Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Two views on China: Esteban Mercatante argues that China is capitalist while Richard Smith says it is not. The Contours of Capitalism in China Why China isn’t Capitalist

Here’s is what we learnt about the working class and democracy

Crise au Liban

In the Oxfam language and tone MENA billionaires’ wealth increased by $10 billion

History doesn’t give much reason to be hopeful. “In keeping with the longstanding pattern of political behaviour during pandemics,”  wrote  global health expert David P Fidler of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, in  Science  on 14 August, “vaccines will eventually reach most populations, but only after powerful countries have protected themselves.” How the race for  Covid-19 vaccine is getting dirty Related Rampant destruction of forests ‘will unleash more pandemics’

A quality analysis Dreams and Nightmares of the World’s Middle Classes

Carlas’s Song Reviews of the film Related Nicaragua:  A revolution compromised

Covid-19 and Urban Marginalisation

Andrew Smith of  Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)  said: "By training and collaborating with despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers, the UK risks making itself complicit in the abuses that are being inflicted." “Risks making itself complicit”? Andrew Smith is either naive or a liberal idiot. UK ‘providing training for repressive regimes’

Ashes in the Snow

A book review Israel is an Army with a Country Attached

Solidarność: 40 years ago and now The writer calls the former communist-party-led regimes of eastern Europe “state socialists.” There is no left consensus on the character of those regimes. I wouldn’t call them state socialists though. They were dictatorial, bureaucratic regimes that controlled most of the economy. “ Today, the union [Solidarity] is almost entirely allied with PiS, and thus with all the illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, homophobic, protofascist policies and practices that the party has been promoting.” The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland’s Solidarity Movement

Katyn

I think arguments that reinforce irrationality and conservatism always find millions of followers. Those millions of people have their prejudices, and their opinions on subjects like Marxism, socialism, human nature, etc are based on lack of knowledge and miseducation or material interest. The contradiction lies in this: in their daily life people generally make rational decisions, but when it comes to subjects like capitalism, hierarchy, human nature, socialism, ‘ordinary’ people have irrational ideas about those subjects. Their ideas has been built over many years, and often since childhood. Most people do not break away from what was inculcated in their minds at home and at school. Like a Muslim preacher who gains fame by hitting the right neurones of a Muslim mind that prone to conservatism, John Peterson is a Western preacher for a Western audience that too has its own conservatism and prejudices. And the more capitalism as an economic and social system enters into crisis and

Maesteg-based Sian Summers-Rees, chief officer of City of Sanctuary, said: "The asylum system itself is dehumanising. Sometimes the system can take years and the quality of the decision-making by the Home Office is not good." Asylum seekers ‘in limbo’ and unable [not allowed] to work

When the Americans were spreading freedom in another country and “a revolution was badly led.”

Can Arabic Language ‘Translate’ into the Modern World?

English landowners have stolen our rights. It is time to reclaim them

What if Palestinians just disappeared? A review of the novel  The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

UN vote Exposes, Isolates Canada

‘These foreigners! They come to our country, they find a safe haven, we give them shelter and jobs, they enjoy our freedoms and democracy ... And now they want to rewrite out history, the history of Great Britain ’ Rule, Britannia!

UAE-Israel deal: The new hegemons of the Middle East

The problem isn’t the algorithm. It’s the class system

Note that Morocco and Tunisia are not in the “Middle East.” How are Middle Eastern countries coping with climate change?

How just one country and 9 products contribute to deforestation

Why economic recovery from coronavirus is widening the wealth gap

“Italy’s Sikh Slaves” Related Italy’s Migrant Boot Camp Raped, beaten, exploited

“While official anti-corruption campaigns are at best a PR exercise, the opposition’s drive to weed out corruption rests on the idea that corruption is an incidental addition to the system, which could be made to function more fairly and rationally without it. Yet this is to mistake a feature for a glitch: the orgies of illicit enrichment [Alexei] Navalny and others rightly attack are not simply a product of the personal greed of Putin’s colleagues, they are part of the system’s very architecture. Far from being an extraneous or incidental aspect of contemporary Russian capitalism, corruption has been built into it from the outset.” Russia’s appointed billionaires

1952-2020 An obituary

Available to watch here

The Democratic National Convention Private healthcare, imperialism and other things the Democrats support

Thousands of migrants denied help during pandemic Related BAME over 50s likely to be among poorest in England

Signs of alternative power with an opposition that doesn’t want to take power! Belarus on the brink: what now? And as Volodymyry Artiukh wrote : “  Police violence, the lack of central ideological and strategic leadership among the protesters, and the decentralized nature of the protests will determine their further development. At the same time, the ruling elite showed no signs of a split, the security apparatus and the bureaucracy generally remained loyal, although there have been signs of hesitation at the lower and regional levels (with several state media journalists and police officers resigning). There is no central coordination center of the protest, no local centers, no visible leaders on the street, no identifiable political groups. I believe that some already existing political groups are taking part in the protests, but they are not visible as separate ‘tactical units’: they are either disoriented, or deeply disguised, or participating as individuals.” Partisans

This is a very good piece. If your university/institution has a subscription with Taylor and Francis online, you should be able to access the article. Decolonizing the history of British women’s suffrage movement

This was written in April. No, Liberal Pundits: Biden Hasn’t Actually Been a Progressive All Along

Historian Raj Pal to the BBC: We have a myth of ‘Britannia rules the waves’ and making Britain ‘Great’, but we don’t want to address the fact that Britannia ruling the waves is to do with the slave trade, colonialism, empire and massacre, as well as trade in tobacco, sugar and salt. Almost a third of stately homes owned by the National Trust have links to slavery or colonialism...

A new publication The Sultan’s Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging

The last communist to challenge Stalin to his face

When [sociologist] Zygmunt Bauman turned his attention to camps in the 90s, he argued that what characterises violence in our age is distance – not just the physical or geographical distance that technology allows, but the social and psychological distance produced by complex systems in which it seems everybody and nobody is complicit. This, for Bauman, works on three levels. First, actions are carried out by “a long chain of performers”, in which people are both givers and takers of orders. Second, everybody involved has a specific, focused job to perform. And third, the people affected hardly ever appear fully human to those within the system. “Modernity did not make people more cruel,” Bauman wrote, “it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people.” Why are they still with us? Related In America: crammed into cells and forced to drink from the toilet

France’s Afghan fundamentalist heroes

State-sanctioned arbitrary killing of Morsi, say UN experts When someone mentions or appeals to “the international community”, do they mean this? The other day a British woman said we were a free country. Whatever her definition of freedom in capitalism is, could a country and its state that are complicit in crimes and oppression be free?

Anyone for regime change?

Repression of the Teachers’ Union

Via   pracownicza demokracja “The strike movement in Belarus is spreading instantly. Much more bets are on strike now. Some of the protesters were released and the  police stopped beating (so far). On strike m. in Minsk Electrical Factory, Belkard in Grodno, Grodno-Nitrogen, Belaruskali in Salihorsk, MTZ tractor factory (here the strike committee was established), MMZ, Kieramin and many more. Once again we see that organized workers and mass strikes are the most powerful weapon in the fight for democracy. Today is the 40th anniversary of the strike in Gdańsk Shipyard. What is happening in Belarus at the moment is also part of our - employee and international - history... and a great example for today for employees and employees in Poland.”

Biden-Harris ticket is a win for Israel

no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled me

This is a good summary, but lacks a political economy perspective. “The cycle will continue for as long as politicians refuse to address the reasons why people come to Britain to seek asylum. To take an example, the 120 people who were  intercepted in the Channel  on 4 August came from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan and Yemen. Of these countries, two were invaded in recent history by a coalition that included the UK; one has been pushed into famine by a Saudi-led bombardment using British weapons and military expertise; one is in a prolonged conflict with Israel, which like Saudi Arabia is a UK ally; and the others, most of which are former British colonies, are places where there is long-term, well-documented persecution of particular ethnic and social groups.” The more fundamental question of [failure of] economic development, the political economic policies pursued by the ruling classes in the aforementioned countries is missing. People become migra

“We have to break bourgeois right”

A call to release leaders of the Jordanian Teacher Association

This country sees itself as overcrowded and overgenerous – it is neither of those things

To those interested in Marxism in the Arab countries East, and specifically Egypt. I would seminal works on the subject by Tareq Y. Ismael: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq The Communist Movement in Egypt 1920-1988 The Arab Left The Sudanese Communist Party Essential Readings on Marxism and the Left in Egypt

The Left, the Party and the Class

A call to release Sanaa Seif

Vis Tariq Ali A friend writes from Lebanon: "There’s a blind rage in the streets. I’ve seen nothing like it, Tariq. Not in Pakistan, not in Sri Lanka, not in Turkey, not even in Tunisia when I was there in 2011. I was in Martyrs’ Square yesterday, and there were young people everywhere just looking for something to break. They didn’t care if they would get infected with COVID-19, knowing that the hospitals have collapsed and wouldn’t be able to take care of them. They didn’t fear the security forces arrayed around them, who fired multiple rounds of tear gas first, then rubber bullets, then live ammunition in an abortive attempt to scatter their ranks. “They’ll run out of tear gas and bullets soon,” one protestor told me, noting how everything is in short supply in Lebanon these days. “Then what will they do to us?” It’s extraordinary. The protestors sacked four ministries yesterday, taking with them documents from the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Foreign Affai

‘The virus piggybacked on racism’

On 05 August 1939, thirteen young women were executed by a  Francoist   firing squad  just after the conclusion of the  Spanish Civil War . Their execution was part of a massive execution campaign known as the  "saca de agosto" , which included 43 young men (among them a fourteen-year-old). Las trece rosas

The Arab Gramsci

The “civilised” UK’s Home Secretary plans to use the navy against migrants A threat to Britain, to “our way of life” and to the economy: lone migrant children

Beirut’s ruling class – the stupidest mafia there is

“The essential thing is the interplay between fatality, technology, and capitalism” set the stage for nationalism/the modern nation. Excerpts from one of my favourite books Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Collateral Damage

Tracing the explosives

“This would not explain why two highly trained, US former special forces soldiers climbed into that boat on a quest to "liberate" a country that was not theirs.” Well, they were former American special forces. The American regime has been doing its best to ‘liberate’ other countries. Many American soldiers and many Americans believe in that mission. Despite the crimes and the criminal consequences of training death squads to invasions and toppling of even democratically-elected presidents, the ideological belief is still there. The American regime would be very happy if the plot against Maduro succeeded. One has just to look at a very recent coup, the one in Bolivia. Even the BBC’s tone would be different. Liberals would disagree with the capture or assassination of the president, but once the dust settles down “democratic elections”, “stability” and “liberal democracy” would be the talk of the day.  A ‘bizzare’ plot to capture a president

“Islamising stones is easier than Islamising souls”

Zeinab, and the world outside her window.  Photograph by Hana Gamal (El Mansoureya المنصورية)

Gaddafi’s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya’s oil

Taking on the ‘fearsome foursome’ and ‘market power’

In the process of liberating other people, especially women, in a faraway country from bearded “terrorists”/“insurgents”, some of our heroic boys exercising their duty under extreme pressure make mistakes. When Muslims attack us in Paris or London, they are terrorists and Jihadis. A flood of articles, hourly updates and eye-witnesses’ accounts, repeated news items and pictures, When “our soldiers” (good Jihadis) execute civilians they act in “self-defence” and barely anyone hears about it. Did UK Special Forces execute unarmed civilians?

Decolonisation for the author does not include decolonising global capitalism, putting an end to - wealth accumulation in the hands of a few - obscene inequality - unequal exchange and monopoly of technology, - uneven development, - overthrowing of dictatorships/bourgeois classes in poor” and “developing” countries”, - debt, - imposition of economic programmes such as privatisation, etc. The author thinks ending discrimination and “reparations and restitution” will bring about decolonisation without touching the structure of the existent ownership and power relations. Colonialism made the modern world. Let’s remake it.

Hinting to economic and political domination/oppression without linking class to race, blurs and even hides what you call “structural” in any society.  Remember how the conflicts in Iraq and Syria have been mainly treated as sectarianism . That is what the following analysis does. There are black capitalists and black people who believe in the morals and ideas of the bourgeoisie. There are black imperialists and the recent example in the US is the most obvious. Then there is global power relations that perpetuates racism and class oppression. A black person in an A country could be oppressed racially and economically by the national ruling class and the country itself is dominated by Western imperialism, which perpetuates those oppressive class and racial relations globally. Any attempt to break out of such domination (see the recent experience of Latin America and Egypt, for example) is met by fierce opposition, sabotage or cooption by Western imperialism. Power and Exclusion

Boris, the Russian oligarchs and Page 3 model

Wealth or Income?