and "freedom"?
England The main argument of those opposing the scrapping of tuition fees in England is where to find the money to fund free higher education. Looking at a list of European countries where there are no tuition fees or a little charge, one can see that these countries have gone bankrupt and their education system has collapsed because they provide "free" higher education. " Once you factor in the people who will not end up paying back their loans, in the long-term the policy is expected cost the government £8bn a year." (Source: the BBC Fact Check) That is less than a tenth of the billions lost beause of tax evasion. The real reason of keeping the tuition fees in England of £9,250+ is that consecutive goverments have adopted the most aggressive "neo-liberal" social-economic system in Europe, where the fundamentalist "free-market" ideology reigns supreme.  The structure of the socio-political system has made many oppose free education
I recommend   More books
In Tartous, Syria, women wear black, youth in hiding and bitterness grows If you are one of those who got confused about who, how, and why in the Syrian war and have given up taking a clear judgment and position, or you are like the majority who have taken the mainstream Shi'a-Sunni war(or conflict) as a given, you should think again.  Here is a background to start with: Syria: from authoritarianism to upheaval   (pdf fomat)
UK Economists are warning that this decade is set to be the worst in more than 200 years for British pay packets . (FT)
" Ferocious oppression by the Egyptian and Israeli authorities has produced a new generation of fighters, motivated more by a thirst for revenge than by ideology." Egypt: Sinai's undeclared war
"For forty years the Israelites wandered in the Sinai wilderness before reaching the Canaanite border, where Moses died, but his lieutenant, Joshua, led the Israelites to victory in the Promised Land, destroying all the Canaanite cities and killing their inhabitants.
  The archaeological record, however, does not confirm this story. There is no evidence of the mass destruction described in the book of Joshua and no indication of a powerful foreign invasion. But this  narrative was not written to satisfy a modern historian; it is a national epic that helped Israel create a cultural identity distinct from her neighbors."  — Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood - Religion and the History of Violence , 2014, pp. 104-5 The role of "myth" in nation creation?
A review of Ilan Pappe's new book and from the archive my interview with Ilan Pappe about his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (audio format) Part 1 , Part 2
"To call for "peace" with Assad is itself an indication of  failure  – not the military or moral failure of embattled rebels who are mostly made up of civilian volunteers, but the collective failure of the world, particularly those with the means to have acted, to stop Assad from carrying out genocide." The pisonous 'peace process' is an insult to Syrians
The primary priority of the Egyptian military and general Sisi is not to fight terrorism or improve governance,” Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour from 2014 to 2017 said at the Senate hearing on 25 April. “It has been to make sure that what happened in 2011 in the Tahrir square uprising can never ever, ever, ever happen again.” US aid to Egypt
I read some Marx (and I liked it) By Richard Seymour On The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the host asked Shadow chancellor John McDonnell if he is a Marxist. Obligingly, he said “no”—but admitted that he  had read Marx and learned from him alongside traditional Labour economists like R H Tawney and G D H Cole. Jeremy Corbyn has since leapt to his colleague’s aid, describing Marx as a “great economist.” In philistine, managerial British politics, McDonnell’s comments felt like a blushing confession: “ I read some Marx and I liked it .” Predictably, senior Tories have in response warned darkly of an “ Islington cabal ” of revolutionaries. But what exactly in McDonnell’s agenda is Marxist? A tax freeze for the 95 per cent doesn’t need the labour theory of value to stand it up. Borrowing only to invest doesn’t depend on Marx’s theory of the commodity form. Renationalising the railway is as close to common sense as it gets in politics. If McDonnell is a Marxist, so is most of the c
France "Advocating for the boycott of Israel, which is the ideology of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, is illegal in France, where it is considered a hate crime."
Britain's greedy nurses And the bbc knows it. That is why it shouldn't stay on the front page for more than 2 hours
Supposedly the 4th economy in the world... Where is Save the Children? Oh, they are helping the Yemeni children!
"The psalm is a song of being forsaken. The feeling of being forsaken, an “immense and aching solitude” as William Styron put it, even amid crowds, even among friends, even when no real-world abandonment has taken place, is common in depression. (Styron began to experience melancholic depression late in life, after developing an intolerance of alcohol. But his description, in  The Confessions of Nat Turner , of the hero's feeling of abandonment by his God in the aftermath of his failed uprising, suggests that he might have known this all along.) But if the song is also a dream, we might ask what sort of wish-fulfilment that could be. What sort of satisfaction there is to be had, or avoided, in abandonment. And whether idealisation can also be a defence against consummation." The Night Season
" A funny thing happened on the tube. Two young, fairly affluent looking racists on the Victoria Line started hassling three teenage hijabis, calling them "smelly foreigners". It didn't seem, from what I heard, to be a focused anti-Muslim thing. It was about getting a sadistic kick out of baiting them, and enjoying their outraged responses. A woman was trying to talk the girls down -- because, though plainly not intimidated, they were obviously distressed -- saying "ignore them ", and telling the young men to "grow up". When they resumed their 'banter' about having to share a tube with a bunch of "foreigners", an elderly black man sitting near them said, "who the fuck are you calling a foreigner?" Which was a good point: their actions were bewilderingly self-endangering, and they didn't look the least bit up to defending themselves. This guy was ready to get up and lamp them. I blurted out something like, "j
A colleague  of mine at Oxford was asked to see an undergraduate who was falling behind in her work. The student – a Muslim – explained that she had been suffering from depression and was being treated for it by her GP. My colleague believed the student’s explanation placed her under an obligation to ask the student whether she was being radicalised. A young colleague, an Arab, told me that when he tried to book a room for a seminar, he was informed that this was no longer permitted on security grounds: he had to get a ‘senior’ academic to confirm the real purpose of the meeting. Another young colleague was told that she had to carry out a security ‘risk assessment’ for a feminist seminar she was convening; she refused, and was repeatedly pressured to comply. A librarian was asked for a reference by another university: ‘Are you completely satisfied,’ they wanted to know, ‘that the applicant is not involved in “extremism” (being vocal or active opposition to fundamental British
"One can disagree with, say, historian Orlando Figes’s conclusions without querying the seriousness of his research, but his assertion in  A People’s Tragedy  that “hatred and indifference to human suffering were to varying degrees ingrained in the minds of all the Bolshevik leaders” is simply absurd (and his disapproving fascination with their leather jackets curious). In Russia, Virginia Woolf wrote in  Orlando , “sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them”. Of course this is a literary flourish, a common and unsustainable romanticised Russian essentialism. But even so, the formulation feels prophetic for this particular Russian story. Chernyshevsky’s dots describe the revolution itself. Pravda’s blank hole contains tactics. Unsayables are by no means all there is to this strange story, but they are central to it." Why does the Russian Revolution matter? See also this in the New York Times
The Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone by 2040 .  The capitalist mode of production will liberate it from ice. The good news is that " an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas."
The Red Army was "the main engine of Nazism’s destruction,"  writes British historian and journalist Max Hastings in "Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945." The Soviet Union paid the harshest price: though the numbers are not exact, an estimated 26 million Soviet citizens died during World War II, including as many as 11 million soldiers. At the same time, the Germans  suffered three-quarters of their wartime losses  fighting the Red Army. "It was the Western Allies’ extreme good fortune that the Russians, and not themselves, paid almost the entire ‘butcher’s bill’ for [defeating Nazi Germany], accepting 95 per cent of the military casualties of the three major powers of the Grand Alliance," writes Hastings. Don't forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler (the Washington Post) Yes, that happened despite Stalin's crimes and blunders.
"American ignorance of Vietnamese history, culture and politics helped draw the United States into a war and a country that it did not comprehend. This pattern of ignorance arguably continues today, both in terms of what Americans continue to ignore about Vietnam and what Americans refuse to know about the Middle East. Literature plays an important role as a corrective to this ignorance."   — Viet Thanh Nguyen, the author of The Sympathizer The great Vietnam war novel was not written by an American  (NYT)
Tunisia "Protests in  Kasserine  last year and in  Kef and Tataouine  last month — driven by socioeconomic marginalization in Tunisia’s long-suffering interior — underscore that no post-revolutionary government has substantially mitigated grievances that provoked Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. Upcoming local elections will gauge the cost of Ennahda’s strategy. The stakes are high, and socioeconomic conditions worsening. The Tunisian government’s ability to deliver on revolutionary promises nationally and locally carries with it the fate of the Arab world’s best democratic experiment." Why do Tunisia's Islamists support an unpopular law

Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Rising Inequality in China 1978-2015

This looks a long but very interesting piece. If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access. Capital accumulation, private property, and rising inequality in China 1978-2015
Iraq We have been here before: the destruction of the Ba'th's regime state by imperialism had led to similar consequences: neglect, fuelling sectarianism, geopolitics...  Actually, those consequences have significantly determined the present situation in Iraq. "Nascent territorialism in Mosul threatens long-term reconstruction efforts by institutionalising division between traumatised populations and security actors, as well as by breeding local resentment at perceived government neglect. With insufficient military and economic resources to commit to liberated areas, the Iraqi government may struggle to reverse trends toward factionalism without sustained international assistance. Yet today, long-term international aid seems unlikely, as Baghdad’s critical foreign partners scale back post-ISIS cooperation." Rivalries threaten post-ISIS Mosul