Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

In a nutshell, the climate  negotiations “are predicated on a contradiction: the task of agreeing a programme of radical global economic transformation is allocated to those – including, this year, a record 2,500 fossil fuel industry representatives – who stand to lose the most from disrupting the current economic model. For the most influential in these negotiations – the titans of finance, energy giants, and the wealthy states who protect their interests – the solution to this dilemma is to find a way to transform the foundations of global capitalism, from energy to agriculture and from transport to industry, while preserving everything else about its social relations and overarching dynamics. Theirs is necessarily a future in which the transition to a decarbonised and ecologically sustainable economy implies no trade-off with continued growth, profit maximisation, private ownership or accumulation: in short, from fossil capitalism to a green capitalism. For some, green capitalism is

‘Peace dividend’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘democracy’

  Michael Roberts , 25 December 2020:

  The economy - some facts

Pinker is, after all, an intellectual darling of the most powerful echelons of global society. He  spoke to the world’s elite  this year at the World’s Economic Forum in Davos on the perils of what he calls “political correctness,” and has been named one of  Time  magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”  His new book is Bill Gates' favourite book of all time! Pinker claims to respect science, yet he blithely ignores fifteen thousand scientists’ desperate warning to humanity.  It should be added that Pinker is an apologist of the US imperialist violence and he is Islamophobic. The grim takeaway ... is that racist violence against African Americans has not declined at all, as Pinker suggests. Instead, it has become institutionalized into U.S. national policy in  what is known as  the school-to-prison pipeline. Pinker  unquestioningly propagates one of the great neoliberal myths of the past several decades: that “a rising tide lifts all the boats”—a phr

"China has already overtaken in per capita GDP or in PPP all of the world's other largest developing economies - India, Indonesia and Brazil. By 2020 China's per capita GDP will be higher than several Eastern European countries. As China has 19 percent of the world's population, quite literally never in human history has anything approaching such a large proportion of the world's population had its conditions of life improved so rapidly. That will be the astonishing measure of China's success in achieving "moderate prosperity" - it is, without comparison, literally the greatest economic achievement in human history." What China achieving 'moderate prosperity' means

The global debt hangover

The Structure of Modern Imperialism