Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 “You never understood that we might want a different life than yours, to believe differently, to feel differently, and think differently from you.” —Arminius, Barbarians - last episode

 Jeremy Corbyn: Seize the time! John Molyneux, 29 October 2020 Today’s suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by Keir Starmer  is outrageous but it is also the culmination of a long process that began the moment Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party. From the very first day the British political establishment, led by David Cameron and supported by most of the mainstream media and a considerable section of the Parliamentary Labour Party, set out to discredit and destroy him.  This project had nothing to do with Corbyn’s personal strengths or weaknesses and absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism,  real or alleged.  The motive was simple and obvious: from the outset they perceived Corbyn and especially those who supported him and were mobilized by him as a threat to their interests, precisely because he had a long record as a socialist, as an anti-racist campaigner, as a defender of workers’ rights and, particularly, as an opponent of war and British imperialism. The last they found

This article is also available in French Arabic and Spanish  French Soldiers in the Sahel: A Barely Repressed Colonial Unconscious

Trump “was elected fair and square,” states Hamid Dabashi. I disagree. He was not. Neither were the ones before him. Leaving aside the electoral college’s role, how is it fair election when just to be a mayor of New York you need to be backed by millionaires and billionaires? The power of the different lobbies with heavy money, of individuals and corporations, and the corporate media shapes many outcomes. Money matters a great deal in elections,” Adam Bonica from Standford University said. It’s just that, he believes, when scientists go looking for its impacts, they tend to look in the wrong places. If you focus on general elections, he said, your view is going to be obscured by the fact that 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup — and the people that win those elections are still given (and then must spend) ridiculous sums of money because, again, big donors like to curry favor with candidates they k

 “ What Macron fears the most is the breakdown of the racial contract. For the more the pressure of liberal forces dismantles the social contract, the more the rulers count on the solidity of the racial contract to continue to link the fate of the white working-class to the bourgeois state. And when the racial contract weakens (i.e. the convergence of postcolonial subjects, the Gilets Jaunes, and other social movements against the police; the Left’s greater understanding of Islamophobia and structural racism; etc.), power panics and is left with only one choice: reinforce the racial contract. This is one of the cardinal functions of the notion of “laïcité,” or secularism, whose meaning shifts according to the ideological needs of the colonial counter-revolution.” Despite Mélenchon’s blunder, I agree with Bouteldja here. Walking the Tight Rope

Why Tunisia, Africa Must Demand French Apology [and Compensation]

 ‘No change for thirty years’

 “ Neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon nor Emmanuel Macron know what  laïcité  [French state secularism] is , yet Macron wants to teach Muslims that “Islam is in crisis.” 

 “ The point I try to make in that article is that the debate on whether Jews should be accorded full political rights in 1840s Prussia presents some striking similarities with the debate on Muslims’ integration into French society today. More precisely, my point is that the French state’s demand that religious minorities (and let’s be frank, Muslims in particular) respect the principle of secularism in the public space is reminiscent of Bruno Bauer’s position on the Jewish Question. Bruno Bauer believed that the Jews deserved to be granted political rights only if they stopped being Jews and embraced Enlightenment thought. In other words, he conceived of political emancipation as a kind of award that individuals receive only if they renounce their own religious identity and embrace the identity that the secular state deems as appropriate. Likewise, the French state demands that Muslims get rid of their religious/cultural practices if they want to show willingness to integrate into Fre

 A “$400 billion” Iran-China Deal? The View from History

 A review of A People’s Guide to Capitalism

 The myth of the ‘efficient’ private sector has been busted by Covid

Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsular

 One of the best analyses I have read. A historical sociology approach to authoritarian resilience in post-Arab uprising

اضغط/ي على الصورتين لعرض النص كاملا غسان بن خليفة، تونس 23 أوكتوبر 2020

“ Simplistic slogans are now a pillar of nationalism: France is under attack for its values, and all citizens are called to its defence against an amorphous enemy. This enemy is violent because it is Muslim, and so the political logic goes, all Muslims should be regarded with suspicion and any signs of religiosity with fear.” The right to offend Muslims is being weaponised Related It is Macron and his government that are in crisis I am a teacher

 Sex attacks fuel ‘feminist revolution’

 “ As nationalism once again rears its ugly head throughout Europe and the world, and photo manipulation is available to anyone with a smartphone, perhaps Heartfield’s ingenious manner of exposing lies could offer inspiration to a new generation of artists. And even if it doesn't, his iconic images that highlighted the pointless brutality of war and the power of collective resistance remain as powerful and relevant as ever.“ The images that fought the Nazis

 “The west’s hypocritical, counterproductive human rights regime.” Sudan is being rewarded for its revolution with blackmail

“ Some will argue that we should not compare so-called liberal democracies in the West with repressive governments elsewhere in the world. But what did the United States’ status as a liberal democracy do for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and working-class Black America? For that matter, what did Iran’s status as a revolutionary society for the  mostazafin —the dispossessed—do for Asieh Panahi and the residents of her neighborhood as they confronted the bulldozers?“ A Call for Solidarity

  Free union leaders and activists

Polish women should to travel to Turkey, Tunisia, or Azerbaijan–countries with Muslim majority–to seek abortion.   Abortion: Ban on almost all terminations

Classism and accent prejudice in UK’s top universities

This is not surprising. Three years ago a YouGov poll showed that “the majority of the people” support the public running of some key sectors such as the railways, the mail service and the water companies.  Transport for Wales rail services to be nationalised Comments on the BBC Related Nationalisation vs privatisation

  In the briefing, Dr Ali said: "The problem with focusing on ethnicity as a risk factor is that it misses the very large number of non-ethnic minority groups, so whites basically, who also live in deprived areas and overcrowded housing and with high risk occupations." He added the whole population should have a "personalised risk assessment" rather than just targeting ethnic groups. "It doesn't make sense to put all ethnic minorities in the same basket as it doesn't make sense to put all whites in the same basket," he said.  On structural racism, he said he was not convinced by the narrative that racism played a part in coronavirus deaths. My comment: What about class then, Dr Ali? What about the overlap of class and racism?  If the whites also suffer from risk because of their class and social conditions they live, the non-whites, the working class, the poor, suffer from both racism and class oppression. Ethnic minority Covid risk ‘not explained

  Mr. Macron will deliver a solemn eulogy to Mr. Paty on Wednesday at the Sorbonne. He has already been hailed as a martyr of the French Republic. The emotion of thousands who turned out for him across France was real. A huge gathering at the Place de la Republique in Paris recalled the ones held after the attacks of 2015. But a few wondered about what had transpired in Mr. Paty’s class. “I feel like it’s very hard to use these cartoons for strictly educational purposes,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS, in Paris. “Secularists think that it is their right, because of the law that allows blasphemy and any form of mockery of religion. But on the other hand, there is the feeling that in doing so, it is the Muslims who are despised, not the prophet,” he said. “By using cartoons to teach freedom of expression, we do not understand that we offend people,” Mr. Khosrokhavar said. “There are a thousand ways to express free

 After banning the use of anti-capitalist materials at schools, the move now is to make  teaching “white privilege” as an uncontested fact illegal

 “No piece of land is worth” I think that’s an underestimation of the role of property in conflicts whether between states or classes or among the marginalised. And the case of the Armenians, the Turkish genocide is in the collective memory. Enmity has a longer history in the “imagined community” than 30/40 years ago.

 “This Land is Your Land”

 The IMF smokescreen

“I’m never going to blend in.” We are not comfortable talking about certain things. Same here, Nadiya. If you as a celebrity is unable to blend in, what about me? Twenty years and I have not been accepted and decided not to try to blend in, for if you want to be accepted, you must go with the stream, accept the status quo, be polite and don’t talk about subjects that make the other feel uncomfortable or upset, don’t express your radical views, don’t judge people, talk about the banalities and the mundane, don’t try to attack prejudices because people don’t want to appear ignorant or intolerant. Nadiya Hussain

 Despite a US-backed coup Morales’ ally set for win They will try other methods in future, including sabotage, sanctions, etc. Related The US-backed coup in Bolivia was based on lies Bolivia’s coup

 When you own a country, you do with its wealth whatever you want while your brothers and sisters (Arabs and Muslims) from Lebanon’s “failed state” to Syrian refugees are suffering. You also stretch your arms to help reshape the geo-strategical board of the MENA region. You get support from the heart of “free market democracies” interested in selling you properties and weapons, and they protect you. An Arab revolution that does not spread to overthrow those rotten pigs and employ the Gulf resources for the majority of Arabs, cannot be called a revolution. Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire

“ Party members were from all ethnicities and religious sects of Syria, making it likely the most diverse among leftist parties in the country. Women also had a significant and, in later years, growing presence in the ranks of the LCP [Labour Communist Party] though were largely absent from leadership positions (p.191). Alongside the initial involvement of women in the first steps of the party through “Marxist Circles”, or collective political groups, they played an increasingly important role throughout different periods of the party. Female members also suffered from the multiple campaigns of arrests by the security services, especially at the end of the 1980s as their numbers and participation in the party increased. As Shabo writes, the significant numbers of women in the LCP and their activism made the party clearly distinct from other leftist and communist groups, where women’s roles were comparatively less prominent.” Syria’s Labour Communist Party

  Man can drop part of name denoting slave ancestry

 The Unintended Consequences of Turkey’s Quest for Oil

  A Lesson in Drawing By the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) Translated from Arabic

French Education Minister: “The Republic is under attack.” The reason? One French man was beheaded for his “freedom of expression.”  “At the very moment that, in the name of fighting terror, the French state is devastating Raqqa, arresting refugee activists, banning climate demonstrations, and giving police the power to conduct home-invasions without a warrant at any hour for three months, the political classes’ propagandists have rallied French society behind them under the banner of defence of Republican ‘values’ – liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, civilization, human rights. In this situation, the nature of Republicanism as the all-purpose ideology of the French ruling class emerges clearly. Republicanism can be harnessed to justify anything that aligns with the interests of French state power. In the name of Republican values, France can  criminalize BDS , hold up racist caricature as an exemplary exercise of free speech, or  seriously contemplate  censorship of the media.

 Andreas Malm: “The likely future is escalating catasrophe”

 Partners in Crime

  Joe Biden’s America is [another] myth

 How rescuing drowning migrants became a crime

 Permission to narrate Palestinian feminism

Anti-communism without communism, demonising the Left and appeasing the far-right. The End of Anti-Fascism Related European identity and the paradox of anti-communism Instructions not to use anti-capitalist materials in schools

Excerpts “The ideological character of the uprisings went through a similar evolution. In the early stages, the revolutionaries fashioned themselves as belonging to a post-ideological movement. In reality, though, they were as ideological as any political movement — but their worldview simply mirrored international liberal norms, a doctrine so thoroughly internalized that it seemed like common sense. The movements for democracy were articulated through an individualistic, rights-based discourse, with a special emphasis on human rights. Among the revolutionary leadership, there was almost no talk of substantive equality, wealth redistribution, or property relations. The liberal revolutionaries appealed to the “international community,” which usually meant the Western powers. To understand what happened, we must grapple with the changing social structure in the Arab world over the previous four decades. Both liberal and left explanations fall short because they ignore the role of class i

 On Blaming Climate Change for the Syrian Civil War

 Modern Arab art and the depiction of blue collar workers

Cristiano Ronaldo’s annual salary is 31 million EUR. He currently plays in Italy. When an Italian earns 32,000 EUR after tax a year, Ronaldo earns that sum in 8 minutes. Like a few other things, this has been normalised and generally accepted and unquestioned by the general population. When a system succeeds in instilling such consent or acquiescence, it is those who question such injustice are looked at as old-fashioned, utopian, or people with extremist ideas about social justice and freedoms. Who are going to vote for in the next election in order to preserve the “democracy” and “freedoms” of the “free market”?

 A glimpse of hope. Columbia students voted to divest from Israel but the president responded dismissively

 The crux of this had been already analysed by Stratfor, the intelligence company, 5/6 years ago. The great uncoupling 

 The pandemic and the future of work

“The Tyranny of Merit  [by Michael Sandel] is infused with moral urgency, elegantly written and cogently argued, with a core conclusion both succinct and indisputable: meritocracy does not counter inequality, it justifies it.” Why the ideal of meritocracy only deepens inequality

 The biggest threat to its independence is the corporation itself

  Founding Generation of Looters Related “Yitzhak Epstein, one of the first settlers in the Land of Israel, a member of “Hovevei Zion,” argued forcefully in his essay “A Hidden Question” (1907), which caused a great stir among the small Jewish population in the country, that the Palestinian reaction to Jewish immigration is rooted, among other causes, in economic competition and dispossession, not in hatred or antisemitism. The list of those who made similar arguments is a lengthy one.” —Adam Raz

“A crash in the dollar is likely and it could fall by as much as 35 per cent by the end of 2021.“ “The end of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege”

The assumptions underpinning our modern economy – that we are competitive by nature, that our desires will always exceed our means – were wrong. And second, it meant that for the vast majority of our history, while we roamed the Earth as hunter-gatherers, we enjoyed more leisure time than we do today. Lots of these things that we think we are hostage to are actually not a part of our nature. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of Britons said their work did not meaningfully contribute to the world. In 2017, a Gallup poll of 155 counties found that only one in 10 western Europeans described themselves as engaged by their jobs. Though labour productivity has increased roughly four- or five-fold in industrialised nations since post-WWII, average weekly working hours have remained stubborn at just under 40 hours a week. A recent report by  Tax Justice  found that Britons think accumulating wealth is positive and morally right, and are broadly supportive of the ultra-rich, believing them to have b

“ The country has been here several times before: Bleeding Kansas during the 1850s, when slave-owners and abolitionists faced off in murderous confrontations; the birth of the first Klan after the Civil War to resist Radical Reconstruction; and the wave of violence that accompanied the rise of the Third Klan during the civil rights movement. Elements of the left from John Brown to the Italian Red Brigades have also pursued violent accelerationist campaigns in pursuit of social change. But only the reactionaries have enjoyed approval from more mainstream sources of political power. Often, they got logistical support as well as material and legal cover from security services.“ America is about to enter its years of lead Related Black Americans arm themselves in response to pandemic, protests

“ Thomas Haldenwang, the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who jointly presented the report with Seehofer, said the spectrum of cases was “large” and the accusations against the individuals “very heterogeneous”, but he said most of them broadly fell into categories with “typical rightwing extremist hallmarks”, such as racism, antisemitism and glorifying National Socialism.” Hundreds of right-wing extremist incidents by security forces revealed

 A virus! McAfee arrested over tax evasion charges

He doesn’t care about Black Lives Matter ... Just follow what he said carefully. You would be surprised how much ignorant white British are. And this is only one subject of discussion. An example from Bristol, England

سعيدة المَنَبْهِي  ولدت عام 1952 في مراكش - توفيت في 11 ديسمبر عام 1977 في الدار البيضاء  كانت شاعرة مغربية و ناشطة في المنظمة الماركسية الثورية إلى الأمام . في عام 1975 ، حكم علي سعيدة و خمسة أعضاء من المنظمة بالسجن لمدة سبع سنوات بتهمة القيام بأنشطة مناهضة ومعادية للدولة . في السجن بالدار البيضاء ، قامت سعيدةبإضراب عن الطعام وتوفيت في اليوم السادس والثلاثين من الإضراب. والجدير بالذكر أن سعيدة المنبهي تعد أول شهيدة عربية في إضراب عن الطعام من أجل النضال الثوري. وتعتبر أيقونة للتضحية والمثابرة والصمود بالنسبة للشباب والطلبة المغاربة ومصدر إلهام للنضال اليساري، ووصفها الشاعر عبد الله زريقة بـ "امرأة أحبت الضوء". يعد شعر سعيدة المنبهي - الذي تم تجميعه ونشره عام 2000 - مثالًا رئيسيًا على الشعر المغربي الثوري والنسوي. ويذكر أنها كانت تكتب بالفرنسية. وفاتها ابتداء من يوم 8 نوفمبر 1977 دخلت سعيدة المنبهي في إضراب تام عن الطعام وذلك بهدف سن قانون المعتقل السياسي والدعوة إلي تحسين ظروف المعتقلين وفك العزلة عن الرفيقات المناضلات وعن المناضل إبراهام السرفاتي ، وقد دام الإضراب لمدة 34

 Saida Menebhi

“It would be useful for some contemporary pundits and politicians to be reminded that ‘horseshoe theory’, which places anti-fascist activity in the same category as the fascists they oppose, is dangerous nonsense.”  A book review The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War

 The history remembered, the history forgotten

 This is a good piece. The Economics of Palestinian Liberation

 The friendly regime “liberal democracies” of Paris, London and Washington support, welcome and will welcome again ...has executed 79 political prisoners since el-Sisi came to power Egypt executes 15 ‘political prisoners’ in a new crackdown

 History of Women’s Movements in Asia and the Middle East

 “A woman with a small cabbage on the way to the market.” Credit to Daniel Nadler (via Egyptian Streets)

“And it's not just stately homes. From universities, to town halls, from theatres to banks, the founders of many of these institutions made their money through the business of slavery. Slavery touched almost every corner of British society.“ Then one day the Havelocks, the Gordons, the Churchills ...will be next, hopefully. How slavery shaped our history Related Tate Modern’s association with slavery

 Migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon

  Two Decades after the Second Intifada Related Palestine’s Capitalists

 Financial crimes spread to politics